Utube Sues YouTube 438
An anonymous reader writes "From The Age article: Universal Tube, which sells used machines that make tubes, has said it has lost business because customers have had trouble accessing its site." So now Utube is suing YouTube seeking a cease and desist on the youtube domain. (I wonder if they think Google's pockets might be deeper that the previous owners'.) This again raises the problems of domain names colliding across different industries and countries, and reminds me of the etoys/etoy tussle a few years back. Should domain name simply be exempt from trademark legislation in all countries or is it a legit thing to fight for?"
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
obviously (Score:2)
Obviously, because the internet is clearly not a truck, that you can just dump things on.
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Um... (Score:3)
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You missed a word in that sentence. s/geeks/geeks on Slashdot/
Re: Obligatory (Score:2)
publicity stunt (Score:2)
this sounds like a simple case of getting publicity by suing a big name!
meanwhile, on the other news channel, I am suing google for US$1M for no other reason than that Google have more money than me, and thus Google are causing me to feel anxiety about my relative poverty.
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What about... (Score:5, Funny)
I know, that was baaaaad.
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Common sense will prevail (Score:2)
If Utube came first, then yes, this is valid if YouTube is exploiting their fame. However, this isn't the case, if I'm not mistaken. YouTube is the one that is famous. Utube is the one that is trying to extort money from YouTube.
To give another example, imagine if I created a site with a name similar to Microsoft, and whenever someone Googled Microsoft, my domain would come up, and a significant number of people came to me first.
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In related news... (Score:2)
The Amazon tribe of Brazil has sued Amazon.com for $1,000,000,000, complaining that they have potentially lost hundreds of dollars in sales of beads and feminine hygiene products while having to deal with dozens of accidental hits to their website.
More sues (Score:2)
Because they have customers so deeply confused by mistyping and misreading, they need to get as much cash as possible out of anything in order to remain alive in the market.
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, it's clearly their fault that people are idiots.
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I take the fact your neighbours are wealthy and that you're not to be a mere coincidence.
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Your address numbers are not chosen by you.
Even if they are, the address has to be something in sequence. I assume that 42 was already taken when your lot was carved out.
Google Provides Servers? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's a nice gesture, but it isn't what utube really wants.
FTFA:
"Girkins [Universal Tube's president] has said the company was looking to sell the web address and find a new home for its website."
Translation: For a lot of money, YouTube can have our domain & we'll pack it up somewhere else.
utube has a ligitimate problem
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Dammit (Score:2)
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I am warning ALL of you. Stop. Now!
Owner of YewTube.com,
Inquire about our genuine wooden tubular products today!
UTube could make a fortune (Score:2)
Most sites would kill to get this level of traffic, and all these guys [utube.com] can think of is getting it stopped.
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Obvious solution. (Score:2)
Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
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If you had a site designed for quick service to 1000 visitors/day that cost perhaps $1000/month, and it ran fine for 10 years, would you be a little pissed when it suddenly got 1,000,000 visitors every hour and fell over?
What if Slashdot, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Clipmarks, and a few others decided between themselves that they would always refer to your site every other day such that you never get it back online? That is in essence what uTube.com
Settle the case... (Score:2)
BBH
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Illiteracy (Score:2, Funny)
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It's the all encompassing .com that's the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
ooh, the wayback machine is fabulous, here's a rant I wrote years ago about ICANN and the flatness of the current DNS system.
And of course we now have phishing problems as well. Oh happy days.
Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl (Score:4, Insightful)
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What about ACME? (Score:2)
Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl (Score:4, Funny)
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HTH.
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5alc934mz85f7sdj40b.emailreplies.spammers.com
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e.g.
Ducks in a row (Score:2)
$ whois universal-tube.com
Donald Tang
360 W 43rd St, S-8E
New York, New York 10036
United States
Domain Name: UNIVERSAL-TUBE.COM
If it wasn't for youtube... (Score:2)
I sure hope I don't get sued by someone someday... esp. since I occasionally get inquiries from engineering firms asking if I can build them a torque wrench, presumably after they stumble upon a web page for one of my college projects from the earlier days of the internet... http://www.google.com/search [google.com]
How much is the name worth? (Score:2)
How much would a YouTube competitor pay to auto-redirect to their site?
Imagine the scene (Score:3, Funny)
MD: "Ok folks! We need to buy 3 miles of indutrial tubing to complete this job, get paid, and then we can have our bonuses for working hard!"
Lackey1: "Ok boss! I'll just go to U-Tube to buy the tubing."
MD: "Good one lackey1. You make sure we place that order by 5.00pm tonight."
Lackey1 goes off to his computer in his office.
Lackey1: "Duh, ok! Let's type in youtube.com and order them tubes."
Watches screen.
Lackey1: "Hey! There's a video of some fat guy miming to Shakira!"
Later, in boardroom at 5.00pm.
MD: "So did you order those tubes we need to make money and get bonuses?"
Lackey1: "Duh, no boss! All I could find was videos of people! They didn't sell no tubing!"
MD: "What the f___?!?!"
Lackey1: "S'true I tells yah! I typed in youtube.com and never realised that it was the wrong website. That honestly never occurred to me!"
MD: "Gahh! We're going to go bust! If only we could have found u-tube's website, we'd have been rich! Wahhhhh! I want my mommy!"
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Sorry to be a party pooper.
LS
Whatever (Score:2)
Anyway, utube is a better domain than youtube
what am i not getting? (Score:2)
Creating a new domain? Yikes. I hope google can caught up the 15 bucks for a new one if they lose the suit
Should be exempt absolutely (Score:2)
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Basically yes. They are also tied nationally so even in the same industry you can have two different companies in different countris with the same trademark.
UTube has a problem (Score:2)
Although similar, the trademarks are for different types of business/endeavour. YouTube has made no attempt to profit from any confusion caused by the similarity in names.
In fact, the vast majority of users go to Utube when they really want YouTube. If Utube were a little bit smarter, they could use this opportunity to firmly entrench their brand name and raise public awareness of their business around the world. All it would take would be a
Abolish TLDs (Score:2)
Soundspace (not namespace) problem (Score:2)
(1) youtube (2005 [wikipedia.org]) had launched after utube.com (2006 [utube.com]),
(2) the company behind utube [utube.com] was actually named "You Tube", or
(3) youtube was into manufacturing, and not entertainment.
/. quality continues it's downfall....RTFA. (Score:2)
Also stop saying "tinfoil hat". For a bunch of geeks who pride themselves on being "accurate", aluminum foil and tin foil are distinctly different things.
Jesus
OK bitches mod me down now I got tons o' karma.
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Yes, and we also know that aluminum doesn't stop the mindcontrol rays like tin does, asshat*.
* Sorry for the inaccuracy. I know that "rectum hat" would be more accurate, but it takes longer to type.
GooTube? YouTube? (Score:2)
Simple legal solution to this problem (Score:2)
Slashdotted sites will sue /. (Score:2)
Not a trademark case... not a case. (Score:2)
No, domain names should not be exempt from trademark claims. They should be treated the same as any other way of presenting oneself.
Regardless, this is not a trademark case. "Utube" is not in the same business as "Youtube", and "Youtube" is not benefitting from "Utube's" name in any way. Under any common definition, it isn't trademark infringement.
And while I can sympathize with these peopl
Would you ever be on utube's side? (Score:2)
Or maybe, just maybe, they didn't want to go running to the lawyers first thing to see if something amicable could be worked out? Of couse, if they did go reaching for the lawyers as soon as "youtube.com" was registered, they'd likely be decried around here as the next SCO.
But we like youtube, so any enemies of it must be ebil.
Trademarking domain names (Score:2)
A domain name is not the company itself ot its products and services!
If none would sue anyone for having chosen a specific phone number (like 800 numbers), why on earth a domain name should be the object of legal actions?
What utube should have done (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe a good strategy for YouTube/Google would be to offer universaltube.com to pay legal expenses if they sue utube.com
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Really it's just a combination of free publicity and inconvenience that they should try to make the best of.
Justin.
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I see your point, but I think it's way beyond what a court would consider reasonable.
Justin.
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If this was true then slashdot is in for some major lawsuits. I mean harm through negligence is what we do
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I can't help thinking there are thousands, nay millions, of companies worldwide who would just love to have this problem. Okay, so the traffic is mostly teens looking for vids of people hurting themselves in new and interesting ways, but traffic is traffic. Maybe sell little iPod couches
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Do you realize what utube.com sells? It's not consumer goods like iPods or DVDs. It's industrial pipe and tube equipment. I would be shocked if they were getting any extra sales from the increased hits. An industrial strength lathe [utube.com] or shear welder [utube.com] isn't the kind of thing you buy on a whim while looking for videos on the internet.
Which isn't to say they don't like the extra publicity. But the image on their front page [utube.com] would use almost 8 terabytes (122K * 68 million) a month all by itself. I don't k
Darwin awards (Score:2)
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How can a company with such massive hit numbers draw so little in sales (especially since they are a real company):
Universal Tube, based in suburban Perrysburg and founded in 1985, has about $US12 million ($A15.5 million) in annual sales.
I have never heard of them before all this, and I can only think they are secretly loving it.
Why would they be glad
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Very few, most likely. Did you bother to look at Universal Tube's site? They sell large, expensive machinery that very few site visitors are going to have an interest in, let alone be able to afford. In short, it's a low-volume high-profit market they're in.
"How can a company with such massive hit numbers draw so little in sales (especially since
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Because they're selling "Used Pipe Mills and Used Rollforming Machines". People loooking for Britney Spears upskirt videos are rarely in the market for gigantic steel milling machines.
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Wait a minute... don't these people make pipes? If they strung together a series of their tubes, I bet it just might work...
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Except for their unique ability to be able to read and even pronounce a language that consists mostly of the letters C, L and Y...
Re:Icons are incorrect for story (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent down (Score:2)
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Thats l33t.
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the parent url of http://www.websiteoptimization.com/ [websiteoptimization.com] is quite fast, actually.
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I have a business here in this central american country. I do ok, but I think I could make a hell of a lot more money if there were more North Americans and Europeans here - most of the locals just can't afford me. I think I will sue the airlines for not flying enough foreigners to this country.
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Domain Name: EYEBM.COM
Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.register.com
Referral URL: http://www.register.com/ [register.com]
Name Server: NS.WATSON.IBM.COM
Name Server: INTERNET-SERVER.ZURICH.IBM.COM
Name Server: NS.ERS.IBM.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Status: REGISTRAR-HOLD
EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited
EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited
EPP Status: clientHold
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 27-Nov-2005
Creation Date: 27-Nov-1996
Expiration Date: 26-Nov-2006
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If you were smart you'd charge $1 for each toilet use, and paying customers get unlimited free toilet tokens... now if you want to argue that the municipality obliges you to provide "free" public toilets then these are the same guys that allowed construction of a mall with no toilets?
Excess traffic is never a "bad" thing. If anything they should explai
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That's ok. I'm waiting for the dust to settle before filing suit against BOTH of these bastards.
Sincerely,
The owner of YewTube.com,
Inquire about our genuine wooden tubular products today!
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Oh wait...