Slashdot Mirror
Startup Threatened Into Settling Over Hyperlinking
An anonymous reader writes "A tiny startup that was threatened by a massive law firm over nothing more than a humble hyperlink has been forced to settle and change its linking policies, handing Goliath the win in this gratuitous trademark case. Under the agreement, real estate startup BlockShopper can no longer include hyperlinks anywhere on its website to Jones Day, a massive Chicago law firm, except explicitly on URL text. Essentially, jonesday.com is okay, but not blah blah blah." I wonder if the owners of jonesdaysucks.com feel the same way.
frist psot beeoches
...and not one memo to a tech guy for a technological solution? I mean, if you don't like a site deep-linking into your own, isn't it a trivial one-line change to the server setup to block referrers?
This whole blah blah blah linking scandal is just so blah blah blah stupid. Heck maybe we can cue a blah blah blah Googlebomb to demonstrate just how bad Jonesday is with the handling of this blah blah blah issue.
BTW: Jonesday, if you're thinking of suing me don't bother, I've got no money and know plenty of lawyers who will work for me anyways. It's not so much blood from a stone as it's blood from a raging inferno.
...in bed
Every person at jonesday isa turtle
It really sucks that the little guy got screwed by a bunch of litigious bastards.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I have a feeling jones day, are about to have a really bad day.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
A website is a public-facing document. It explicitly exists to transfer information from the operators' servers to the computer of anyone who for whatever reason accesses that server.
It seems unreasonable to claim that there should be any sort of restriction on who can do what with the address that points people to your website. If you don't want people going there, then make your site password-protected.
From TFA: "Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"
So, basically, here's a just saying, point blank, that he's not in the business of justice... that it's irrelevant if you are right in the eyes of the law, if you don't have enough money, you lose. It's refreshing to see a judge being so honest.
Unfortunately, the judge in the case refused to even look at the brief after Jones Day said the brief sided with one party (as most amicus briefs do); he also refused to dismiss the case at the request of BlockShopper. According to TechDirt, the judge even allegedly put pressure on BlockShopper to back down by saying, "Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"
I may not know much, but that's pretty low.
You can't googlebomb from Slashdot comments. Take a look at the HTML source: every link is marked rel="nofollow", which tells search engines to ignore it. Most websites that allow any random user to post links include this tag as an anti-spam measure.
.. the firm presumably wasn't thrilled about having its attorneys' home purchases broadcast ..
The firm's got a point if you ask me.
This is an overkill, but I'm sure they just meant to teach these boneheads a lesson - don't fuck with lawyers.
"The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers" (Henry VI, Pt. II).
I insist that you stop this defamation immediately! jonesday.com is a fine, upstanding company that offers excellent service.
... and then they built the supercollider.
...someone should Da Vinci their Gibson with extreme prejudice.
Scriptkiddies could finally be useful!
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
According to this blog and many other sources, the lawyers in question were Dan Malone and Jacob Tiedt, who do indeed work at Jones Day according to their own web site. It's not clear to me what, exactly the issue is there. The names involved in sales of a property are ordinarily recorded as public information (unless it's done through an agent or something). The information about these gentlemen's employment is right on their employer's web site. Is Jones Day claiming that putting this information together is illegal?
The blog cites another article in a law journal about supposed concerns about privacy. Fair enough. But if that's the case then these guys have probably gone out of their way to keep all personal information private.
Wait, what's this? Jacob Tiedt is a pretty distinctive name. There can't be too many of those in Chicago. And, wow, that's strange. Why the heck does the guy's name appear all over the place in a Google search that simply uses "Jacob Tiedt" and "Chicago"? Heck, one of the web pages registers his political donations which ALSO indicates that his employer/occupation is "Jones Day/Attorney" and gives his ZIP code. Lexis Nexis gives all sorts of details too, and (gasp) links directly to the jonesday.com web site. Horrors. And, strange, apparently he doesn't have an unlisted number, because his name is easy to find in the various on-line white pages. It's almost as if he hasn't made the slightest effort to remain incognito.
It looks like Jones Day is going to spend a lot of time in litigation if they want to expunge the web of any links to Jones Day and these guy's personal information, and half of the web pages are as a result of their initial attempts with Blockshopper. Hello? Streisand effect?
The apparent remedy in the settlement was to prohibit links like this: Daniel P. Malone Jr., while links like this: www.jonesday.com/dpmalone are acceptable. Huh? I don't get it.
What a farce.
The whole Google-Bomb idea was nice, but every link on this page is nofollow'd. Not gonna do any good.
That sounds like bad dialog from a Lifetime network lawyer movie or something.
>You have the absolute right to point to any resource on my server you want?
Yes.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act does not cover publicly accessible URLs. It never has. Period.
And even if it did, like most amateur, wannabe, condescendingly annoying, psuedo legal eagles, you are confusing "rights" with the law. There are rights that we have that the legistlature and judicial system consistently and repeatedly ignore. To make matters worse, they do it because of ignorant, shortsighted, luddite fools just like you. You disgust me. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with deeplinking a to a publically available URL.
Don't pretend for a minute that you know more about what is right and wrong than anybody here, let alone assume we are as completely ignorant of the law as you are.
Yeah. Like most forums, links in comments are given the rel="nofollow" attribute, which means google will ignore them.
Go to the site's home page to see the top and bottom 10 judges: http://www.therobingroom.com/
Lawyers are paid for their knowledge, judgement and advice. I'm not in the market at the moment, but as an occasional purchaser of legal services, the fact that Jones Day would pursue this claim in this way indicates a lack of sound judgement. If I were looking for a lawyer, I would be thinking - "If they are as clueless about the real world as the reporting on this case suggests, in acting for themselves, then how could they be trusted to give sensible advice to others?" Jones Day have thousands of lawyers, and of course this case is one of thousands that I expect that they are currently involved in, but how could their review team have let this carry on to its conclusion? Incorrect risk analysis on their part? No risk analysis? Could reporting on this be incorrect?
I understand that nobody enjoys information that they consider to be private to be put into the public domain, and that part of the problem is that the internet removes the half-way house that publication on paper provided - semi-public by way of obscurity - that they lacked tools to redact the information, but I'm not sure that this is a good reason for a trademark claim. Perhaps a spokesperson from Jones Day would like to give some background on their decision making and the way that they pursued their claim to provide balance to the commentary.
Wrong. Comments are indexed by google. http://www.google.com/search?q=JonesDay.com+sacrifices+Chinese+babies+in+the+name+of+Satan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Someone made a reference up where JonesDay.com Sacrifices Chinese babies in the name of Satan and it's already been indexed.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1136379&cid=26946099