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CyanogenMod Domain Hijacked
An anonymous reader writes "The team behind CyanogenMod, one of the most popular community-driven, Android-based operating systems for phones and tablets, has announced that they're moving to Cyanogenmod.org after their .com domain was held ransom by a community member. He had been in control of the .com domain name for some time, but the team found out he was impersonating Cyanogen to make deals with community sites. When they removed his access to other parts of the CM infrastructure, he demanded $10,000 to relinquish control of the domain and threatened to change the DNS entries. When they refused to pay, he went through with it. The team is now disputing control of the domain with ICANN. They said, 'We will continue to be open about the what, when, how, but unfortunately, we may never know the "why" – though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension.'"
Sounds like a real asshole. Enjoy the domain why you can - it'll be taken from you, or it'll be rendered worthless when the responsible adults get their own domain. Either way it's worthless.
A real community member would be proud to shell out the 10 bucks for the domain name nenewal and donate it back to the project.
Whoever this community member is, he needs to be very very careful about what he's doing. Many countries hold that malicious hijacking of trademarks or implied trademarks to be a criminal rather than merely civil matter. Ie if you go to a company or organization and maliciously register their trademark to fuck them over, you can expect a policeman at your door with a warrant.
This happens quite regularly, and it rarely turns out as happily as the malicious party expected.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Benedict Judas Quisling is unable to take your call at this moment, but if you leave your site name he'll remove it from DNS as soon as possible.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Even just putting up a standard ad landing page would generate income, there.
We'll see if ICANN just brings down the hammer for powerful corporations here.
They did mention "filing charges". IANAL, and I doubt Steve is either. If I were in his shoes, I'd be hesitant to publish clearly identifying details until I'd consulted an attorney.
So they *will* get it back. Eventually.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/103583939320326217147/posts/A8mtUUpdEH8
I tried going to cyanogenmod.com and got redirected to cyanogenmod.org. Maybe someone realized that what he was doing wasn't just unethical, but also most likely illegal.
"lol didn't read"
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This guy is in England... the country where you get arrested for posting a photo of a burning paper flower on facebook.
Yup. I'm 90% positive about who it is, but I'm not going to ask or discuss it with the rest of the team to ensure noninterference with legal proceedings.
I am, however, planning on talking with some lawyer friends on advice for setting up a 501(c)(3) organization.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Whoa... Whoops, turns out I was wrong. https://plus.google.com/u/0/103583939320326217147/posts/A8mtUUpdEH8
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
What's in a name...
Check out my cross-platform apps
Registrant:
Worthless Internet Asshat
Kemp House
City Road
London, London EC1V 2NX
GB
Domain Name:CYANOGENMOD.ORG
Created On:21-Oct-2010 18:09:32 UTC
It's the responsibility of any person responsible for a project to ensure a backup domain(s) is available in the case the domain owner become estranged from the project.
A good example of proper planning.
This is the first whois data from that domain 3 years ago:
Administrative Contact:
Deveci, Ahmet webmaster@metserve.com
Third Floor
152-156 Lower Clapton Road
Clapton, London E5 0QJ
GB
+442081232629
Whenever the subject is brought up, it would be appropriate to NAME the perp and note his background info.
No libel, no slander, just sufficient identification that anyone considering teaming with this fellow can make a fully informed decision.
It's not revenge, just self-defense.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Although, if you REALLY want to know who's the suspect, it's easy enough to find out just by reading some of the social media posts further down in this story's comments.
Don't give up on that 501(c)3, though - avoid those single points of failure, where you can.
I only just now realized that the rom is called cyanogenmod and not cryogenmod. Christ, I've been calling it cryogenmod for over a year!
Any idea about the laws in UK? Seems to be owned my MetServe Enterprises Limited, a UK registered company.
The address for that company looks like the office of their lawyer though. Looks like you need to pay money to get documents with the director and shareholder names. Anyone willing to give a pound to the UK Companies office?
And this is why you make sure of who's listed as the registrant. Not just the administrative contact, the registrant is the one who owns the domain. You can set the billing, technical and administrative contacts to whoever needs to run things day-to-day, but make sure the registrant contact information's set for the organization, not one single person within it. That way when someone goes rogue you don't need to involve ICANN, you can just contact the registrar as the registrant and get control back. It's still hassle, but much less hassle than a dispute proceeding.
This all looks to now be resolved - http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/domain-situation-has-been-resolved
From the cyanogenmod blog -
(ciwrl wrote this, I’m just posting on his behalf so this is resolved)
So earlier today we put up a post on what prompted us to transition to our new CyanogenMod.org domain. We refrained from identifying the ex-member out of respect for his privacy and career outside of CM. Suffice it to say you guys aren’t slouches, and figured it out on your own.
With that said, the ex-member in question contacted us and has agreed to hand over control of the CyanogenMod.com domain. This was done as amicably as these things can be, and CM did not pay the fee he requested.
We will still be using CyanogenMod.org as our primary domain, and the .com address will simply redirect to this new domain. Ironically enough, ‘.org’ is better than ‘.com’ as we are not a commercial entity, and is far more in line with how CyanogenMod is structured.
We received a common question, that we’d like to take a moment to answer. Some of you contacted us mentioning that you had previously donated to a different address. When the forum began, up until about 3 months ago, the forum utilized this other address as the mechanism for forum donations and establishment of the ‘Donator’ badge. Donations made to this address prior to three months ago were used for the CyanogenMod forum IPB licence and forum related costs and were not misappropriated.
On a side note, we have also gone through internal restructuring to make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. Nobody has control over everything, and there is no longer such a large single-point of failure. Our lessons have been learned.
We ask that you please not perform any vigilante actions, we do not condone any such thing; just let this fade.
We want to move on, get you the builds you expect from us, and not mess around with distractions.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Ahmet Deveci 8:22 PM
For the record, regarding: cyanogenmod.com
Following the saga from : http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/psa-transition-to-cyanogenmod-org it would appear that I have been labelled a 'thief' an 'extortionist' a 'liar' and a bunch of other somewhat degrading comments.
The domain name has since been transferred to the CM Team, but I wanted to make a few things clear.
I purchased the CyanogenMod.com domain name 3 years ago and have been responsible for the renewal fees ever since. This means I (my company) legally owned the domain name. It was fully registered in the United Kingdom. I hear people saying about ‘trademark’. Yes, CyanogenMod is now a registered trademark in the US. But the domain was registered in the UK well before that trademark. I don’t want to get into any legal battles here, but US trademark’s are not valid in the UK unless they are registered here with the IPO.
The term 'hi-jacked' is just wrong, the domain name was always in my control. I didn't hijack anything. I initiated a transfer out process with my registrar today who restored the DNS entries to their own. This in turn deleted all MX entries and other records. The term 'hi-jacked' has just derived from tech blogs creating stories for link bait.
The term 'extortion' is also wrong. If I was out for the money, why an earth would I have transferred the domain to the CM Team for free?
I really don't want to make a meal out of this, nor do I want to get into the rigmarole of having to keep fighting off the haters on here or Twitter or my personal email. I would just simply ask that some people act a little more mature about this whole situation and let's all move along.
The domain name has now been rightfully transferred to the great guys behind CyanogenMod and I will continue to use the mod on my devices. I will just be stepping down from my previous role as 'webmaster'.
If I have offended anyone during all of this commotion then I apologise. In the meantime, let’s all move along and play nicely. This incident was blown way out of proportion. There are far more important things in life than to worry about internet disputes.
Thanks again,
Ahmet
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
...But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension."
I find this quote rather amusing.
Didn't this project start in part because of the carriers denying smartphone owners updated versions of the Android OS to help drive sales of new handsets instead?
And now one of their people is trying to extort $10,000 out of them.
Is greed beyond the comprehension of CM?
And the response: https://plus.google.com/116028512018932696380/posts/4gDX3HygM3E
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
First you get the domain, then you get the money, then you get the weemon.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Conspiciously missing any discussion of:
His initial attempt to extort $10k from CM. He didn't agree to transfer the domain for free until AFTER he had been outed.
His posing as Steve when contacting N2ACards.
His alteration of the CM website to point to N2ACards without any discussion with anyone else in the organization.
His routing of all money coming from N2ACards to his personal account.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
He, in good faith, as a web-admin for the CyanogenMod project, 'donated' the domain name and maintained it for them. What you're missing is the extortion and fraud he subversively and covertly performed when acting as a web-admin for the CyanogenMod project. When he was confronted by this his response was to attempt to blackmail the CyanogenMod team into paying $10k to keep their domain - since, even though he donated it, he still held the keys. Hijacking is misleading and too soft a word. He blackmailed, backstabbed, defrauded and embezzeled. The guy is the definition of deplorable conduct.
Oh, duly noted, just posted it without commentary to be as neutral sounding as possible.
He seems completely oblivious to the effects of his behaviour at some level, and I posted as much on my own G+ feed.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)