And back here in reality, no one will care about this. Not on Slashdot either, when this story quietly drops further down the front page in a few hours.
If I bring a screwdriver to work and use it, for a few months, and then go somewhere else, you can't have my screwdriver. His employer will need to prove to the court that they asked him to spend company time on making and maintaining the page (or paid him something else extra or offered some other compensation for doing it) to win this case.
That's a bad analogy. He didn't "bring" the Twitter account to work. He made it while working. Nothing was taken from him. Better analogy would be like a game programmer making a level editor for the game company is making, and then taking that level editor with him when he leaves the company. I doubt you think that would be fair.
He seems to have worked completely from his own place, so that hardly matters. Or are you claiming that whatever he produced (including the reviews and new readers of the site) now aren't the company's property? How would you feel if you paid someone to do work for 4 years and when he left he would take it with him? That's basically stealing.
What did the employee spend money on here? Nothing. He did use the company's time and resources. That is usually what employees are paid for, and then companies get what their employees produce. Like that Twitter account.
If you work on your own projects during work time they usually belong to the company. For example the 10% (or whatever) Google allows for personal projects during work time. Do you honestly think that they would allow you to take it out of the company? No, they want to drive innovation that way and use the project further down the line if it's good.
It doesn't matter if he was specifically asked to do so. He used the company's resources and time to make it, used company's name as part of his handle and it definitely was something directly linked to Phonedog. If you do something at your work time, it usually does belong to the company. It's so with your personal projects done at work time too. Hell, in some places your personal projects done outside your work time belong to your employer too.
He created the Twitter account as part of his job, so it does belong the company. Valuing those followers at $2.50 really isn't much either, and I can easily see that such group of targeted followers is worth that (I work in advertising too).
This seems like a really straight-forward case. The Twitter account belongs to Phonedog.
That has been the case for years. It's also why government sites tend to get so much seo spam and hacking attempts. Google supposedly devalued it after governments started complaining about it.
The main change is that sites that are not in English will be translated then included in the search results.
From the article:
One of the new changes will affect searches in languages for which there is little Web content available, including Afrikaans, Hindi and Icelandic. Google will now translate relevant Web pages written in English and show those results, too.
That's not the point though. Companies don't care that much if it's 100% unhackable as long as it protects the content long enough (so that most sales are done) or that it hinders mass copying, as with this case. Whatever you described in your post seems like a huge effort, ever for me (and I'm a geek). It's completely out of reach from masses. That is the point.
Also, there are uncrackable DRM's, but with games. There are still titles that haven't been cracked, or have been cracked improperly which leads frustration for the guy who pirated it. It can make him buy it. With games the companies have also figured out that they can give out the game for free and charge for gameplay features or items, ie. free2play. Lots of gamers hate it, but well, they asked for change. Most of multiplayer games and MMO's are also either unplayable or severaly limited, like WoW (and don't say there are private servers, because they seriously suck compared to real ones and the experience is completely different).
The music industry consists of fit, attractive dancers whose voices autotune well
And what is wrong with that? I listen and look at what I find pleasuring. It doesn't matter if it's computer enhanced. In fact it's a little bit surprising to find such a hate towards augmentations on such a geek site.
Google+ introduced Circles, shortly afterwards Facebook magically made it possible to share posts with only certain groups This was one of the most-asked-for and never granted features before G+ came along!
It was possible, it just wasn't as clear. I've been using the feature for years in Facebook.
And notifications? They have been there as long as I can remember. And they certainly weren't added only after Google+
You mean like Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth? Those all wore a Beta tag for years and years.
Maps and Earth weren't developed in Google, they bought them off. Keyhole had been developing their product for years and it was fully finished and sold to companies too. Google bought them off and made it free for personal usage. In fact, they haven't really developed it all after it was bought from Keyhole. It was never in actual beta. Google Search was in beta when Google started, back in 1998.
Google Plus is showing every sign of being everybit as big as Gmail. Its a totally new concept. Its not facebook, its not myspace.
How is Google Plus any different? They have basically copied every piece from Facebook, starting from the UI and going to features, games and frankly, pretty much everything. Only thing Google+ had at the time was better organization of target groups for your updates, which you could already do on Facebook anyway.
There is nothing new with Google+. It's a complete Facebook copy, with significant amount of less features and people using it (ie., it's completely dead place).
The music industry needs to change.
And that has to start by getting rid of labels and all artists just making their music available for download on sites like iTunes, Amazon and Google Music.
And who are you to tell the artists what they should do? If they are so concerned about that, they can do that exact thing already. But they value the extra services and funding labels offer them, and that's why they make deals with them. However, they are free to choose, already. In fact they are more free now than if you were to tell them how to do it.
It's their half-assed attempts to create new products, and releasing them way too early. It's not only with Google Music, it seems to be a company wide practice and can be seen with Google+, Google TV, their coding languages, even Android and quite much any product they put out. Gmail was put out with the same tactic, but it actually offered much more than competitors did back then (good amount of space and great interface).
However, every one of Google's recent products just are not offering anything new, anything better or anything more. In most cases it's actually completely reverse. What they offer is a lot less than competitors do. And yet they still continue the bad practice, and are once again starting a new service that offers significantly less. People will just lose interest and never try to product again. I suspect this will happen with Google Music, Google+ and every other product they put out with the same tactic.
Please Google, finish and polish what you start before releasing them!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because it is obviously really bad to help companies make their websites work better for both robots and human visitors.
And back here in reality, no one will care about this. Not on Slashdot either, when this story quietly drops further down the front page in a few hours.
If I bring a screwdriver to work and use it, for a few months, and then go somewhere else, you can't have my screwdriver. His employer will need to prove to the court that they asked him to spend company time on making and maintaining the page (or paid him something else extra or offered some other compensation for doing it) to win this case.
That's a bad analogy. He didn't "bring" the Twitter account to work. He made it while working. Nothing was taken from him. Better analogy would be like a game programmer making a level editor for the game company is making, and then taking that level editor with him when he leaves the company. I doubt you think that would be fair.
He seems to have worked completely from his own place, so that hardly matters. Or are you claiming that whatever he produced (including the reviews and new readers of the site) now aren't the company's property? How would you feel if you paid someone to do work for 4 years and when he left he would take it with him? That's basically stealing.
If anything, I would be afraid if I was phonedog as being seen as complacent about enforcing their marks.It seems their may be a gray area here.
I'm quite sure company employees are allowed to use their trademarks.
He didn't develop anything.
He developed business relationships with those followers, on his work time.
What did the employee spend money on here? Nothing. He did use the company's time and resources. That is usually what employees are paid for, and then companies get what their employees produce. Like that Twitter account.
He said further proves. In this case it's already established he was working for Phonedog and made and used the Twitter account as part of his job.
If you work on your own projects during work time they usually belong to the company. For example the 10% (or whatever) Google allows for personal projects during work time. Do you honestly think that they would allow you to take it out of the company? No, they want to drive innovation that way and use the project further down the line if it's good.
It doesn't matter if he was specifically asked to do so. He used the company's resources and time to make it, used company's name as part of his handle and it definitely was something directly linked to Phonedog. If you do something at your work time, it usually does belong to the company. It's so with your personal projects done at work time too. Hell, in some places your personal projects done outside your work time belong to your employer too.
He created the Twitter account as part of his job, so it does belong the company. Valuing those followers at $2.50 really isn't much either, and I can easily see that such group of targeted followers is worth that (I work in advertising too).
This seems like a really straight-forward case. The Twitter account belongs to Phonedog.
That "search history" setting only hides the search history from you. They still log all that data.
That has been the case for years. It's also why government sites tend to get so much seo spam and hacking attempts. Google supposedly devalued it after governments started complaining about it.
The main change is that sites that are not in English will be translated then included in the search results.
From the article:
One of the new changes will affect searches in languages for which there is little Web content available, including Afrikaans, Hindi and Icelandic. Google will now translate relevant Web pages written in English and show those results, too.
Complete opposite direction. Go Slashdot!
That's not the point though. Companies don't care that much if it's 100% unhackable as long as it protects the content long enough (so that most sales are done) or that it hinders mass copying, as with this case. Whatever you described in your post seems like a huge effort, ever for me (and I'm a geek). It's completely out of reach from masses. That is the point.
Also, there are uncrackable DRM's, but with games. There are still titles that haven't been cracked, or have been cracked improperly which leads frustration for the guy who pirated it. It can make him buy it. With games the companies have also figured out that they can give out the game for free and charge for gameplay features or items, ie. free2play. Lots of gamers hate it, but well, they asked for change. Most of multiplayer games and MMO's are also either unplayable or severaly limited, like WoW (and don't say there are private servers, because they seriously suck compared to real ones and the experience is completely different).
People willingly pay for water, for Pete's sake, which does come out of a faucet for free.
You do know that in most parts of the world, the water that comes out of faucet is undrinkable?
Now a days internet pretty much is http.
The music industry consists of fit, attractive dancers whose voices autotune well
And what is wrong with that? I listen and look at what I find pleasuring. It doesn't matter if it's computer enhanced. In fact it's a little bit surprising to find such a hate towards augmentations on such a geek site.
What? Google didn't launch YouTube. They bought them. Just like Android and any other product they have, apart from search and AdWords.
Google+ introduced Circles, shortly afterwards Facebook magically made it possible to share posts with only certain groups
This was one of the most-asked-for and never granted features before G+ came along!
It was possible, it just wasn't as clear. I've been using the feature for years in Facebook.
And notifications? They have been there as long as I can remember. And they certainly weren't added only after Google+
You mean like Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth? Those all wore a Beta tag for years and years.
Maps and Earth weren't developed in Google, they bought them off. Keyhole had been developing their product for years and it was fully finished and sold to companies too. Google bought them off and made it free for personal usage. In fact, they haven't really developed it all after it was bought from Keyhole. It was never in actual beta. Google Search was in beta when Google started, back in 1998.
Google Plus is showing every sign of being everybit as big as Gmail. Its a totally new concept. Its not facebook, its not myspace.
How is Google Plus any different? They have basically copied every piece from Facebook, starting from the UI and going to features, games and frankly, pretty much everything. Only thing Google+ had at the time was better organization of target groups for your updates, which you could already do on Facebook anyway.
There is nothing new with Google+. It's a complete Facebook copy, with significant amount of less features and people using it (ie., it's completely dead place).
Spotify (and iTunes, kind of) offer that functionality already.
The music industry needs to change.
And that has to start by getting rid of labels and all artists just making their music available for download on sites like iTunes, Amazon and Google Music.
And who are you to tell the artists what they should do? If they are so concerned about that, they can do that exact thing already. But they value the extra services and funding labels offer them, and that's why they make deals with them. However, they are free to choose, already. In fact they are more free now than if you were to tell them how to do it.
It's their half-assed attempts to create new products, and releasing them way too early. It's not only with Google Music, it seems to be a company wide practice and can be seen with Google+, Google TV, their coding languages, even Android and quite much any product they put out. Gmail was put out with the same tactic, but it actually offered much more than competitors did back then (good amount of space and great interface).
However, every one of Google's recent products just are not offering anything new, anything better or anything more. In most cases it's actually completely reverse. What they offer is a lot less than competitors do. And yet they still continue the bad practice, and are once again starting a new service that offers significantly less. People will just lose interest and never try to product again. I suspect this will happen with Google Music, Google+ and every other product they put out with the same tactic.
Please Google, finish and polish what you start before releasing them!