Utube Sues YouTube

An anonymous reader writes "From The Age article: Universal Tube, which sells used machines that make tubes, has said it has lost business because customers have had trouble accessing its site." So now Utube is suing YouTube seeking a cease and desist on the youtube domain. (I wonder if they think Google's pockets might be deeper that the previous owners'.) This again raises the problems of domain names colliding across different industries and countries, and reminds me of the etoys/etoy tussle a few years back. Should domain name simply be exempt from trademark legislation in all countries or is it a legit thing to fight for?"

Comments

Obligatory

[RichPowers]

"Universal Tube, which sells used machines that make tubes..." Well now we know who built the backbone of the Internets

What about...

[SnowZero]

How long before they go after ewetube?

I know, that was baaaaad.

Re:What about...

[aerthling]

The owners of that domain will probably feel a bit sheepish if they do.

Eh?

[Spad]

Remind me to sue my neighbours for their house being #41. People are always knocking on my door (#41a) instead, wasting my time and causing a loss of earnings.

After all, it's clearly their fault that people are idiots.

Google Provides Servers?

[Psychotext]

I can't help thinking that the best thing Google could do on this is provide the server needs for utube.com to function whilst being hammered by the people incorrectly hitting the site. I don't think they would have much to complain about after that... though I'm sure that probably wouldn't stop them.

Re:Google Provides Servers?

[Dolly_Llama]

As the market matures, it makes sense to me that business insurance should cover unexpected things like this that impact business.

Re:Icons are incorrect for story

[drawfour]

Did the World Wildlife Fund sue the World Wrestling Federation? No, they simply put a link on their site pointing people to the other site if they mistakingly stumbled across it. utube and youtube should just do the same.

Is simple fact-checking really that hard? Try reading this wikipedia article about the world wildlife fund, and be sure to read the section labeled "Lawsuit". Yes, the World Wildlife Fund did sue the World Wrestling Federation, leading to the name change to World Wrestling Entertainment. It happened in British courts.

Illiteracy

[Petronius.Scribe]

Rather than sueing YouTube, why don't they sue the marketing morons who decided that "u" made a good abbreviation for "you" in product names and marketing campaigns? If people didn't automatically skip the y and o then this wouldn't be an issue.

It's the all encompassing .com that's the problem

[Colin Smith]

Hence stuff like .bank, .retail, .energy, .telecom etc etc.

ooh, the wayback machine is fabulous, here's a rant I wrote years ago about ICANN and the flatness of the current DNS system.

ICANN fuck up the worlds DNS

Well, Ok, but if you're going to call yourself ICANN then what do you expect?
Here's my DNS heirarchy diatribe.

The DNS is not being used appropriately.

It's a heirarchical system that has been abused by the registrars to the point where it's effectively a flat naming system; *.com.

End users should not have access to domains above 3rd or 4th level. First, second and maybe even the third level domains should be reserved exclusively for domain administration purposes.
Think of it as a filing system. Would you allow users to randomly create directories off root or /usr or even /home? No, only a fuckwit would do that but this is essentially what ICANN are doing. As a responsible administrator you should administer that heirarchy and create areas where users can create and access information in a consistent fashion.

An example of a managed heirarchy
microsoft.vendors.software.com
apple.vendors.software.com
opensource.vendors.software.com
ibm.vendors.software.com
microsoft.operating-systems.software.com
apple.operating-systems.software.com
open-source.operating-systems.software.com
amazon.vendors.books.com
barnes&noble.vendors.books.com
waterstones.vendors.books.com
hoover.US.trademarks.org
persil.UK.trademarks.org
fred.new-york.US.plumbers.com
tesco.superstores.shopping.com
asda.superstores.shopping.com
whsmiths.newsagents.shopping.com
menzies.newsagents.shopping.com

You see the kind of thing I mean? Web browser and other software could then make use of the structure of the heirarchy.

The DNS needs to be re-organised or even just organised. ICANN and the registrars should get off their fat arses and design the heirarchy rather than completely abdicating responsibility and allowing chaos to ensue the way they have done so far.

A properly designed heirarchy would allow everyone to have their place without all this domain squatting and trademark infringement bullshit.

The new TLDs that ICANN are proposing will simply cause more chaos. They will not solve anything. ICANN are just abdicating their responsibilities again. Do you really think that the IBMs, Microsofts and Apples of this world will not simply register their names and trademarks in every existing TLD?

They can, they will and things will only get worse.

And of course we now have phishing problems as well. Oh happy days.

Re:Next in line: Cisco

[maxwell demon]

Of course, Cisco routers don't power the internet. Unless they now make routers with integrated power plants. :-)

Imagine the scene

[19061969]

In a busy boardroom of a company that, well, uses industrial tubes.

MD: "Ok folks! We need to buy 3 miles of indutrial tubing to complete this job, get paid, and then we can have our bonuses for working hard!"
Lackey1: "Ok boss! I'll just go to U-Tube to buy the tubing."
MD: "Good one lackey1. You make sure we place that order by 5.00pm tonight."
Lackey1 goes off to his computer in his office.
Lackey1: "Duh, ok! Let's type in youtube.com and order them tubes."

Watches screen.

Lackey1: "Hey! There's a video of some fat guy miming to Shakira!"

Later, in boardroom at 5.00pm.

MD: "So did you order those tubes we need to make money and get bonuses?"
Lackey1: "Duh, no boss! All I could find was videos of people! They didn't sell no tubing!"
MD: "What the f___?!?!"
Lackey1: "S'true I tells yah! I typed in youtube.com and never realised that it was the wrong website. That honestly never occurred to me!"
MD: "Gahh! We're going to go bust! If only we could have found u-tube's website, we'd have been rich! Wahhhhh! I want my mommy!"

Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl

[TorKlingberg]

I'd just love to type those long addresses all the time.

Re:obviously

[Feanturi]

Of course it's not a truck, everyone knows that data takes the bus.

Um...

[ari_j]

No, Data flies a starship. His evil brother Lore takes the bus.

Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl

[threeturn]

Let me guess, you sort your socks before putting them away - right?

Re:There is no such thing as bad publicity

[wyverspur]

No, No

They make universal tubes the internet runs on.

*ducks*

Re:UTube could make a fortune

[Pollardito]

There is genuine confusion here, between the two names -- if you just pheonetically say "You Tube dot com", the listener can't tell the difference. The proper party for Utube.com to be sold to use Youtube.com, then it can just be made to point to the main site.

it's not even any better in the south, every time they type in yalltube.com it gets them to an equally useless tube-related site

Re:/. quality continues it's downfall....RTFA.

[geoffspear]

Also stop saying "tinfoil hat". For a bunch of geeks who pride themselves on being "accurate", aluminum foil and tin foil are distinctly different things.

Yes, and we also know that aluminum doesn't stop the mindcontrol rays like tin does, asshat*.

* Sorry for the inaccuracy. I know that "rectum hat" would be more accurate, but it takes longer to type.

Interview with UTube owner and CEO

[indian_rediff]

The following interview with Ralph Girkins, the owner of Universal Tubes, was broadcast on Marketplace - a segment in National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/. A transcript is available at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/10/1 3/PM200610134.html. Makes for interesting readin and definitely changes many of the assumptions that people are making regarding the kind of business he is trying to run. And you can definitely glean his frustration from his comments, at the lack of cooperation from Google/Youtube. So, why not go the American way? Sue sue sue!

I knew I should have. . .

[Hamoohead]

. . .registered youtoob.com!

Re:There is no such thing as bad publicity

[MS-06FZ]

Except it costs you more money, too - you need a bigger pipe

Wait a minute... don't these people make pipes? If they strung together a series of their tubes, I bet it just might work...

Re:obviously

[morgan_greywolf]

The quality of geeks is really declining these days.

You missed a word in that sentence. s/geeks/geeks on Slashdot/

What utube should have done

[slapout]

Redirect everyone coming to their site to a youtube.com video of an advertisement for utube. And in the description say "if you would like to purchase our product, click here". Then people who are really looking for youtube will get there (and see a utube ad). And people who are looking for utube will think they're just watching a utube ad before entering the utube site. Problem solved.

Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl

[Colin Smith]

Nope. All my socks are black.

HTH.