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Canonical Targets Ubuntu Privacy Critic

Posted by Soulskill on from the probably-should-have-thought-that-through-a-bit-more dept.

New submitter bkerensa writes "A member of Canonical's Legal Team recently sent a email to a critic of Ubuntu's privacy settings to insist he stop using the Ubuntu name and logo, even though it falls under 'fair use.' Micah Lee is the CTO of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and maintainer of the HTTPS Everywhere project. When Ubuntu began adding commercial results in its Dash search software, Lee wrote about the privacy concerns and created a site called Fix Ubuntu to show people how to turn it off. Canonical's legal department has now sent him a letter asking him to 'remove [the] Ubuntu word from you[r] domain name and Ubuntu logo from your website.'"

5 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Dickish move... by jddeluxe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ....but what would you expect???

  2. And the response is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    https://micahflee.com/2013/11/canonical-shouldnt-abuse-trademark-law-to-silence-critics-of-its-privacy-decisions/

    Ubuntu just lost a lot of street cred. Not only is the response appropriate (remove the logo, nothing else), attacking a site dedicated to fixing your product via legal means is not the way to get the Open Source community on your side. When your main product is based on Open Source, that's kind of like shooting yourself in the leg and wondering why the gun is making you bleed out.

    1. Re:And the response is... by umafuckit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But this isn't a site promoting an alternative distro or selling a product. It's site about Ubuntu. So how does its presence weaken the Ubuntu trademark? It's like saying that this post weakens the trademark because it uses the term "Ubuntu". I bet Canonical won't bother going after http://ubuntu-artists.deviantart.com/ or http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/

      --
      soylentnews.org
    2. Re:And the response is... by Baloroth · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, no it isn't. It's nominative use: he isn't using the logo to represent his own product, but to literally refer to the product Canonical is producing. That is fair use. In fact, it strengthens Canonical's trademark: the more people using it to refer to Ubuntu itself, the stronger the trademark is. Same reason Wikipedia can use all the logos of various companies and products on it's wiki pages about them: because it is literally referring to the trademarked product itself, not to some imitation or misrepresentation of the product.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  3. Their Lawyer hasn't even read their own policy by Minter92 · · Score: 5, Informative

    So now Ubuntu's lawyers don't read their own legal policy http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy . I looked into it when I wrote a blog post about Canonical going bankrupt eventually.
    Note:
    "You can use the Trademarks in discussion, commentary, criticism or parody, provided that you do not imply endorsement by Canonical."

    So not only is it fair use it also is ok under their own intellectual trademark policy.. Talk about one hand not knowing what the other is doing.