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Internet Brands Sues People For Forking Under CC BY-SA
David Gerard writes "Internet Brands bought Wikitravel.org in 2006, plastered it with ads and neglected it. After years, the Wikitravel community finally decided to fork under CC by-sa and move to Wikimedia. Internet Brands is now suing two of the unpaid volunteers for wanting to leave. The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a declaratory judgement (PDF) that you can actually fork a free-content project without permission. Internet Brands has a track record of scorched-earth litigation tactics."
I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
How can they not understand that volunteers are exactly that: someone volunteering. And their volunteering can cease at any time. They should be countersued for abuse of legal procedures.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
What the hell is a CC by-sa? I did RTFA, but perhaps my reading comprehension is lacking.
But it's not content theft; the volunteers who are forking via Wikitravel via CC-sa are obeying the license that the source site uses; it's even on the original site right now:
"Wikitravel uses a copyleft license for all text, images, and other content on the Web site. Anyone can use Wikitravel content according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license."
via: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Copyleft
The Creative Commons License that it was under gives you the right to do exactly that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
That would be true but the materials they purchased the rights to had already been made available under the Creative Commons License BY-SA. Internet Brands has the rights to the content, but they can't revoke licenses already given. The license under which the material was already made available permits redistribution as long as the redistribution is done with an identical license to the original and provides attribution, so if Wikimedia follows those guidelines they are free to redistribute it, create derivative works, etc.
Consider this analogy in the print world. I write a novel and license a PublisherCo to distribute the novel in any form for all time in exchange for a big one-time payment up front. I'm then free to sell the copyright to Paper Brands for another one-time payment. Paper Brands now holds the copyright, but the licenses are still out there. They can't call up PublisherCo and call takesies-backsies any more than I could have before selling the rights.
Note that Internet Brands was bought by a private equity firm a couple years ago. This stupidity is consistent with the private equity way of doing business. They always seem to have a really poor understanding of the businesses they buy. And indeed they don't need to, since their business model seems to be acquire, pillage, and abandon.
This is what I most hold against a certain private equity capitalist who's now running for President. Bain is most often criticized for costing people their jobs, but layoffs can be justified if cutting back helps save the company.
But Bain never saved anything. The acquired previously healthy companies and drove them into the ground. Inasmuch as they actually tried to run them, they did so ineptly. But mostly they just found ways to pass assets onto their own investors and pay themselves fat management fees in the process.
So of course Internet Brands is acting stupidly Stupidity has become a valid business model!
Maybe you should read their actual lawsuit.
http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2012/2012_9_4_Internet%20Brands%20Files%20To%20Protect%20Its%20Wikitravel%20Trademark%20From%20Deliberate%20Infringement.pdf
I hope Internet Brands wins. Fuck the freetards.
So, um, I notice you're using words from the English language without a license, freetard. See you in court.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
As a former employee of theirs (worked for a company that IB bought, left about a month post-acquisition), I can't say I'm surprised. It was clear they had no interest in developing or maintaining a quality product, but that their business model was simply to milk their assets for revenue while leaving them to wither on the vine. Several weeks after the acquisition closed they brought the hatchet down, and in return for severance pay, asked all fired employees had to agree *never to apply for a job at IB or any subsidiaries, ever* - not that it was really a risk, but WTF?
Will be nice to see them get spanked.
The IB complaint mentions "unlawful acts" several times, but usually without any specifics. The only allegation that comes anywhere close to a trademark infringement is that one of the defendants sent an email saying "the wikitravel admins are planning to..." do exactly what they then did, i.e. fork the project. That's a nominative use of the wikitravel trademark, totally protected under the First Amendment.
The IB complaint really tries to paint a picture of some kind of tortious interference, but doesn't actually list that claim. Possibly because those admins are volunteers and they have no business relations with IB to interfere with.
It's a little odd that Wikimedia filed a separate action; I'd think a simple demurral would make the original case go away more cheaply.
What you linked explicitly says that others can copy the wikitravel website because of the licence. So according to your own document it's not theft if it's attributed. In other words your original statement was utter stupidity and you just admitted as much. Good job.
The complaints are about trademark infringement and various things which have nothing to do with the fact that wikitravel was copied but merely deals with the circumstances around it being copied.
No, that is entirely false. Read the lawsuit, not the bullshit flamebait summary.
The suit is about Trademark Infringement, Unfair business practices under the Lanham Act, Unfair business practices under California Business Practices Act, and Civil Conspiracy. Copyright is not mentioned at all.
Basically, WikiTravel (Internet Brands) is claiming that the site was forked, which they admit right in the suit is legal. However, these two 'unpaid volunteers' , who were admins for WikiTravel (and are the ones who forked the site) then went on WikiTravel's web site and made statements to the effect that WikiTravel was moving to or becoming WikiMedia. That is a lie. WikiTrave is a trademark owned by Internet Brands, and is going nowhere. They also used their admin authority to send emails from WikiTravels email to WikiTravels customers stating the same thing.
They can fork the site if they want. They can not claim or imply that the site is WikiTravel (a trademark violation). And they can not make it appear as if the WikiTravel business no longer exists or has become something else. That is a Lanham Act violation.
I don't think ANYONE wants to see that!
Don't be daft. I could walk into my office and ask who knows what CC is and after dealing with the multiple "carbon copy!" answers there'd be around 3 out of 40 people that would know.
who go after wall street?
ask Leah McGrath Goodman.
or Moe Tkacik
or Michael Lewis
as the 'wikitravel company'. the company doesnt own the 'community'.
I was active in Wikitravel at the time Internet Brands bought the site. They knew damn well that the content was CC-BY-SA licensed and what that meant (that the content was not theirs, and could be taken and reproduced anywhere), and they explicitly promised the community that they would abide by the terms of that license. Obviously they have no intention of doing so, as demonstrated by the fact that they have spent the last several years dragging their feet about their promises to make the content easily portable.
Suing volunteer contributors for casually using the name "wikitravel" in reference to a community of contributors which existed long before IB bought the trademark rights to the web site, is unconscionable. Trademark rights are intended to prevent customers from being ripped off by other companies, not to squelch the free-speech rights of individuals to talk about the company. This is fundamentally no different from if employees of Widget Corp identified themselves as "employees of Widget Corp" and talked about why they were organizing a strike, or calling for a boycott, or threatening to quit.
IB owns a domain name and the exclusive rights to use the mark "Wikitravel" in trade. That is all. They do not control the right to say "Wikitravel" or to talk about "the Wikitravel community" in reference to the people who use the web site that IB hosts.
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There's a slight difference between an Anonymous Coward saying it and, say, Timothy Lord saying it. Remember that these people were basically trying to get contributors to change from contributing to WikiTravel to contributing to their site by sending messages from Administrator accounts that people would pay attention to.
The civil conspiracy, such as it is, involves admins of WikiTravel sending e-mail messages and "private meetings" at events like WikiMania (the annual "convention" of Wikimedia volunteers) to discuss the possibility of moving the WikiTravel community to become a Wikimedia sister project.
I don't even see how that is illegal.
They aren't saying that the new site is WikiTravel, but the community that once upon a time was maintaining the WikiTravel website (especially the grand majority of the administrators and bureaucrats who did most of the heavy lifting on the site) are moving. That isn't even a lie.
Since most of the folks who used to be admins on WikiTravel have had their privileges revoked, I suppose it is a moot issue as the door is being slammed behind them.
As for if a volunteer administrator can possibly be called a corporate officer charged with fiduciary responsibilities that could be prosecuted under the Lanham Act, that would be an interesting bit of case law. The fact is that they really couldn't speak on behalf of the company any more than a stock clerk (aka "associate") can speak on behalf of Wal-Wart. It will be really interesting to see where all this will go, but I don't think they would even be capable of violating that law as you suggest. Certainly the new website that was referenced did not use or operate under the name "WikiTravel'
It is also factually correct that WikiTravel as a business no longer really does exist as a practical matter. It is just a hallow shell of a website with a bunch of content and nobody to maintain it. Apparently most of the content had a bunch of website crawlers plow through it and that content will be transplanted to the new wiki once everything is in place.
This certainly is going to go down in history as a classic way of how not to treat volunteer administrators on a wiki. Internet Brands is just digging a deeper grave for themselves if they try to push this further.
Could you walk into your office of about 40 people (especially if they were technology geeks) and ask "what is the CC license?" and get a reasonable answer?
No doubt that there would be some clueless souls, but it really is a pretty common term. Particularly here on Slashdot as stories regarding open source content of various kind are typical to the point of even defining Slashdot. I'd say CC-by-SA should be as common of knowledge as GPL for those who are regular visitors.
Now the original GP post asking what it stood for was a reasonable request, particularly given his high UID. The ad hominem attacks upon that poster rather than simply answering the question is where it crossed the line.
I guess all of that is up to a judge and jury to decide, if these folks want to go forward.
The awesome thing is that the Wikimedia general counsel is essentially offering his services (with permission of the WMF board of trustees) to act as their attorney so this can set a precedent to tell would be idiots like Internet Brands to suck an egg. They have the WMF at their back.
As for if it was a lie or not, that is also the point of this going to adjudication. I really don't think IB is going to succeed here.
I would have to presume that some sort of "consensus" happened among the admins to speak in this manner. Perhaps what is being portrayed elsewhere is also a lie to suggest that a vast majority of the admins are making the move together with a large number of regular contributors. There will always be stragglers being left behind, but the bulk of the community is moving. Perhaps you have some evidence to the contrary, but that seems to be the situation. To quote:
--- http://www.wikivoyage.org/general/Migration_FAQ
I'd be curious who is going to be left after all of these experienced admins are gone? There might be a few people who are newly promoted admins, but unless they have substantial experience in running a high traffic wiki they are going to be quickly overwhelmed. This Slashdot story alone is going to flood the site with trolls that is going to test the patience of the admins. Certainly the heart and soul of the site are going to be gone.
Somebody is certainly telling a lie here. My gut reaction is to suggest when terms like "unanimous" are thrown around, that it really means something.
Except Tomothy Lord is an employee of Andover.net with a specific employment contract and policies that he has agreed to follow.
In the case of the admins of WikiTravel, there were no policies governing their use of the mailing lists and administrative tools... other than "use common sense" and "don't be an ass". Those are hardly contractual requirements to avoid at least suggesting that all of the admins have moved on to another website and it would be nice if they would follow along. There were policies about the interaction with users in regards to deleting content, but those were mainly guidelines anyway. Most wikis (even Wikipedia) has pretty loose policies in regards to administrators and expects them to be mature and not doing things rashly.
In this case, apparently the WikiTravel admins did come to some sort of group consensus and if the Migration FAQ is any indication, the group e-mails did have a sort of official standing.... from the group of admins who had been running the site previously.
In fact, if you want to read a really interesting page (until it gets deleted), I'd suggest reading this:
http://wikitravel.org/en/User_talk:IBobi
This is apparently the current "bureaucrat" in charge of the site. Note that several of the previous bureaucrats had even desysoped this user (an employee of Internet Brands apparently) and it sort of is the current hotbed of discussion... or at least what is left.
The sad part: I think this particular person is also going to become a bit of a scape goat for Internet Brands. It will be interesting to see where this goes.