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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."
Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software? They're the ones who can't afford this type of thing. The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee.
Bram Cohen obviously has the right to protect the name: the software is open source, the name is not. But more than that, he's protecting the reputation behind that name. He's not attacking the coders of Azureus, or even tracker-websites like UnrealTorrents that use part of the trademark in their name. No, he's going for people using his trademark maliciously...attacking spyware in the way that is easiest and best for him. Certainly this stirs more pots than just me running AdAware on my Windows box, no?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
There is a recent article - mentioned on
A secondary aspect of the current BitTorrent legal efforts might be to prevent BT from falling into the realm of Xerox, Hoover, and Kleenex: brand names that have been co-opted into common/generic usage.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Then people will stop calling it BitTorrent ... end of story.
Yes, I think that's kindof the idea.
Liability, and all that.
If it's a symbolic fee (say $1), somebody will probably be willing to cough it up for whatever the open source client is.
On the other hand, it will require everybody using it to be registered with BitTorrent!
If the registry requires the registrees to specify the purpose of using the name, they now have legally agreed not to use the name for any other purposes. Since "distributing adware/spyware" is obviously not an acceptible description, this will make those companies very easy to sue.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I assume they can refuse to sell a licence to anyone that they don't want to (adware).
I'm sure if your OSS project is any good it will be able to raise $1US to buy a license.
This is all conjecture but that is the way I would do it.
A trademark is started with common usage more often than not. It is very trademarkable, as is Google, even though people use it as a verb, even when referring to Yahoo or other search engines.
This sig is the express property of someone.
No, what the articles is saying is those people who develop and release BitTorrent clients but when you install thier BT client you also get AdWare/Spyware/etc installed (think other P2P clients like original Kaza, etc) cannot use the name BitTorrent to describe thier client application.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Different name, same thing... Happens all the time in all industries.
Deleted
This will hinder recognition and development of crappy/incompatible clones that don't implement the protocol well and therefore might cause problems in the BitTorrent network.
Trademarks, copyright and patents are things that constitute "intellectual property". If you don't [i]like[/i] that word you could say "immaterial rights". It doesn't stop the concept from existing though.
Nobody has claimed that there is one "intellectual property law".
For those who have a hard time grasping this concept, here's an analogy:
Imagine someone took Firefox, repackaged it as "Firefox Plus" with lots of adware/spyware, and Googlebombed their site so that it was the first result for "Firefox".
That's what's happening right now with BitTorrent. People are writing/repackaging BT clients with adware installers and doing their best to push them to the top of search engines. That way they get novice users who don't know any better to install their crap product. Then the novice user says "BitTorrent sucks, all it did was install adware on my PC and run like crap." It's directly harming BitTorrent's trademark, and they *should* be going after these creeps.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
"Most of the big spammers and adware purveyors seems to have lots more money than I do, and than Open Source developers do. Sounds to me like the fee will hit the wrong people."
You'll only get to use the license if your software meets their security standards; ie. no adware or spyware. If you're distributing adware or spyware you don't get to use the name, no matter how much you pay.
I think there's still a disconnect between most commenters, and the purpose of the licensing program. It is designed to stop the bad people from using the name, and to protect the good people. Putting the licensing requirement in place, with the stipulation that anybody who uses the name must adhere to the no adware/no spyware standard, is the essential first step they must take so they can chase the bad guys.
I doubt they will even bother asking for a license fee from the good guys since that is not the point of the licensing program. They are not using it to make money. They are not using it to inconvience the good guys. They are using it with the express purpose of causing grief for the bad guys who soil the BitTorrent name.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
You didn't quite read the (very short) FA, before chiming in, now did you?
Or perhaps he read between the lines in the FA and you didn't.
Do you expect a company that wants to collect license fees to claim "we're going to siphon money from competitors" or "we're going to protect our users against spyware"? Which do you think a marketer is more likely to produce as a public statement, regardless of a company's aims?
That being said, I'm a lot more sympathetic to BitTorrent's position, even if they just want some money, than I am to most other companies trying to lurk until something acquires value and then enforce it. So maybe they're banking on some name recognition, but that changes awfully quickly in the online world, and they *did* produce something decent.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
> Bram Cohen obviously has the right to protect the name: the software is open source, the name is not.
No. This is an example of a greater pattern of abuse that needs to be addressed soon, especially with GPL3 set to enshine it as acceptable practice.
What I'm talking about is this: Developer(s) toil away and produce Free Software. Software becomes popular. Developers suddenly file a trademark and begin to monitize it. See Linux(tm), Firefox(tm) and now BitTorrent(tm). Granted Linux isn't being heavily monitized YET but the shots have already went across the bow. Firefox has already told me to change the name in my RHEL rebuild. See a pattern? The problem is that the package is only known by its name, which until recently was freely usable so nobody has even given any thought what else to call it. Calling everything "The package formerly known as foo..." just doesn't scale.
I propose we forbid this practice. If commercial interests need a trademark that is understandable, but they should undertake the expense of focus groups to pick a new name and the PR to popularize it. This is especially important with BitTorrent since it is not just the name of a client but also the name of the protocol. So sorry Bram, you are a genius but you are wrong on this one. Pick a new trademark for your client or even new forked version of the protocol you want to lock up in an "IP" box.
Democrat delenda est
Classic example: Apple computer and Apple records.
Worst example ever:
-Apple sued Apple.
-Computer Apple now also distributes music with (apple) iTunes.
I doubt they intend to try to make money from Azareus. I hope what they're trying to do is to clamp down on some of the bastardized BT clients that are around; these are just people grabbing someone else's client code, sticking in spyware, and redistributing.r ent_software
Check the "malware-free" column here to see which clients will likely be "asked" to stop using the BT name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTor
Bram doesn't care of Azureus uses "BitTorrent" anywhere. What he's worried about is someone making a program called "SuperBitTorrent++" which is the bit torrent client plus a bunch of malware.
Ummm, this is wrong. For brands that are sufficiently strong, you can't use their name for anything. There are lots of factors to take into account, but you picked some particularly strong trademarks which make your example incorrect. This is because: imagine I start producing pajamas that say Coca-Cola on them. Even though Coca-Cola is a soft drink company, their trademark is so strong that if I made Coca-Cola pajamas somebody could perfectly reasonably think that the soft drink company distributed those pajamas. Because confusion is likely, my use of the trademark is illegal even though the goods are different. This is called "dilution" of a trademark.
BitTorrent doesn't have the strength Coca-Cola does, but it does have some things on it's side--for example the name is quite arbitrary, well known amongst the same type of people that would use these other "BiTorrent" things, and most of all *the impostors were intentionally trying to make money off BiTorrent's good name.*
Because they technically have little to no standing in that matter. They'd be stuck with something like slandering brand name or something. Crowbar makers can't sue the users of crowbars who give crowbars a bad rep by using them in crimes. They do have standing if you violate their copyrights, however.
While this is technically true TM law is notorious for being abused. McD's stomped out anyone using a double arch in anyway shape or form, and Toy's R' Us did the same with anything that ended with R' Us.
Quite frequently these larger rule-the-world corporations will take their trademark and create what is effectivly vapor-ware, i.e. a paper trail showing their TM being in or heading towards every imaginable market/industry so they can mud stomp anyone, anywhere that uses something similar.
If you must!