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Amateur With Call-Sign Deflects Domain Challenge
ivi writes "Check out the story at the American Radio Relay League's web site." I thought this was interesting because it seems likely that QVC was sending out "bulk" threat letters to anyone with "QVC" in their domain name. This practice has become common, and there are even companies that specialize in providing this, uh, service. The domain owner handled it well, and QVC backed off - but there still seems to be something slimy about the act of sending out threats in that manner in the first place.
For mailicious interpretation of the words "quality", "value" (even more so), and "convenience" (which is as convenient as a push web site). The very concept of push merchandising is so dead, it is unbelievable.
This is the reason given that one of the first sounds on the macintosh system that was played on startup is called ....
sosumi
so-sue-me
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Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Mike Mangino
mmangino@acm.org
I know it's hard to read every link posted to slashdot's front page, but it would be nice to think someone was trying.
I'm sorry. I didn't read the wipo.org.uk site beyond the name. The name, "World Intellectual Piracy Organization", really did little for me than to discredit the idea. I am sorry for that; I should have read further.
But, please, don't go off on the First Amendment. TLDs really have nothing to do with that. As I stated in my prior reply, ICANN has already taken the stance that trademarks != rights to a TLD.
I'm sorry that an American citizen has to point that out to you. It's a shame, really, as I am currently a British resident. And it's rare that I come across a British citizen that is more arrogant and offensive than us Americans. I take my hat off to you for that.
Cheers!
--Be human.
I am not trying to redefine the First Amendment. I am merely conveying the interpretation of the First Amendment handed down by our Supreme Court. This is how meaning is attached to our Articles of the Constitution. This is how our democracy works. Are you trying to redefine the First Amendment through??
As for disregarding wipo.org.uk, I said I was sorry. I meant it.
And as for my statement about ICANN, they have indeed taken this position. Now, that doesn't stop trademark holders from attempting to bully domain holders. Nor does it stop domain holders from giving in to their bullying. But it *is* their policy.
Cheers!
--Be human.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "why do they continue to let WIPO take the actions that they do." ICANN is not in the business of policing WIPO. It is not their job.
However, this has gotten way off topic. If you want to carry this on further, e-mail me. My e-mail address is valid.
Cheers!
--Be human.
Get some people who can read to fact-check, spell-check and THEN post the stories.
Why was there no link to the QVC web site?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When will corporations realize that trademark status doesn't give them the right to bash others over the head unfairly?
When they get "squashed" for doing so. i.e. they go to court, loose, have to pay all the costs of the defendant, pay for the time of the judge and court officials with the judge able and willing to take any punitive action (short of capital punishment of the directors.)
This case is as silly as, say, Apple Records going after Apple Computer in court over trademark dilution.
Apple Records did at least have some basis for a case. Not least because they were taking action against a commercial entity.
It seems more common these days to see examples of companies believing they own the "right" to anything that could remotely have anything to do with the name of their business or their type of business.
Or the name of a product or even an advertising slogan.
Of course if tradmarks wen't broken it would be possible for both "Quality Value Choice" (TV shopping channel) and "Quick Vehicle Credit" (made up car finance company) to register "QVC" as a tradmark, since they are enguaged in completly different lines of business.
if I had some corp attacking me like this, I would go the super-meek route, defend myself in court, and submit briefs with titles and or content along the lines of: "Please don't do this, Your Honor" and "This is Ridiculous!!!".
Whilst this might work on something like "Judge Judy" (no obviously biased or incompentant judge would last 5 minutes in front of TV cameras.) It may not work in other courts.
.com is commercial-space. If he had .org, then OK, but he's in the wrong TLD to be preaching the richeous cause here.
.com, .org & .net as though they are .misc. e.g. if foo is the name (legal or trading) of a commercial entity, trading across national borders, which wishes to register foo.com then that is ok otherwise go away.
In which case it might help in the people in charge of it actually applied some kind of selection criteria to it. Rather than treating
There is no such thing as a British citizen; you may be referring to her Majesty's subjects?
Someone should tell the British passport offices and embassies around the world. Who are quite happy to issue documents identifying the holder is a being a citizen of "Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Instead of making up zillions of redundant top-level domains, there should be TLDs and/or 2LDs that separate out the various namespaces. Radio callsigns, for example, are unique all over Earth and they may as well belong to one TLD.
That's because radio callsigns are assigned in a systematic way so as to be globally unique. Even though different national authorities have different "algorithms" for assigning callsigns.
DNS is ideal for separating namespaces. It's lousy at categorizing things on its own.
Rather DNS allows catagorisation, just that it relys on humans to actually select sensible catagories and apply them.
The Evil One. QVC. Uses the television to sell crap to people with no taste.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Sun, Microsoft... and now JVC. Argh!!! Give it a rest..
I guess it would really suck if your initials are JVC.
Jeez...
--Chemguru
Before everyone goes off on michael, did anyone consider that he may be using the dvorak layout? q and j are right next to each other...
Looks like the story has been changed now.
First of all, like many have already pointed out.
/. "editors" be??? I mean, do they have any purpose at all?
QVC != JVC. HOW FUCKING STUPID can the
Secondly, this _is_ indicative of how things are going. I await the day that a company like QVC gets raked over the coals to the extent that they so richly deserve. If sleazy third-rate asshole companies keep this up, sooner or later someone will refuse to be pushed.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It's now much easier to apply for a trademark. The USPTO web site now has online trademark applications. The process is straightforward, and they accept credit cards. Costs about as much as a year of web hosting.
...the ghetto i lived in whilst at university.
some of the angrier homeless (and/or) junkies could be quite adamant with their demands for money, especially if one was alone, hoping the 'mark' (me) would cave in.
if you got agressive back at them they usually chilled out.
but it sucked when i was green about all that shit...my heart would get all pitter-patter and i'd have trouble sleeping if they were particularly threatening.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Another agument, that I have not researched, is a use of a term that someone later tries to trademark. Does the earlier use of the term preclude the trademark use or is it treated as a senior trademark.
Fight Spammers!
If someone wanted to cause trouble, could he not go after QVC for dillution?
Fight Spammers!
hey, I own that domain! I hereby give you notice to cease and decist using that word in the future.
(I have to defend My Word vigorously or I lose all rights to My Word. I'm just doing my job and protecting my interests, you understand.)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Apple Records did go after Apple computer, but the semi-infamouse Sosumi (So-Sue-Me) system sound resulted from another lawsuit by the McIntosh Amplifier people.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
ICANN, USPTO, DoC and WIPO know the solution to trademark problems.
.REG, was required for trademarks on the Internet. As we know this is the case for proper use elsewhere, you could not.
.REG for trademarks would be a certificate of authentication when consumers visit those sites. This would help prevent con men from defrauding the public. In addition, this would then allow people to use the words for whatever reason they see fit - without being gagged. You know there are laws, should anyone make libellous statements. It is all common sense, do you deny any of this?
.REG Top Level Domain.
This is email sent 6 November 2000 to DoC & USPTO.
Subject: First Amendment
Secretary Mineta,
It is my truthful and honest opinion that you violate the First Amendment. This is for reasons laid out in previous communications to you, of 9th October and 6th September, about words on the Internet. Are you not ultimately responsible?
You restrict word usage so much, they can now only be used as trademarks. An individual's property (domain name) will be taken off them, should they use a word that business does not want them to have. People will lose financially should they try to protect their property.
I include the main elements for you to deny now, if this is not the truth.
You did not deny that an identifier, like
You did not deny that a classification was required. As we know it is essential to identify it from many others of the same name, you could not.
You did not deny that a country code was required. As we know it is essential to identify country source that also have many similar names, you could not.
You know that having a Top Level Domain of
Why do you put big business interests before that of free speech for the people?
Perhaps the First Amendment is not important to you. Either that or you have forgotten it, if so it is quoted in next paragraph.
AMENDMENT I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Abridging means to shorten, by the way. Strange is it not, that a British citizen has to cite this to you?
Though you have secured your place in history - as the man who stole words that belong to everybody and gave them to big business. All this is in my opinion of course, and others reading this, that may agree. That is unless you prove these claims wrong, which hopefully now you will attempt to do. If not you may have to do the right thing - introduce
More at WIPO.org.uk - nothing todo with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.ORG).
Being a poor student I supplement my income by doing technical support for an OEM. Unfortunately, this OEM sells some of its computers through QVC.
Everyone who works there dreads the 'QVC Customer' announcement before a call comes through, because we all know it'll be some clueless mother-fscker who will say things like 'Double-click? What does that mean?', 'Which one's the right mouse button', 'Where do I click the escape key' and 'I plugged all the cords into the telivision but it won't come on!'.
In fact the best you can hope for from a QVC customer is the old 'My keyboard is broken - the double quotes above the 2 comes up as an @ sign and the pound sign doesn't work either!' (incase you hadn't guessed I'm in the UK).
Argh!
</rant>
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Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
My first name is Scott. I'd hate to be badgered by lawyers from Kimberly-Clark Corp. And I am in the paper business. Do they have prior art?
Does this mean my dog's, Roland, will infringing on a music keyboard manufacturer's brand name?
I've already got problems with a credit card company sending my cat, Cindy, credit card applications. When will they get this shit right?Subject says it all.
"All is Well and N7QVC.COM has Been approved and can remain up. I wish to thank each and everyone for your Support. Received Email from Attorney and said that 'your use of the letters N7QVC in your domain name are used only for your personal use, and not for commercial activities that would create the impression that you are affiliated or connected with ***, Inc. in any way, we will take no further action'.
I understand *** needs to protect there trademark as you would want to protect your FCC assigned call from other people using it, I'm satisfied that this matter is over, and hope everyone will consider that the attorney was doing his job and doing it well. Lets all consider this matter over, I owe you all a great deal of thanks. I only wish I could thank you in person and let you know how grateful I am, How wonderful if feels to be a ham today. Its a wonderful hobby and you really meet some cool people that are always there for one another. There are some special people out there and i got email from allot of them in the past few days. at least now my site can go back to an average 25-50 hits a day :-) And while i have all your attention lol Don't forget to check out the Dualband copper cactus antenna. It works good and everyone says its really easy to build, by the way its all free as amateur radio should be. I Really don't know if I could have this website without all your support. I hope you all know what this means to me and how grateful I am."
No need to worry, folks. Just move along.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
nothing QVC could do about it.
Except use lawsuits for herassment. Which is effective in the US because of costs not being awarded against plaintiffs and the chances of a judge considering the plaintiff in "contempt of court" are remote.
If he wanted to have "N7QVC Amateur Radio Supply", that in itself is distinctive enough to be granted a trademark.
Except that HAM callsigns cannot be tradmarks. Since they only apply to commercial ventures. Also a trademark is usually only valid within the specific type of business. i.e. if things worked correctly QVC would be laughed at if they made a claim against anything other than a television shopping company.
However other people, e.g. the IOC having been able to get away with this nonsense makes it appear credible.
Really, there ought to be a law for instances like this where there is a clear misuse of trademark
There already laws. Just that they are not enforced.
Or have laws against "fraud", "herassment", "extortion", etc Been rewritten (in the USA) not to apply to corporate entities.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wasn't it the government that assigned him those call letters when he got approved by the FCC in the first place. Couldn't he have just told QVC to go bug them instead, since he'd already been granted usage of those letters.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
nothing QVC could do about it. If he wanted to have "N7QVC Amateur Radio Supply", that in itself is distinctive enough to be granted a trademark.
Really, there ought to be a law for instances like this where there is a clear misuse of trademark, that said trademark be revoked.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
the link seems to be slashdotted. luckily some guy in norway is broadcasting it via his 2 meter rig. thank god for dashdot
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume