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AOL Threatens Peng, Demands Domain Handover

Posted by timothy on from the but-peng-is-cute dept.

nutznboltz writes "According to the Peng project website AOL has sent them a cease-and-desist letter claiming that Peng, a GPLed software project is commerically exploiting AOL and has until Oct 15th to hand over the pengaol.com domain name." Update: 10/12 17:45 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, the domain name in question is actually pengaol.org, rather than pengaol.com.

5 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Correction: by flogger · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are asked to hand over the pengaol.org domain name. Not the pengaol.com

    --
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
    "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
    -- The Doctor, "Doctor
  2. Come on AOL, by norweigiantroll · · Score: 5, Informative

    Go pick on someone your own size. Gaim, Peng, Jabber, etc., seems like AOL just likes to harass non-profit, open-source projects. Come on, these people are working (mostly for free) on the software, giving out the software for free, and releasing the source code too. AOL should be ashamed of itself for for harassing people who are just trying to help their fellow man.

  3. Here are the culprits. by FreeLinux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Arent Fox

    Why not drop them a line.

  4. They didn't look at the site by Ektanoor · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems that looking at sites/articles is not a problem among certain /.-ters. If one looks well at this letter, then he may note that they only have taken a look the the name of the site...

    Besides it seems that Peng's development came into a halt somewhere in August. This news is in the first page in French- "Peng ne sera plus maintenu" 03.08.2002. So, the claims come a little out of sight and rather harsh. Again, we see that lawyers are also bad readers, love to shoot first, blindly and stupidly.

  5. They took my domain also by Joe+Jordan · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is nothing new. AOL has been doing this to virtually any domain name that has the letters "A" "O" and "L" in sequential form for as long as I can remember.

    I also had an a-o-l domain name. "EnhanceAOL.com" was my site before I got a cease and desist from Arent Fox claiming that I was diluting their trademark. My site was an aol add-on site - software that actually improved upon their client software (hence the term 'enhance aol'. They don't look at the "content" of your site. They don't care if your trying to save the poor starving children of the world. If you have "aol" somewhere in your domain, they're going to take it.

    Don't believe me? I found this site: search.wipo.int which lists at least some of the AOL domains that have been repo-ed by AOL -- If anyone knows of a better source please post because I know there's been more.