Yahoo! Threatens French-Language Site Over Parody

groov3 writes " A French-language Slashdot-style weblog called pssst received this afternoon a cease and desist letter from lawyers representing Yahoo! They asked them to remove a parody site called Yahoo! Québec (site in French). Problem is: they're not the authors. It seems Yahoo!'s lawyers cannot properly read HTML or URLs. Another amusing case of legal cluelessness. A local online tech news site called Multimédium has more details (in French again)." a limp Babelfish translation of the Multimédium story seems to imply that Yahoo!'s big problem with the parody is the use of the "Yahoo!" trademark and logo itself, changed only by the addition of the word "Quebec." Any French-speaking Slashdot readers care to help us English monolinguists out on this one?Click below for more explanation:

Morph3us writes "Here's some more info on the cease and desist letter from Yahoo! inc. to the French-language weblog pssst! Actually, what Yahoo! INC. doesn't like in this parody is the fact that it is using the actual logo of Yahoo!, with the single addition of the word "Québec" in a very similar font. Also, the search engine used in the parody was searching in a porn site database. Both of these facts could lure visitors into thinking that Yahoo! inc. was associated with the site and was offering a porn site search engine. Pssst doesn't have any power on the site Yahoo! Quebec and even on the link to it in Pssst, because it was posted by an anonymous contributor (although I guess they could delete it from the database). This contributor is also the author of the site and of the first message posted on Slashdot about this story. The author of the site sent me an e-mail today mentionning he had changed the search engine to seek in the Vatican's web site ("from one extreme to the other" as he told me!). He also plans to modify the logo to Youhou! instead of Yahoo! But there's no intention of removing the site at the moment. "

Comments

Parodies

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This is one of the funniest things I've seen for a while. And I don't even speak french!

2. http://www.worldwidescam.com/parody.htm says "L.L. Bean Inc. v. Drake Publishers Inc." involved a parody of the well-known L.L. Bean catalogue of outdoor goods published in High Society, an adult magazine devoted to erotic entertainment. The parody was entitled "L.L Beam's Back-to-School-Sex-Catalog" and displayed a facsimile of Bean's trademark. It featured sexually explicit photographs using "products" that were described in a crudely humorous fashion. The article was labeled on the magazine's contents page as "humor" and "parody." After L.L. Bean sought injunctive relief on trademark infringement and trademark dilution theories, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine granted summary judgment to Bean on the dilution claim under Maine law. The First Circuit reversed, citing first amendment considerations. The court stated that the rights of a trademark owner extent only to prevent injurious unauthorized commercial uses of the mark by another, and that such rights to not entitle the owner to quash an unauthorized use of the mark by one who is communicating ideas or expressing points of view. In this framework, the court found that the dilution statute was inapplicable in this non-commercial context. There could be no "tarnishment," as required for one form of dilution, based solely on the presence of an unwholesome context in which a trademark is used without authorization when that context is non-commercial. Here, Drake Publishers never did use L.L. Bean's mark to identify or promote actual goods or services.

Re:the problem

[sjames]

The first, simply put: it doesn't work to be nice. ... The second reason is that being nice simply doesn't suffice.

Extrapolating to other situations, if someone bumps into you, or calls your number by mistake, the best policy is to scream out a string of obscenities? (Since you know very well they did it on purpose just to bug you) Or perhaps it's just better to skip the preliminaries and invite them to step outside.

Not everyone understands the law and most people don't run everything they plan to do past a lawyer first. Society is not well served if people insist on opening dialog with "fight'n words".

Re:the problem

[sjames]

Being nice actually works in the situations you mention. From the story in his post, being nice didn't work when someone was breaking the rules for the license of the MUD in question.

Agreed, it didn't work that time, so stronger measures were justified. The part I took exception to was that the poster then extrapolated that case to conclude that being nice never works and it's best to just start out nasty.

Most definitely a parody...

[Christopher B. Brown]

• The Cancun travel guide is Sites "full hot"
• It mentions Rene Simard, and chortle! links to a pregnant seahorse...
• It definitely plays the "pur laine Quebecois" versus "maudit francais" game.

  To those from less French places, this is somewhat analagous to Australians playing up that they're transported convicts, treating the "theoretically better born" English as inferior.

It's definitely very politically incorrect, and will be quite offensive to anyone sensitive to terms like "wop" or "paki." It's too bad that it's so offensive, as it's otherwise quite funny. The only upside is that it's pretty much going to be offensive to everyone, including Quebecois.

I guess it's funny in a sort of "South Park" way...

Dialects

[vlax]

Almost anything counts as a dialect, whenever there is an objectively measureable difference in the dominant speech of one area or socio-economic group compared to another.

Quebec French is objectively and legitimately different than French spoken elsewhere. The same can be said of Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Wallonia or for that matter Vietnam, Haiti, Louisiana or Reunion. Ergo, calling it a dialect is legitimate, so long as we all understand that all types of French are dialects.

Quebec French shows relatively little creolisation, and calling it a creole is certainly a misnomer. All languages adopt words from other languages, but a creole, as you point out, evolves from a pidgin generally. There is no history of pidgin in mainstream Canadian French. Only the Micmacs and the Michif used genuine creoles as far as I can recall, and neither group much influenced Canadian French.

Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, Reunion, Mauritius and many other places have creoles, Quebec French is unquestionably French - it has only a smattering of foreign terms, no more really than Paris French and less than any modern variant of English. Quebec French has not adopted any grammatical structure from English, nor does the grammar of Quebec French vary in any important way from the standard model of French. Quebec French is, in many respects, very conservative compared to other variants - which is mildly surprising considering the history of poor literacy in Quebec.

There have been some changes in pronunciation, but the same can be said of France - the French spoken today in Europe is not the same as that spoken 300 years ago. There is some variety in vocabulary, but nearly all of it comes from French terms that have shifted in meaning, or retained meanings lost elsewhere. Again, that happens to all languages everywhere.

Furthermore, "Ebonics" (Or Black American English or whatever term you like) has few aspects of a creole. Although there are still some people who believe that black English grammar comes from West African Bantu roots, there are very few linguists who believe this. Black English bears very little (or no) relationship with the English and French creoles of Lousiana, the Carolinas and the Carribean. It is a language that has evolved from the English imposed on African slaves - there is no consistent link between its grammar and the features of any African language. Most likely, it's evolution is just as natural as that separating the varieties of British English from American English, but lack of literacy and education tend to exacerbate the drift.

Ebonics can probably best be characterised as a group of dialects limited primarily to lower income blacks and groups in direct contact with them.

Re:Dialects

[vlax]

((I was under the impression that the distinctions had to be _easily_ measured, ie the blank stares Enoch said they get from Parisian French speakers. More than that, I believed it had to evolve naturally - creoles being an 'unnatural' form of evolution. ))

Think of Quebec French as being about as different from Paris French as Midwestern American is London English. These things aren't numerically measureable, so that's an approximation, but it's a pretty good one.

Dialects are fuzzy things, there isn't any notion (that I know of) of 'easily recogisable differences'. You could say that people from Minnesota have a dialect of English, because you can objectively measure consistent differences in their speech, but most Americans readily understand Minnesotans. Furthermore, many people can shift between the language they speak at home and some more standard or socially acceptible speech pattern. Dialects aren't solid things, so the only rigourous definition that's useful is any objective variation in speech that isn't an idiolect.

'Naturalness' isn't a notion that means much in terms of linguistic change. Creoles happen spontaneously throughout human history, usually when two or more groups of people have to live in close quarters and communicate, but share no language. However, they don't happen nearly as often when there is a single dominant language they all have to communicate in, like in the context of slave ownership.

((Interesting. So it's just pronounciations and word definitions that differentiate it? Or is there more?))

Mostly, that's it. A lot of people make noise about how common code-switching is in Quebec (using an English word or phrase in the middle of sentence in French) but that is something people do knowingly - only a few English words have really become integrated in Canadian French. The situation in New Brunswick is less clear, but I don't know the details of the French spoken there nearly as well.

((I am under the distinct impression that it is one. English forced on immigrants (in this case, black slaves) caused them to learn the basics, but they were still using it in the context in which they knew language. A new form sprung up as a result. ))

It's a cute theory, so cute almost everyone outside of linguistics buys into it. Unfortunately, there isn't any evidence to support the idea. There needs to be a consistent pattern of Bantu-style usages in order to establish the relationship, since the early period of slavery, when Black English first emerged, is undocumented. The lack of conjugation of the verb "to be" is well documented in many languages with no African contact, it alone isn't enough. Most of the structures used in Black English are inconsistent with typical Bantu grammar, and the few that are could easily be coincidence. After all, there are only so many ways of saying something, there's a good chance that any language will have some structure in common with any other language. Bantu languages most obvious feature is that they are very morphologically rich, while Black English is even poorer in morphology that the already morphology poor Standard English.

Furthermore, it's fairly easy to find phonetic links between Black English and the traditional dialects of the deep south. Certainly, Black English is more like white English in Alabama than like even the Carribean English variants.

((Incidentally, I know some distinctly NON-lower-income people who speak it as their birth-language. So it isn't restricted to those of the lower class or those without an education. )

True. It is mostly restricted to lower income groups and some people who have recently emerged from those groups. Like any linguistic phenomena, Ebonics is a fuzzy edged thing. There are always exceptions.

((Since you say the people you know disagree, could you tell me why? If you know more on the subject than I, I'd like to know what you think. What are the differences between the grammar of the language and the grammar of ebonics? Have you truly examined it, or are you contradicting me just so you can say ebonics is for uneducated losers (I'm not saying that to be inflammatory, I actually have been confronted by those who wanted only to say just that and had no logical backing for it). If need be, we can take this off slashdot - I'd be glad to email about it, so as not to continue an off-topic discussion. ))

First of all, I don't mean to say that Ebonics is in any way inferior or deficient or just for losers. That most of its speakers are black and poor is objectively verifiable. However, Ebonics is a perfectly normal, functional, useable language, as capable as any other of expressing any idea. Speaking it does not indicate lack of intelligence, nor today necessarily lack of education. (Although most well educated Americans can speak something closer to standard English, that doesn't mean they should have to.)

Had African Americans, from the day they set foot in America, been treated equally and given the same education as everyone else, I suspect there would be no Ebonics. Ebonics arose due to socio-economic factors, including poor education. This does not in any way indicate poor intelligence on the part of its speakers, nor deficiency on the part of their language.

In short, I want to distance myself from any idea that Ebonics = dumb and bad and Standard English = smart and good.

I gave a short summary of my reasons for disbelieving in the African origin hypothesis of Black English. If you need further reasons, we probably should take it off /., as we are well off topic. I don't think there is anything racist about suggesting that the African origin hypothesis is wrong. I don't mean thereby to invalidate Black English or suggest anything is wrong or deficient about it.

The differences in grammar between Standard English and Black English are fairly well documented by American linguists, and there is a fairly strong tradition of studies in this subject. Language in the USA was the text I had on the subject, but it seems to be out of print. I confess to not being an expert on American dialects - my subject was French - but I did study enough to get the principles down. (An' growin' up in da slums a Joizee shooa hep'd.)

It seems to me that WIlliam Labov is still the big name in that field. His website is at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~labov/home.html

If I've failed to answer any of your questions please e-mail me. I too have no wish to be hostile. Certainly, I'm not taking an anti-Black English stance.

Back in the old days...

[vlax]

...there used to be a notice, part of Yahoo's copyright notice, saying they would tolerate reasonable parodies. Now that Yahoo is in the big leagues, I guess the lawyers are running things.

I remember a Weird Al Yankovic fan site that parodied Yahoo, and a joke on Isreali PM Benjamin Netanyahu called Net'an'Yahoo. Did Yahoo take action in those cases? No. Why the sudden change of policy? Does having your stock go up 8000% in three years mean one has to start acting like some dumb, litigious conglomerate?

I don't know how a case like this would play out in a Quebec court. Public opinion is likely to favour the local francophone over a big foreign Anglo company, but the judge may not see it that way.

The commentary in French on the page with Yahoo's letter is worth the trouble of reading, if you're French-compatible. This law firm can't even get the domain name right (pssst.qc.ca vs pssst.gc.ca).

Furthermore, the HTML source of http://altern.org/groov3/yahoo/ has been modified with the follwing embedded comment:

Youhou, avocats de Yahoo, l'auteur de ce site est dans le lien de courriel ci-dessous

Yoohoo! Yahoo lawyers, the author of this site is in the link below

C'est quioute, ça. C'est ben quioute.

Anyway, good luck with Yahoo, d'un québécois en exile.

As another linguist...

[vlax]

...but with some background in dialectology, most of what you're saying is true. There is nothing less inherently correct or inherently French about the language of Montreal than the language of Paris. There is no one true French.

Whether you get something that could be passed off as Parisian French in school or something more legitimately Canadian depends on where you live and how much of the population is French there. My former students from Alberta and BC tended to to have illusions about the correctness of Paris French and often refused to use standard Canadian pronunciations (e.g /tsIp/ vs /tip/), but most of my Manitoban and Northern Ontario students spoke like Canadians. Students from N.B. usually seemed to pick up some Acadian usages (which I confess, with shame, to having a hard time understanding.)

Vowel raising is common in Ontario and throughout the prairies - I hear it everytime I visit my family in Winnipeg. Most Canadians only hear it when speaking to people from the Maritimes because their accent is pronounced in other ways as well. Most Canadians do have a perceptibily different accent, but are much easier for most Americans to understand than people from other regions of their own country.

I'd like to say that's because there are so many Canadians on American TV, but that's not actually true.

Commonwealth, American and International Englishes

[acb]

Apparently the British version of MacOS differed from the US one in a few things, such as "Trash" being labelled "Wastebasket", as well as text in menus and dialogs. Nothing that some hacker with a copy of ResEdit couldn't put right.

Commonwealth English appears to be in decline, and has been for decades. Though at least now, with the Net (a bidirectional medium, unlike Hollywood and MTV), it goes both ways. The new international English won't be just American-minus-obscure-regionalisms, but will contain pithy Commonwealthisms. For example, how many Americans have you seen using the adjective/adverb "bloody" lately?

And the hardcore Americophobes can use RiscOS; which is so British it even comes in a Welsh version.

Re:what kind of site is yahoo quebec

[Neph]

"Racist" is putting it pretty strongly. Seems to me the site's humour is mainly based on the Québec spoken-only version of French ("joual") put into written form. A Yahoo! site is really just a convenient backdrop.

The rest of the joke is really just the ironic link targets, like a the a link to "Ottawa" (capital of Canada) pointing to a site about the semi-terroristic separatist group FLQ (now demised, as far as I know).

If you do consider writing down joual racist, I'm not really the butt of the joke being an anglo (English-speaking Québecer don't get me started), but I don't think any Québecer with any detectable sense of humour would find this offensive.

Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty

Re:links to other yahoos racist

[LizardKing]

Yes, I have been to Quebec. I wouldn't have made the kind of comments I did unless they were from *personal* experience. I noticed that a lot of the locals were cordial to my girlfriend (who obviously spoke French without an accent), but were far less friendly towards me. I also noticed a curious counterpart to this attitude when an Canadian friend went to France and was given the third-degree by customs. The rest of the people he was with all had British passports, but they only picked on him ... odd.

I'm sorry if the subtlety of my phrasing infers that I found all Quebec citizens unfriendly. My use of the word *often* was not intended as a gross generalisation - but I have to admit the majority of people I met would insist on speaking French when they knew I was English, and then become very terse if I spoke French to them.

Go figure ...

Chris Wareham

Re:links to other yahoos racist

[LizardKing]

Not particularily suprising that the page expresses racist sentiments. The citizens of Quebec are often intolerant of foreigners, especially English speakers. This resentment, directed towards the more affluent English speaking territories, started in Canada's colonial past. And before anyone accuses me of bigotry I'll just add that my girlfriend is French - although politics is something we agree to differ on. I vote Liberal and she votes National Front ... it's worth remembering that one of the earliest 'fascist' political parties originated in France, and the National Front is still a credible force there.



Chris Wareham

This is not the version Yahoo protested about

[Dilbert_]

If you follow the link at the bottom of the page, you arrive on the same site, v1.0. And (most) of the links on that page do indeed point to real-looking but non-existing Yahoo url's. So they just stole the real Yahoo front page and put it up on their site. That's just lame, IMHO. And the parody notice at the bottom is much more concise, and it points to pssss. So I think Yahoo's mistake in sending legal threats to the wrong people is understandable here. I bet Andover's lawyers would do the same if someone just stole Slashdot's frontpage to attract more hits.

Re:the problem

[Robert S Gormley]

Unfortunately, it's behaviour like this that somewhat validates the people who say that some people who rant "free speech" are really saying "give me something for nothing" and really just doing that because it is easier than 'subversive' methods.

French also spoken here

[akey]

The site may not be hosted at pssst.qc.ca, but Pssst's certainly behind it. Or one of their users.

Houby.

One of their users, definitely. But that doesn't make pssst responsible for it. It's a simple matter to look up the name of the person who registered the domain, and start there, rather than finding a site that is recommended to visit while waiting for searches to complete. The lawyers fsck'ed up, period.

'Joual' glossary

[Stavr0]

This may help you 'get' some of the jokes: http://www.hostie.net /hostie/glossaire/glossdex/glossdex.html
---

You-Hou! Not Yahoo!

[Stavr0]

Obviously they don't get the joke... however they DO have other parodies http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Humor/By_Topic/ Computers_and_In ternet/Internet/Website_Parodies/Yahoo_/

When it's english it's parody, when it's quebecese it's infringement. WTF?!?
---

Pssst! And slashdot!!

[SpIcEz]

If you look closely to the Pssst.qc.ca web page, they mention slashdot a little lower!! Talking aboot the Guiness Beer article!!!

Im from Quebec and didint know about this site. I'll probably be checking it out now, to see what it has to offer, I mean, cant be that bad if they know about slashdot and post the GOOD articles ( like that one aboot beer bubbles!!

Here is where they mentione it!!
-------------------------------------------

1017 - 2000-01-12 12:03:38 société | fulltet
Slashdot nous informe sur les travaux d'une équipe de scientifiques australiens qui a percé un des mystères du 21e siècle. Celui des bulles dans la Guiness; pourquoi descendent-elles plutôt que de remonter? À voir ; il y a même une animation digne de mention...

Translation :

Slashdot informes us of the works of an australian scientific team who have pierced the mistery of the 21st Century. The mistery about the Guiness beer bubbles; Why to they seem to fall to the bottom instead of floating to the top; there is even an animation which is worth mentionning!

Re:On Racist Humour

[Betcour]

So no jokes on race, sex, age, job, religion, politics and disabilities... It's not a surprise that American "comedy" movies are so lame nowadays. The problem in the US is that people don't understand what second degree means (which explain why Starship Troopers had so little success there), neither do they seem to have a sense of self-humor. Instead of fucosing on suing everyone who says "black" instead of "Afro-American" or boycotting movies that don't have at least a black, an asian and a gay character, American people should focus on why there are still so many gun-deads, homeless and illiterate people. Changing the way people talk won't save anybody from a bullet or feed a stomach.

Re:Canadian Law of Parodies & Language

[redelm]

Most interesting. I stand corrected. But don't defendants/respondants have choice of language?

-- Robert

Reminds me of Macdonald's Canada

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Some years ago I was crossing the Detroit/Windsor border on the Ambassador bridge occasionally. There was a Macdonalds at the end of the bridge. It looked JUST like a US Macdonald's except for a little red maple leaf logo at the intersection of the two arches.

Turns out there was a story behind it...

It seems that when Macdonald's got their trademark, they only got it for the USA and somehow neglected Canada. Somebody in Canada checked - and then trademarked it. Then he cloned the ENTIRE Macdonald's Speedy Service System, including every last menu item (which were also not trademarked in Canada) and started opening franchises all over - including the one at the end of the Ambassador Bridge.

Well after some months a Macdonald's executive noticed, and a a company official was duly dispatched to order them to cease and desist. The owner laughed, pointed in the direction of the bridge, and asked the official if he had noticed the line across the bridge, right at the middle. Then he explained in small words that the line marked the boundary between the US and Canada, and he was in Canada now, and that Canada was a different country, and Macdonald's USA didn't own the trademark there, but HE did, and that they could go whistle.

So Macdonald's Speedy Service System sued (in Canadian court, of course). And lost. And the guy operated his restaurants for quite a while. Meanwhile Macdonald's began adding new food items and were careful to get the Canadian trademark on them. Macdonald's Canada couldn't clone them, of course, or at leaset not with the US names. But that didn't hurt them particularly.

Eventually Macdonald's US broke down and bought the guy out for some non-trivial number of megabux.

YaHooka

[G27 Radio]

I seem to remember YaHooka.com having some kind of run-in with Yahoo a while ago. Since they are still online I guess things were worked out. Some very educational links on their site btw |-)

numb

A lot is lost in the translation...

[Fross]

This is indeed a parody, as is evident by the entries on the page - not being awake enough to translate the whole lot, suffice to say the various main links down the page that usually link to other parts of yahoo, are quite different, very ironic, and link to different sites. it is pretty obvious to a frenchspeaker, on viewing the contents of the page, that this is not a serious yahoo page.

though i think this sort of thing is protected by the laws on parody, that's not something i'm entirely clear on, nor is that the point of this post.

a typical example of this humour is in this little section at the bottom of the site:

pssst, ce site est une expérience
pour voir combien de temps mettrait Yahoo!, à se prévaloir de ses droits
un peu comme d'autres l'ont fait avant elle.
Résultat: de la mise en ligne originelle (3 novembre 1999) à la mise en demeure (12 janvier 2000), il s'est écoulé 70 jours. Bravo!

which translates to:

hey, this site is a test to see how long it takes Yahoo! to exercise its rights (in an ironic way, i presume), much as other have done before it. The result: from the beginning (3rd november 1999) to its demise 912 january 2000) it (expletive deleted) 70 days. Well done!

hope that helps

Fross

Re:No parody, but a cheap way to get more hits!

[TheUnknown]

This is a parody, not a good one, put a parody. Most words come either from bad French (quebec version) or from our culture (politics, arts, ...) Most of the categories made me smile. This page can't be confused with a real Yahoo page because of the words used.

Just my 2 cents,
Benoit Potvin

Interesting...

[Issue9mm]

Interestingly enough, the disclaimer page is a broken link. Never had one???

I'm going to take the words of the French-speakers in the forum here, and go against my initial feelings. It certainly doesn't LOOK like a parody to me, but then, I can't tell what the hell they're saying...

A couple of questions spring to mind, however... Is the addition of the word "Quebec" enough to keep Yahoo from having too much to gripe about? I thought that there were rules concerning parody and satire, and that you could "loosely" use logos as such, but I've always seen them modified to achieve some humorous effect. Yes, the Yahoo logo in this instance is modified, but only by addition. The actual Yahoo! logo is used fully intact, without modification otherwise.

I dunno how tech the laws are, and how such distinguishments are made, but it definately seems like Yahoo has a valid concern here. (Then again, the French-speakers are telling me it's obviously a parody.

Also, without the disclaimer being available (not that I would have been able to read it), there's really know way to know for someone who might not have ever been to the original Yahoo site. If you ask me, they're just trying to reap the rewards of the already established Yahoo.

Maybe it's me, but I really wasn't expecting to see that close a duplicate when I clicked on the link.

Another note, contrary to what was posted in the story, I DO feel that pssst has something to do with this.


Thank God this is over, If I had to type Yah...Doh!!!. Nevermind.

Re:That looks about right.

[friedo]

Weird Al always gets permission from artists when he parodies their songs. In the case of Amish Paradise, his evil record producer told him that he had gotten permission, when, in fact, Coolio said he didn't like the idea. Thus, when Weird Al went ahead and did it, Coolio got a bit pissed off. It's a damn funny song, though. :)

what kind of site is yahoo quebec

[dtremens]

I'm belgian and speaks french, that's why i think i can contribute to this discussion. I'm not quite sure what kind of help Rob requested on the home page but if it's about the content of the yahoo quebec site here is my point:

The site is quite rude, using racist and "non-politically correct" terms to point to countries and topics.
This is a kind of humor usual in europe (specially belgium - see "man bites dog") and i LOVE it. It's not to be taken seriously and people should not be offended by those jokes.
The search engine was pointing to a XXX search engine; this should be why yahoo is upset. As a result of their actions the search engine now links to the Vatican's search engine (small country in Roma where the pope lives).
It looks like the lawyers that wrote the cease and desist letter did a lot of mistakes in the letter: the name of the recipient is false and that recipient is not the one that did the site, etc...

At the bottom of the site they say it's an experience to see if yahoo was going to react like others (link to a scientology article in english) did before. they say it took 70 days from the lauching of the site to the cease and desist letter and do not comment on that lenght.

There is also a second page with more links and no search engines.

They also insist about the differences between france-french and quebec-french which is a great joke subject in french speaking countries in europe (they include a link to yahoo france on quebec. Looks to me like a revenge.

Conclusion: Yahoo is upset cause of the racist and sexual content of the site. They did not a lot of research on who operated the site and the guys react quick.

REAL Y! parodies get listed in Yahoo quite easily

[rambone]

Yahoo has no problem adding a link in their own directory for legit parodies, here

Wrong target but legitimate claim from Yahoo

[simpleguy]

Well the lawyers have really goofed up by targeting the wrong people.
Its a bit like when slashdot was named as a defendant in the DeCSS saga :)

I have visited the website and I find it very very similar to a yahoo homepage and I could not find something like "This site is a parody and is in no way affiliated nor endorsed by Yahoo!"

Moreover, the Yahoo! wording is used and no attempt has been made to change it so that it could mean a parody, like YaHooka! had done in the past.


Well, a co-worker believed it was a Yahoo! site.
I would too, at first sight if I had not followed this story on slashdot.

I think Yahoo! has a valid case here but alas, they have knocked at the wrong door.

Not the authors?

[Knos]

pssst, ce site est une expérience pour voir combien de temps mettrait Yahoo!, à se prévaloir de ses droits un peu comme d'autres l'ont fait avant elle.

Résultat: de la mise en ligne originelle (3 novembre 1999) à la mise en demeure (12 janvier 2000), il s'est écoulé 70 jours. Bravo!"

translation: (in a rush)

psst(link to psst'sites), this site is an experience to see how long Yahoo! will take to make his rights play a bit like others have done before them.

results: from the original cease and desist letter ( november, 3th, 1999 ) to the actual cease and desist letter, it took them 70 days. Bravo!"

I'm wondering what the connection is between psst and the authors of the site... it's quite unclear when reading this as it sounds like the authors received the letter..

Quebec has different [language] LAWS

[redelm]

Others have touched on important issues, and I will add some: Quebec doesn't use common law, it uses civil code (moreso than Louisiana). Furthermore, it has restrictive (and highly controversial) language laws. I'm surprised the letter was in english. Must be from Toronto lawyers.

IANAL, but I don't see why the "Cease and Desist" letter shouldn't be ignored completely. It's written in english to an obviously french-language site. I don't believe anyone in quebec is legally presumed to be able to read english unless they have given indications they can.

Beyond the protection offered parody (and it is obviously such), the fact that Yahoo doesn't have a Quebec site (it does have a section for french language in .ca) dilutes their claim of trademark infringement.

If this went to court, it would probably have to be in Quebec civil court. There civil code applies, the chief difference being the judge is not bound by precedents. AFAIK, defendants have choice of language anywhere in Canada, and certainly in Quebec. I doubt an action would succeed and better[worse], Yahoo could well be ordered to pay the defandants legal costs.

-- Robert

No parody, but a cheap way to get more hits!

[athmanb]

The sites' name isn't "Yahoo Quebec" but "Youhou Quebec", but it still uses the Yahoo banner. Also, it doesn't make fun out of Yahoo, but simply plagiarizes it's design and function as a moderated link-list.
Since this page would be listed in search-engines under the term 'yahoo' and most people won't see the difference immediately, quite a few would believe that they got on a page produced by the well known Yahoo!
And since quite a few links on the Quebec page lead to sites which contain sexual references or even p0rn (most of it has already been pulled by their respective hosting companies, i guess also because of Yahoo!), Yahoo may indeed get into some troubles with concerned parents.

Even though i don't agree with the cybersquatting laws, which will doubtless be applied here, taking a name of a well known site just to attract more visitors is extremely lame and certainly deserves to be taken action again.

Re:the problem

[RoninM]

Why can't they be nice? Two reasons. The first, simply put: it doesn't work to be nice. Shocking as it is, a lot of the people abusing trademarks, copyrights, and licensed software are doing so with the full knowledge that they're breaking the law and, moreover, they're not going to take you serious until you cram a cease and desist down their throats. Believe you me, I've tried being nice in these cases. Most recently, in the case of Mudgik: The Gathering of Heroes, which is quite obviously a CircleMUD derivative, but goes about merrily breaking the license regardless. I tried contacting the administrators of the MUD itself in a very friendly manner, asking that they come into compliance with the license (which, for those that are actually reading and wondering, is NOT a "free software" license -- it's free as in beer, not as in speech). I did this, as with any official CircleMUD business, from my circlemud.org e-mail account. I also logged into the MUD from circlemud.org to try to hunt down one of the administrators. What do I get? No response from the administrators to my e-mails, no response from the administrator of their site (admittedly, he's only had 2 days to respond thus far), and circlemud.org is banned from the MUD. Whole lot of good being nice did me. Now the situation is still unresolved and I'm embittered.

The second reason is that being nice simply doesn't suffice. There's two aspects to defending a trademark: defending it whenever there's an abuse of it and defending it loudly. The first aspect is necessary for trademarks which have to, unlike a patent and copyright (I think?!), be defended or otherwise they're considered invalid. Arbitrary defense of a trademark doesn't work. The second is to deter others from abusing the trademark -- after all, you have to pay your pack of lawyers for their services, but as long as you're willing to use them, you might as well make the fact very well known. That way Joe Blow from Indiana thinks twice about abusing your trademark.

Canadian Law of Parodies & Language

[KenClark]

I feel obliged to correct some of the legal misapprehensions that are in this post.

As background, I am an articling student (i.e. graduated from law school and am now in the process of passing the bar) and I am specializing in IP matters (patents, trade-marks and copyright). I also used to work as a summer student for the law firm which sent the cease and desist letter - and they're one of the top IP law firms in Canada, no dummies usually.

The first legal misapprehension in this post is that the Quebec Civil Code applies to this matter. Copyright and trade-marks are Federal matters, and therefore the Civil Code does not apply. The Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act, which are Federal Acts, do apply. As such, you can use any of the official languages of Canada in a legal proceeding (which includes English).

The other biggy that people might not understand is that Parody is not a defence in Canada to copyright or trade-mark infringement.

The Perrier and the Michelin cases (trade-marks and copyright respectively) show that in Canada, as opposed to the U.S.A., if you parody someone and it harms the goodwill associated with their trade-mark, then that is actionable and you can be sued for it. The Perrier case involved a mock Perrier bottle dressed-up as a "Pierre-Eh?" bottle (mocking Pierre Trudeau, a famous prime-minister of Canada), and the Michelin case involved a uninionization dispute at a Michelin plant where the Michelin Man was depicted as crushing workers or something like that. In both cases the people sued were forced to stop using the trade-marks (and copyrighted images).

So be careful with your parodies!

qnd translation

[orabidoo]

quick and dirty translation:

the website "yahoo quebec", a parody of the famous american portal Yahoo!, has been created a few months ago by JH Roy, who does the radio show "Branché" at Radio Canada.

Strangely enough, he was mentioned in the threatening letter from Yahoo!, and hadn't even heard of it when we talked to him in the evening. ``I'll start by reading the letter and looking at the laws on cybersquatting and commerce brands, before I see if I take the site down'', he says. ``maybe i'll change the search engine and the logo''.

In his parody, JH Roy used Yahoo!'s logo, with the word "Quebec" added. The search engine searches in the database of a porn site; it's presumably these 2 details that annoyed Yahoo! the most. The letter seems to confirm this.

JH Roy says, ``I thought Yahoo! was the last compay around with a sense of humour. There are several parodies of Yahoo!, some of them are even listed on Yahoo itself!''.

Clément Laberge, who maintains the weblog pssst!, and to whom Yahoo!'s threatenign letter is mostly addressed to, has up to next monday (17 jan) to tell Yahoo's lawyers that he has taken the site down. Which he can't do, since he has no control over the site.

Tanslation of the mmedium article

[gdon]

Hi fellow Slashdotters ! Here is my humble translation of the mmdeium article. I'm French, so be kind to my English writing. Sorry if this someone already post a similar thing while I'm typing this.



pssst! formaly warned

Montreal (January 12 2000) - the pssst! website from Quebec has been formaly warned by the American company Yahoo! to have allegedly been the author of the Yahoo!Quebec parody!. The editor in chief of Multimédium, Dominic Fugère, and somenone called Mathieu, whose names appeared with the bottom of the parodied page, are also quoted in the formal warning.

The Yahoo!Quebec site, a parody of the famous American portal Yahoo!, was created a few months ago by Jean-Hugues Roy, organizer of the Branché emission in Radio-Canada.

Surprisingly, this one was not quoted in the formal warning and was thus not well-informed yet when we joined it in evening. " I will begin with carefully read the formal warning and will re-examine the laws on the cybersquatting and other laws on the marks of trade before deciding if I will withdraw the site, answers it. I perhaps will modify the search engine and the graphics of the logo. "

In his parody, Jean-Hugues Roy used the exact logo of Yahoo!, to which it added the word " Quebec ". As for the search engine of the parodied page, it searches the data base of a directory of porn sites. These are the two details which probably exacerbated the susceptibility of Yahoo! Inc. Extracts of the formal warning, sent by the lawyer company Smart & Biggar from Ottawa, seem to confirm this assertion.

" I believed that Yahoo! was the last big company to have the sens of humour, affirms Jean-Hugues Roy. There are several parodies of Yahoo!. Some are even indexed in their search engine! "

Clement Laberge, the person in charge of the pssst! website, to which the formal warning is mainly intended, has until next Monday, January 17, to inform the lawyers of Yahoo! that he withdrew the site, thing which he cannot do by himself because he doesn't have control on the site.



Thanx to Bablefish for the canvas.

Hope this helps

OffTopic addition : Any Linux/Free Software job in Toulouse, France ?

From a Quebecois, why it IS parody:

[Enoch Root]

I realise the humour of Yahoo! Québec is gonna be hard to grasp even for other French speakers, because it's very Québec-oriented. But when I loaded the page, I couldn't help but laugh, and the humour was immediately apparent to me.

Here's the thing: spoken Québecois is a variation of France French. Technically, we write the same French (with a few "Canadianisms" thrown in) but our spoken French is radically different, filled with expressions and pronounciation variants that even the French have a lot of problem to understand. When we speak in Québecois before a French, it's not unusual to get a blank stare, followed by 'Pardon?'

There's a whole debate about Québecois slang. Is it a true language? Or is it a deformation brought about by lack of rigor and education? The snobs and well-bred try to mimic Parisian French, but otherwise, you'll hear Québecois everywhere you go. And so, even though everyone speaks it, Québecois is considered 'vulgar' or common by many people. (Some Québecois artists claim otherwise and sing in Québecois, but that's another story.)

So, most of Québec's search engines are coupled with French ones, because we have the same written language. But Yahoo! Québec's humour rests in this: it is written in an imitation of spoken Québecois, and belittles the small-town, close-minded Québecois mentality.

That's why, for instance, under the listing "Régions", you see the following headers: "Us", "Africans", "The South". Most small-minded Québecois without education would only recognise these three distinctions.

Under the news box, we see items such as, "René Simard enceint" ('René Simard [Québec artist, male] pregnant'; cheap joke.) "Gouverne Ment" means 'Government' but is a play on words of 'Govern' and 'lie'. And so on.

So, it's definitely a parody. It's funny, too. Just in case it wasn't obvious, tabarnak!