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Kodi Is Fighting Trademark Trolls (betanews.com)
Friday the makers of an open source media player Kodi called out trademark trolls who they say have "attempted to register the Kodi name in various countries outside the United States with the goal of earning money off the Kodi name without doing any work beyond sending threatening letters." BrianFagioli shares an article in which BetaNews quotes Kodi community and project manager Nathan Betzen:
"At least one trademark troll has so far not agreed to voluntarily release their grasp on their registration of our trademark and is actively blackmailing hardware vendors in an entire country, trying to become as rich as possible off of our backs and the backs of Kodi volunteers everywhere. His name is Geoff Gavora. He had written several letters to the Foundation over the years, expressing how important XBMC and Kodi were to him and his sales. And then, one day, for whatever reason, he decided to register the Kodi trademark in his home country of Canada. We had hoped, given the positive nature of his past emails, that perhaps he was doing this for the benefit of the Foundation. We learned, unfortunately, that this was not the case," says Nathan Betzen, Kodi Project Manager.
"Instead, companies like Mygica and our sponsor Minix have been delisted by Gavora on Amazon, so that only Gavora's hardware can be sold, unless those companies pay him a fee to stay on the store. Now, if you do a search for Kodi on Amazon.ca, there's a very real chance that every box you see is giving Gavora money to advertise that they can run what should be the entirely free and open Kodi. Gavora and his company are behaving in true trademark troll fashion."
"Instead, companies like Mygica and our sponsor Minix have been delisted by Gavora on Amazon, so that only Gavora's hardware can be sold, unless those companies pay him a fee to stay on the store. Now, if you do a search for Kodi on Amazon.ca, there's a very real chance that every box you see is giving Gavora money to advertise that they can run what should be the entirely free and open Kodi. Gavora and his company are behaving in true trademark troll fashion."
That's a lot of words for "ironic"
So, if you think the prices for a product are too expensive, that gives you the license to just take it without paying? That is some seriously screwed up logic and ethics you have there. Piracy occurs because people lack ethics and would prefer to take something for free rather than paying for it. L
His name is Geoff Gavora. He had written several letters to the Foundation over the years, expressing how important XBMC and Kodi were to him and his sales.
Well then, I suggest they talk to Hari Seldon and get it sorted out. He seems to have a lot of experience dealing with difficult people.
#DeleteChrome
Kodi is open source... even if they did add signing requirement to the official build, it would be trivial for someone to fork it and produce a version without the signing requirement. Pretty sure if the Pirates have the skill to write a Kodi plugin to facilitate that, they would have no difficulty with making a custom build without signing.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Canada to be aimed at him. The Kodi folks ought to just redirect any to him as a favor.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
When you buy something that doesn't do what the marketing bullshit says it should do, there are laws in place that gives you the right to get a refund. Nothing similar exists for copyrighted material.
And some of them add more bullshit on the packaging saying that if you open it you agree to the bullshit legal mumbo-jumbo user agreement sealed inside the packaging that you can't read before opening it.
Copyright means copy right. The right to copy after a limited period of time. That law was put in place for both the authors and the public but since the last few decades it has become one-sided bullshit protecting mega-corporation that steal from the authors themselves and put people in prison or ruin their lives simply for copying media. The law is less severe if you steal physical things from a store, where there is actual losses involved.
#DeleteFacebook
Why are you so desperate to destroy Liberty and oppose any measure that might defend it? I use my hand-assembled x86 Kodi box for completely lawful purposes (See Sony v Universal, linked below). If you want to punish wrongdoers, go after them, but dont tell me i cant have Kodi because of the actions of others, that is an unnecessary infringement of Liberty for the overall minor issue of copyright infringement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Good-bye
Shame on you, you cut short his sentence --"and/or apply for registration of the mark in that country."
Canada has moved to a hybrid first-to-file trademark registration system. Prior users of the mark may still demonstrate that they have priority, but they have to litigate priority in court. Many countries, like China, are hybrid first-to-file countries, and many others are pue first-to-file countries.
Register your trademark or else:
"Whether your trademark is already the subject of a foreign registration, or whether an application for the mark has not yet been filed in any country, it would be prudent to be the first to file in Canada before the law permits others to file applications for your trademarks without having to claim use. While you could litigate later over who is entitled to priority for the mark, it would be far more cost effective to avoid this potential litigation by being the first to file."
there is nothing of value lost
that argument has been studied so many times going back to computer hobby club in 70s passing around disks and sharing.
If a person pirates then they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place. And since it's only a copy then piracy for personal use harms noone and no corporations.
See
http://www.businessinsider.com...
quote:
Downloading music and movies without authorization will remain legal in Switzerland after the conclusion of a government study found that the practise doesn't cause enough damage to copyright holders to warrant making it illegal
David R. Foley of UltraCade attempted to trademark the MAME name (he was later found guilty of selling games he didn't have the rights to). The MAME team had to legally challenge this trademark application. So yes, the MAME name/logo/wordmark is a registered trademark mainly because someone else attempted to register it in bad faith first.
It's funny that Microsoft is willing to fight trademark trolls but they seem to show little sincere interest in fighting piracy. Windows is widely used for illegal streaming services, and there doesn't seem to be much progress by Microsoft to ensure that it is used for lawful purposes. This seems like karma to me. When you create a product and don't care whether it's used to break the law, I have a hard time finding sympathy that you also have to deal with trademark trolls. The name Windows is becoming synonymous with piracy, and Microsoft needs to step up and prevent this.
Before you say that Windows has legal uses ad [sic!] there the piracy doesn't matter, let me point out that there are plenty of legal uses. This doesn't mean, however, that car manufacturers and dealers shouldn't take steps to try to avoid selling cars to speeders and design their cars to make it less likely that they will be used for criminal purposes. Likewise, Microsoft should take steps to prevent their software from being used for piracy. And piracy isn't defensible, either. If you don't want to pay the prices for films that don't meet your standards, the appropriate thing to do is simply don't watch them. Your criticisms of the film industry do not justify theft, no matter how much you pretend otherwise.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I see your (somewhat incorrect) interpretation of the Constitution.
However, I raise you one 'violation of the social contract' that was done by copyright extension.
You see, copyright has always been what is called a balanced social contract. Society as a whole carry the cost of both allowing and enforcing copyright, at no cost to the copyright owners - and in return the 'works' are supposed to become the property of that society after a reasonable time to allow for a suitable profit to be made.
However, as I am sure you know (because only someone with an interest would write the facile bs you did..) the opposite has been done. These days profits can be taken much much quicker on works than previously, however copyright have been extended to the point where it is unlikely that society will EVER receive their part of the contract.
Now, a contract where one party can never benefit is generally considered legally unenforceable.
So, it SHOULD be considered entirely appropriate to ignore the copyright side of that agreement, and the holders are ignoring the other side.
Of course, the government does not profit from such a view, so use force of arms to stop it - that does not however make it 'right', just enforced.