Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent to Sue Over Trademark
joe 155 writes "The people at BitTorrent are to begin to
protect their rights through lawsuits if necessary: "The company will set the lawyers on anyone using the BitTorrent name, and trademark, if they are using it to distribute spyware or adware" They also plan to put into action a system where by people will have to pay a licence fee to use the name in the hope of cutting down on adware distribution."
You didn't quite read the (very short) FA, before chiming in, now did you?
The idea is that they want to avoid that spyware - and adware pushers freeload on BitTorrents trademark.
Man, I'm sure that Mr. Pavlov would really love slashdot. You only oughta say "Patent", or "Lawyer" or "Microsoft" and the dogs go "Yapyapyap!"
Fascinating...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Any reputable client does not contain spyware/adware anyways so this wont matter to the OSS ones
basically the scum that repackage a client and trick people into downloading it (on some trackers) will have a problem...which is great.
screw them, they are scum
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
No, there is no intellectual property law.
There is trademark law. That say you call you produckt xxx and nobody else can call themself xxx. If you would make a movie and call it the "the revenge of bittorent" Bram would let his lawyers loose on you only for the name.
Then there is copyright law. If you would publish a movie in the cinema called "the revenge of bittorent" you would have to sue bittorent users of violating your copyright by distirbuting the movie over the BT network.
There is also patent law, but that is not involved here. (...YET....)
Anyway, the lawyer win.
That headline really ought to say "BitTorrent to Sue Spyware Makers over Trademark," because as of now about 2/3s of the comments are people saying "BitTorrent is dead because Bram is going to sue uTorrent and BitComet and other legitimate clients! Nooo!" Look, I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA but you could at least RTF summary. They're only suing scumbags. This is a good thing.
"Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software?"
No, unless said free/OSS software is adware or spyware.
"The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee."
Software must meet security standards before the vendor is allowed to use the name. Adware and spyware vendors won't be given a license, no matter how much they pay.
This is what the summary stated:
In other words, I don't think this is a RTFA situation, but a RTFS issue.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"As long as the Software is not using the trade mark BitTorrent within its name, it should not be affected."
and it isn't adware or spyware. That's the whole point of the licensing program... to go after the adware/spyware people. Not the OSS software. Bad guys, not good guys.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.