Consumer reports spams. Badly. Take this survey. Take that survey. (No, opting-out did not work.) When my subscription (to the online site) came up for renewal, I cancelled. So *NOW* I get spammed to come back.
Competition is great, but since I run my own server, I'll just block the CR junk at the firewall, thanks:)
I disagree with you there. There's nothing quite so wonderful (ok, maybe there are a few things...) as pasting the error message from one's 20th mailserver configuration attempt into the Google toolbar and getting a discussion of what could cause the error message and how to trouble-shoot it. Most of the time that's in the form of a mailing-list archive. Often that's the ONLY hit. Sure, I'd rather have a well-written discussion, preferably written by the developers of the application I'm using. But if it doesn't exist, PLEASE give me the link to the mailing list where my exact problem was discussed! (Even if they didn't solve the problem, a discussion of how to troubleshoot it can be a good start...)
My biggest gripe about mailing list links is that some of them don't link to the rest of the thread, making it tricky to find the rest of the discussion.
I'd expect users of RBLs (see http://www.spews.org) and certainly the denizens of NANAE to argue that they have the right to refuse to receive email from anyone, for any reason, since that mailserver is private property.
It can be used in ways you like (refusing emails from Verizon's corporate HQ because they refuse to kick their spammers) or in ways you don't like (making it more difficult to send outgoing mail), but I don't see how you can reasonably kick and scream against one and not the other.
Actually, several providers have been refusing email from dial-up pools for a year or more, which is what caused me to decide that I would need to send outbound email through my ISP. IIRC, attbi refused email from my server on my ISDN line over a year ago.
The solution isn't difficult - go dig around on your ISP's website (or call them) and figure out the mailserver that you'd be using if you WEREN'T running your own MTA. Set your mail server to relay outbound emails through them. (See your man pages - it isn't difficult.) There's NO way your ISP's mailserver is going to refuse to accept your email, since if they did, no one not running an MTA could get email out. Sure, you'll have an extra line of headers in your outbound email, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Was the location of your mail server a secret anyway?
Of course, if your ISP is a notorious hoster of spammers, you're going to need to find a new ISP. You didn't really want to support those spammers anyway, did you?
Another option is OpenACS. Lots of neat tools for building dynamic websites.
Consequences...
on
Ruling the Root
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It is interesting just how broadly some companies want to define their trademarks, and the scare tactics they'll use to try to enforce them. For instance:
From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com]
Dear Domain Name Registrant:
It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain
name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark.
As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous
names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay
trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay
enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a
decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third
party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was
denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous
trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection.
We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous
eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's
trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to
confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the
third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's
use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the
distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use
of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the
distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and
fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or
e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain
name to evoke eBay's famous brand.
We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a
dispute similar to this one against a company using the name
www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its
domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money.
Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.
More information on trademark law may be found at
http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm.
Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer
Protection Act of 1999 ()
provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who,
without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that
infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been
notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their
infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to
additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having
received this e-mail, you are on such notice.
Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the
Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions
against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings
before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's
arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at
issue to eBay.
While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct
business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order
to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have
registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and
without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the
circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not
sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and
simply let the domain name registration expire.
Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as
requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Edith
eBay Legal Department
As far as I can tell, this is a FORM LETTER, triggered a scan of new domain registrations. Anyone got a similar one?
So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert, called www.egyptbay.com.
p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.
The part of the site that I thought was most interesting (that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet) is the use of movies to teach physics.
I do a similar exercise with intro chem students with Raiders of the Lost Ark. We calculate the mass of the gold statue Indy tries to replace with the bag of sand, considering the density of gold and the density of sand. Makes for some good discussion, and it gets students THINKING about the equations.
I'd like to recommend the excellent openACS toolkit. Not PHP and not MySQL (ick), but a mighty fine, totally open source toolkit for building communities, e-commerce, etc. PostgreSQL rocks, or if you're feeling spendy, it also supports Oracle.
The best thing about the openACS toolkit is that you can have a functional db-backed site up in no time. No need to re-invent the wheel.:)
From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com] Dear Domain Name Registrant:
It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark. As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection. We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain name to evoke eBay's famous brand. We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a dispute similar to this one against a company using the name www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money. Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.
More information on trademark law may be found at http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm. Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 () provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having received this e-mail, you are on such notice. Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at issue to eBay.
While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and simply let the domain name registration expire. Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation. Edith eBay Legal Department
So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert, called www.egyptbay.com.
p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Read some of the stuff at http://bruce.pennypacker.org/SLAPP/ if you want to see just HOW much of an idiot. The defendant's response is amusing. You don't get to LAUGH at legal papers every day.
Consumer reports spams. Badly. Take this survey. Take that survey. (No, opting-out did not work.) When my subscription (to the online site) came up for renewal, I cancelled. So *NOW* I get spammed to come back.
:)
Competition is great, but since I run my own server, I'll just block the CR junk at the firewall, thanks
I thought the most interesting bit about this was Microsoft stating that 'so-called digital signitures' were not acceptable.
Um, hello? This is Microsoft, that thinks its click-through EULA is as good as a contract?
I disagree with you there. There's nothing quite so wonderful (ok, maybe there are a few things...) as pasting the error message from one's 20th mailserver configuration attempt into the Google toolbar and getting a discussion of what could cause the error message and how to trouble-shoot it. Most of the time that's in the form of a mailing-list archive. Often that's the ONLY hit. Sure, I'd rather have a well-written discussion, preferably written by the developers of the application I'm using. But if it doesn't exist, PLEASE give me the link to the mailing list where my exact problem was discussed! (Even if they didn't solve the problem, a discussion of how to troubleshoot it can be a good start...) My biggest gripe about mailing list links is that some of them don't link to the rest of the thread, making it tricky to find the rest of the discussion.
Google has the Spamhaus reply. Go go google. :)
I'd expect users of RBLs (see http://www.spews.org) and certainly the denizens of NANAE to argue that they have the right to refuse to receive email from anyone, for any reason, since that mailserver is private property.
It can be used in ways you like (refusing emails from Verizon's corporate HQ because they refuse to kick their spammers) or in ways you don't like (making it more difficult to send outgoing mail), but I don't see how you can reasonably kick and scream against one and not the other.
Actually, several providers have been refusing email from dial-up pools for a year or more, which is what caused me to decide that I would need to send outbound email through my ISP. IIRC, attbi refused email from my server on my ISDN line over a year ago.
The solution isn't difficult - go dig around on your ISP's website (or call them) and figure out the mailserver that you'd be using if you WEREN'T running your own MTA. Set your mail server to relay outbound emails through them. (See your man pages - it isn't difficult.) There's NO way your ISP's mailserver is going to refuse to accept your email, since if they did, no one not running an MTA could get email out. Sure, you'll have an extra line of headers in your outbound email, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Was the location of your mail server a secret anyway?
Of course, if your ISP is a notorious hoster of spammers, you're going to need to find a new ISP. You didn't really want to support those spammers anyway, did you?
Another option is OpenACS. Lots of neat tools for building dynamic websites.
From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com]
Dear Domain Name Registrant:
It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark. As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection. We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain name to evoke eBay's famous brand. We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a dispute similar to this one against a company using the name www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money. Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.
More information on trademark law may be found at http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm. Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 () provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having received this e-mail, you are on such notice. Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at issue to eBay.
While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and simply let the domain name registration expire. Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Edith
eBay Legal Department
As far as I can tell, this is a FORM LETTER, triggered a scan of new domain registrations. Anyone got a similar one?
So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert, called www.egyptbay.com.
p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.
I do a similar exercise with intro chem students with Raiders of the Lost Ark. We calculate the mass of the gold statue Indy tries to replace with the bag of sand, considering the density of gold and the density of sand. Makes for some good discussion, and it gets students THINKING about the equations.
Interested? Check out www.labarchive.net
The best thing about the openACS toolkit is that you can have a functional db-backed site up in no time. No need to re-invent the wheel. :)
From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com]
l and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer
Dear Domain Name Registrant:
It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain
name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark.
As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous
names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay
trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay
enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a
decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third
party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was
denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous
trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection.
We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous
eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's
trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to
confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the
third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's
use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the
distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use
of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the
distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and
fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or
e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain
name to evoke eBay's famous brand.
We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a
dispute similar to this one against a company using the name
www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its
domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money.
Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.
More information on trademark law may be found at
http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm.
Federa
Protection Act of 1999 ()
provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who,
without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that
infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been
notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their
infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to
additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having
received this e-mail, you are on such notice.
Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the
Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions
against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings
before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's
arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at
issue to eBay.
While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct
business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order
to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have
registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and
without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the
circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not
sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and
simply let the domain name registration expire.
Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as
requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Edith
eBay Legal Department
So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert, called www.egyptbay.com.
p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.