Slashdot Mirror
Katie Jones Interviewed
scubacuda writes "Greplaw has interviewed Katie Jones (of the real Katie.com). In addition to the details of the dispute regarding Penguin's 'branding' of the book Katie.com (which many /.ers 'reviewed'), she shares the details of her conversation with cyberlawyer Parry Aftab, how she believes Penguin's title change suggests that it thought it could steamroll her without recourse, and the tremendous amount of support the geek community has shown her." Ms. Aftab has several blogs. Ms. Aftab, if you contact us with a response to these allegations, Slashdot will publish your response (we've also written to your email address). Another reader notes: "Yesterday /. ran an article about the book Katie.com. Out of curiosity I just visited the Amazon.com website to see how many more reviews were on the website. Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."
What is Amazon doing now - monitoring the traffic it gets to certain books and then removing reviews that contribute to a less than average rating? How do we explain the reduction in reviews from 300+ to 81 and the boost in the rating?
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Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name.
At first she didn't tell them what to do with the name. Penguin had demanded she give up the address and all she wanted was to keep her existing domain. So to use your example: you register bill.com, Gate's book comes out, the publisher demands you give them bill.com
Still think this is fair?
http://www.aftab.com/..... I mean come on, a lawyer is bad enough... there are too many of those. But a lawyer who apparently has no clue that its not squatting when the person owned the domain YEARS before the book was even made and whos sole buisness is to screw people on the web because there ARE so many loopholes in Internet Law..... that just deserves a slashdotting in my book.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
You can't copyright a domain name. I'm amazed that you bothered to read the part of the FAQ that said when you can copyright but not the part that says what can't be copyrighted:
Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents
Making the URL a link makes it much easier to /. a site.
Thus:
http://www.aftab.com/
I will now proceed to fire up Opera and set it to reload the page every 30 seconds.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
As Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451) recently found out, he could not prevent "Fahrenheit 9-11" from being titled as such because one cannot copyright a title.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
It's a standard part of the contract to get a book published, in most cases, that the publisher decides the title. The author can suggest a title, but most of the time the publisher's marketing department has much more say in what the title will be.
If an author doesn't like that, he or she could self-publish. But self published works are rarely successful.
People are actually allowed to use numbers other than 555-XXXX. They just don't out of habit/tradition and respect for people who have phones. There is no law (feel free to disprove me) that says you MUST use a 555-XXXX number if you are publishing something fictitious.
The main problem is that people aren't seeing domain names as a parallel to phone numbers, or anything else identifying.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Notably several people posted responses they got from here. They were all exactly that. I would suggest that it is a form response, probably prepared by her lawyer. To test that theory out, I sent an email that essentially said "I understand it's Penguin's fault, but you (presonally, and separate from Penguin) could always make an honest offer to buy the domain of Katie Jones". I have received no response to this - notable because most people that got responses got them promptly.
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Caution: Contents under pressure
Be careful with the donations. It's possible that the alleged friend is just someone trying to make some quick money on the case. Hold back the donations until you see an official link from Katie's homepage.
She already mentioned in the interview that she hasn't accepted any donations yet, but has been offered plenty.
Apart from the stunningly obvious fact that the titles "Fahrenheit 451" and "Fahrenheit 911" are not the same and a copyright on the former would be of absolutely no use to Bradbury, I find it humorous that Bradbury himself has a history of, shall we say, borrowing titles. For example, the title of the book "Something Wicked This Way Comes" comes from Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's MacBeth and "I Sing The Body Electric" was the title of a chapter in Walt Whitman's book, Leaves of Grass.
I'm reminded of Disney at this point. Here we have someone who plunders the public domain, adapts and creates something new from what they found there and then complains when others do the same to their own creations.
Plume Re-titles Book by Katie Tarbox A Girl's Life Online (PDF)
... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book
(text reproduced below)
In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and
the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.
New York, New York, August 6, 2004
called Katie.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into
the seductive world of the Internet. After the book was released into the market, it was
brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet.
The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely
coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when
Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that
the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever
with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.
Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the
fact that Plume's book, Katie.com, and the website, Katie.com, are not in any way
associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume
had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Katie.com from domain owner Katie
Jones. This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently
posted on her web site.
"We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in
an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course,
the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way.
"Going forward, Plume and the author have decided to re-title this book A Girl's Life
Online. This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how
we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly
titled book will be released next month. We have always taken this situation very
seriously. And we hope that by making this title change, it will demonstrate just how
dedicated Plume is to clarifying this matter."
"At the age of eighteen, Tarbox published her memoir and became the leading advocate for Internet safety regarding Internet predators"
She's not a what?
No you cannot copyright the word "windows". However you can TRADEMARK it.
Yes, since Bradbury didn't want any confusion to lead to him being associated with an extreme political view, he must therefore hold personal hate in his heart for Michael Moore.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
Trademark is not the same thing as copyright. I'm fairly sure Microsoft doesn't have a copyright on Microsoft, but does on the source code to Windows, and has a trademark on both Microsoft, and Microsoft Windows.