Internet Brands Sues People For Forking Under CC BY-SA 168
David Gerard writes "Internet Brands bought Wikitravel.org in 2006, plastered it with ads and neglected it. After years, the Wikitravel community finally decided to fork under CC by-sa and move to Wikimedia. Internet Brands is now suing two of the unpaid volunteers for wanting to leave. The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a declaratory judgement (PDF) that you can actually fork a free-content project without permission. Internet Brands has a track record of scorched-earth litigation tactics."
Boycott! (Score:5, Funny)
I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
Re:Boycott! (Score:5, Funny)
I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
I'd just say fork 'em.
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They actually own a lot of things. They bought a website I used to frequent. Things didn't change much if at all from what I could tell after they bought it though.
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Yeah I'm pretty sure they bought up HuntingOutfitters.com and the flagship HuntingNet.com.
HuntingNet, best I can tell at a glance, hasn't been updated in any significant way since I built it a little over 6 years ago. (I did not work for Internet Brands)
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I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
The same for me. Plus, I love the fact that their wikipedia entry for Xenforo says: "Its popularity is growing according to feedback from various community forums and weblogs.[2]". With the citation pointing back to just one blog, its own company blog with absolutely zero comments posted on it (despite having that feature turned on).
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There was something to destroy in vbulletin?
You get what you pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Informative)
How can they not understand that volunteers are exactly that: someone volunteering. And their volunteering can cease at any time. They should be countersued for abuse of legal procedures.
Well, a little background on who Internet Brands is and what their business model is might help....
From wikipedia: The company was founded in 1998 as CarsDirect.com, launched from the business incubator Idealab. The company invented a consumer-advocacy approach to selling cars "haggle-free" online, an approach it continues to employ.[9] In 2000, Roger Penske invested in the company and joined the Board of Directors. In 2002, Time Magazine voted the site one of the 50 best in the world.[10]
The company changed its name to Internet Brands in 2005.[11] The company's IPO was in November 2007 on the NASDAQ exchange.[12] INET was added to the NASDAQ Internet Index on March 22, 2010.[13]
Internet Brands is headquartered in El Segundo, California; Autodata is headquartered in London, Ontario.
Internet Brands agreed to be acquired for $640 million by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in September 2010,[14][15] and was thus delisted from NASDAQ.
Might be more interesting now to find out who Hellman & Friedman are...
Also from wikipedia: Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is a private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman[2][3] and Tully Friedman,[note 1] that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts and minority growth capital investments.
Dunno about you, but LBO people don't set well with me after an LBO killed a company I worked for, which would have been worth at least a billion $ annually, had they invested in us rather than suck us dry like a bunch of leeches. YMMV
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Informative)
LBO - Private Equity - aka Corporate Raider: buy a company with little money down, load acquired company up with debt, charge acquired company millions of dollars in "fees" for "consulting", and then if company is still successful sucker the....do an IPO and if the acquired company goes belly up, stick the...put the company into bankruptcy and let the creditors eat it after siphoning millions of dollars out of the company. In the meantime, honest hardworking people - people who actually have to work for a living - get canned without so much as a handshake and the Private Equity guys walk away with millions or billions of dollars of equity that was sucked out of the company.
A great illustration of this technique was the bar that Paulie bought in the movie GoodFellas: run up the restaurant's credit, buy Cutty Sark, sell the booze at a discount, and when the restaurant goes bankrupt, burn it down the for insurance money. The only difference is that the Private Equity guys do the legal version.
That's how Mitt Romney made his millions: by fucking over small investors and banks.
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LBO - Private Equity - aka Corporate Raider: buy a company with little money down, load acquired company up with debt, charge acquired company millions of dollars in "fees" for "consulting", and then if company is still successful sucker the....do an IPO and if the acquired company goes belly up, stick the...put the company into bankruptcy and let the creditors eat it after siphoning millions of dollars out of the company. In the meantime, honest hardworking people - people who actually have to work for a living - get canned without so much as a handshake and the Private Equity guys walk away with millions or billions of dollars of equity that was sucked out of the company.
A great illustration of this technique was the bar that Paulie bought in the movie GoodFellas: run up the restaurant's credit, buy Cutty Sark, sell the booze at a discount, and when the restaurant goes bankrupt, burn it down the for insurance money. The only difference is that the Private Equity guys do the legal version.
That's how Mitt Romney made his millions: by fucking over small investors and banks.
And the private equity people usually are using someone else's money, rarely putting their own into the mix, but collecting their wages as "administrative fee" Our LBO people leveraged our own assets to buy us, plus some investor money. They're rule of thum was 1 in 5 companies go bust anyway, no matter what you do, so they work on keeping 4 companies going, hoping to spin them off or sell assets for a profit, while they draw "administrative fees" from the 5th company until it's fully wound down and die
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The way you make it sound, they were holding a gun to the original owners head to make them sell. Or people were forced to hand over cash to finance these operations. Or that ...
The point is, this shit was all voluntary by all parties. The only people I actually feel sorry for at the "human resources" that worked there. And anyplace that has a "human resources" department should be suspect.
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Thus proving that mere lack of coercion is insufficient to keep such shit from happening, and thus more regulation is needed.
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You do realize that Bain Capital made most of its money by finding companies that were in trouble. They then figured if there was a way they could save them.
They would then purchase the company at a deep discount and then turn the company around for a massive profit.
If it did not work then they would try to get what they could back from the company before it died.
They did not always do "best for the employee" stuff but the did invest in troubled assets and try to save them. For profit of course.
Most of the
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Uh, you mean like Ampad [politico.com]
The only case I know of where Bain actually grew the company was Staples. And that was more venture capitalism than equity capitalism. The took a small but successful office supply chain, give them a bucket of cash, then cashed out when the investment produced massive growth. Venture capitalism is great and I have no problem with Bain getting rich by taking investment risks. But it's hardly evidence of their management skills.
The claim that they save dying companies seems to be so muc
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you just explained the corporate raid, only in much nicer terms. still the same thing.
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Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what the percentages are but I would say gutting is done more often.
I wish we would get some actual investigative journalism on Bain's record. All I've heard so far are one-off cases cherry-picked to support the advocacy position that the particular cherry-picker wants to make. I'd like to a see a comprehensively researched table listing every company Bain took over and the various results of the time before, during and after Bain's involvement.
you know what happens to journalists (Score:3)
who go after wall street?
ask Leah McGrath Goodman.
or Moe Tkacik
or Michael Lewis
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I'd be curious either way, in terms of if it was a bunch of pump and dump scams that raided corporate treasuries and deliberately ran the companies into the ground or if they really were the white knights coming to the rescue of a poorly managed company that just needed a shake up at the top management to put things into proper order.
I'm sure you could find plenty of people with both viewpoints... often when talking about the very same company I might add as well.
Still, it would be harder to suggest that Ba
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Informative)
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That is not quite it. To extend your analogy to Leveraged Buy Out, what they did first is first borrow $25 in the name of the lawnmower from the neighbor. When selling the lawnmower, they then told the neighbor that the new owner is the one that owes the $25 that YOU borrowed.
This would be all great if it was summer and the owner could mow lawns in the neighborhood, but now it's getting into the winter and the new owner is going to have to wait six months before they make any money back. Then it turns out t
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Not much of a defense really. Sounds like "I only slap her around when she needs it'.
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Wow! Politicians and corporate raiders do have a lot in common.
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Best explanation ever!
Hope you don't mind me copying it (though difficult to accredit it properly)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/106639317314065291577/posts/ZLNdUUCvMnm [google.com]
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Alas, my mileage most certainly does not vary [slashdot.org].
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Informative)
This has nothing to do with them being volunteers, and very little to do with the fork.
If you read the actual suit, you will find tha tthe actual complaints are trademark violations, among some other things.
From the suit, they are claiming that the 'unpaid volunteers' decided to fork the site (which they admit they can do). However, the admins then went on WikiTravel's site and made posts stating that 'WikiTravel (a trademark) was moving to WikiMedia'. It is not. In addition, they claim, these volunteers sent out emails to WikiTravel's customers, using WiikiTravel's email accounts, and again stated in these emails that WikiTravel was moving to WikiMedia.
If true, that is not 'forking a project', it is lying and forgery.
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I wish I'd read this before commenting earlier. This is the other side of the proverbial coin it seems.
the trademark claims are bogus (Score:3, Interesting)
The IB complaint mentions "unlawful acts" several times, but usually without any specifics. The only allegation that comes anywhere close to a trademark infringement is that one of the defendants sent an email saying "the wikitravel admins are planning to..." do exactly what they then did, i.e. fork the project. That's a nominative use of the wikitravel trademark, totally protected under the First Amendment.
The IB complaint really tries to paint a picture of some kind of tortious interference, but doesn't
Re:the trademark claims are bogus (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what you were reading, but they clearly do state the claim.
29. For example, on August 18, 2012, Holliday improperly and
wrongfully emailed at least several hundred of Wikitravel members, purporting to
be from Wikitravel and informing members that the Wikitravel Website was
“migrating” to the Wikimedia Foundation. Upon information and belief, the
number emailed is far greater.
30. Specifically, Holliday’s email contained the Subject Line, “Important
information about Wikitravel” and its body stated, “This email is being sent to you
on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators since you have put some real time and
effort into working on Wikitravel. We wanted to make sure that you are up to
date and in the loop regarding big changes in the community that will affect the
future of your work! As you may already have heard, Wikitravel’s community is
looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation.”
the 'wikitravel community' is not the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
as the 'wikitravel company'. the company doesnt own the 'community'.
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True, but they do own the name WikiTravel, and unless the people who own the trademark say it is moving, it isn't moving. If they had said 'members of the WikiTravel community are moving to WikiMedia instead' or something similar that would be different. But they worded it to make it appear as if WikiTravel itself was simply moving to a new host, which is likely to lead to confusion, which is exactly what trademarks are supposed to protect against.
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They didn't say IT was moving. IF XYZ is a social media company with a site by the same name and I and all of the other users of XYZ decide to jump to ABCbook, it is perfectly fair and accurate to say the XYZ community is moving to ABCbook.
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So what exactly is untrue about the community looking to migrate?
Uh...it wasn't? The Administrators were looking to migrate.
Imagine I was a WikiTravel contributor--part of the community, but I don't pay attention to the decisions being made. I just like having a place to post my opinions on the local scene for visitors. I get an e-mail from one of the admins saying, in essence, "The Community is moving to WikiMedia." Well, then, I'm going to go over to WikiMedia and set up my account and post there. After all, if we're all moving...
Pretty soon, nobody is posting on
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I didn't state if it was true or not, and I have no idea. That is for the courts to decide. I was just pointing out that the suit is not about copyrights or people being volunteers like people were saying.
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The fact that these were volunteers and not paid employees is going to have a huge role in the lawsuit. The fact that these volunteers had no contract they were working under other than the fact their contributions needed to be released under the terms of the CC-by-SA license is also going to play a huge part as well. The copyright license was the only contract term they even agreed to at all, which makes almost everything else being asserted sort of moot.
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In other words, they stated exactly what they later did. They WERE the Wikitravel administrators and they said the community was migrating. Then the community DID migrate.
They didn't say they were the company.
Re:the trademark claims are bogus (Score:4, Informative)
...made posts stating that 'WikiTravel (a trademark) was moving to WikiMedia'.
I doubt that's what they posted.
Posting the trademark symbol next to the word WikiTravel on August 18th, 2012, is illegal and it's a finable offense. The filing of the trademark only occurred on August 22nd, 2012 [uspto.gov], coincidentally just four days after the alleged incident. And no, pay no attention to "FIRST USE: 20030724. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 2003072", that part won't help them.
The fine for falsely claiming a Trademark is pretty significant. I don't think it's a mistake they would have made. You'll notice that the current site [wikitravel.org] doesn't even have the trademark symbol anywhere yet, although technically they now have the right to use the symbol since August 22nd.
29. For example, on August 18, 2012, Holliday improperly and wrongfully emailed at least several hundred of Wikitravel members, purporting to be from Wikitravel and informing members that the Wikitravel Website was “migrating” to the Wikimedia Foundation. Upon information and belief, the number emailed is far greater.
I'll assume that this is still their interpretation and their paraphrasing of what happened, since there are no quotes that are used except for one single word.
So moving right along...
30. Specifically, Holliday’s email contained the Subject Line, “Important information about Wikitravel” and its body stated, “This email is being sent to you on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators since you have put some real time and effort into working on Wikitravel. We wanted to make sure that you are up to date and in the loop regarding big changes in the community that will affect the future of your work! As you may already have heard, Wikitravel’s community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation.”
Ok, now we're getting somewhere!
They're finally quoting the people they're suing. Please note the careful wording inside those quotes: "on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators" and "Wikitravel's community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation."
Is anything of this really untrue?
It seems to me like Internet Brands only started clamping down on its unpaid volunteer administrators only after they sent this message out, so they were still formally volunteer admins at the time? Right? That's the problem of giving volunteers unfettered access to your mailing list and web site. You can't just accept the benefit of all their work, you have to also accept all the downside that could possibly come from giving them such privileges (especially if they're not getting paid by you).
Plus, it's not like Internet Brands can't have the final word in all of this. I'm sure that they promptly locked down their mailing list and possibly locked down their wiki site as well, thus possibly locking out even more existing volunteers from participating in the discussion, and then sent follow-up emails telling their own side of the story.
In the end, owning the actual mailing list and the actual site gives them the final word. And the people that were contacted will have to make up their minds whether the community is still mostly with Wikitravel, or migrated elsewhere. That being said, I'm not a lawyer, and this is only my layman opinion regarding the reported Trademark claim made in the parent post. Perhaps the other claims they're making have more teeth to them, those other parts I really know nothing about.
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The smart thing would be for Internet Brands to settle and settle quickly.
One other fly in the ointment is how Internet Brands, realizing that they were losing the community, contacted the Wikimedia Foundation themselves and offered to go into a joint venture with the Wikimedia Foundation for a travel related website.... to keep their fingers in the mix but still try to offer something resembling accommodation with the community.
The Wikimedia Foundation said thanks but no thanks and for Internet Brands to g
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>>>The IB complaint really tries to paint a picture of some kind of tortious interference, but doesn't actually list that claim.
"C'mon Boss. Can't I just shoot 'em? It will be quicker....."
Re: To Prevent Jurisdiction Shopping (Score:2)
It's a little odd that Wikimedia filed a separate action; I'd think a simple demurral would make the original case go away more cheaply.
Apparently in the previous case with Xenforo, Internet Brands (who had purchased Jelsoft/VBulletin) sued xenForo and its former employees both in the UK and in California. And this is despite Internet Brands having its' HQ [slashdot.org] in California and this is also despite the fact that most of the parties involved: Jelsoft, VBulletin, [justice.gov.uk] and xenforo, also had all originated from California and were California-based at the time as well (and I assume that most of those former employees in question, the ones who started Xen
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting points, but in paragraphs 24 and 34 of the suit [ibsrv.net] they quite much seem to claim a "violation of the [CC BY-SA] License" and that "the creation of 'Wiki Travel Guide' has been done without proper attribution". The alleged trademark infringement happened when the volunteer admin wrote to the Wikitravel users in an e-mail that the "Wikitravel community" was migrating to Wikimedia Foundation, which is obviously different from claiming that "Wikitravel" (the site) was migrating to Wikimedia (a view also admitted by Internet Brands in the suit.)
Anyway, just because someone somewhere mentioned your trademark in context that did not please you is not grounds for damages. What IB seems to claim is that the supposed Wikimedia hosted travel website would infringe its trademark - before it has even launched! Given that they only own a trademark for a travel website "Wikitravel", anyone should be able to launch a new website with different name.
Given that they are making such claims of trademark and license violations even before those have happened (obviously you can not infringe with a non-existing product or not give attribution before you actually start distributing the content), it seems like a desperate last resort effort to stop the split by suing a few individuals to me.
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the "Wikitravel community" was migrating to Wikimedia Foundation, which is obviously different from claiming that "Wikitravel" (the site) was migrating
Pretty much identical to an attempt to mutilate the Encyclopaedia Dramatica as a two-bit site whose name let's not quote to not give it undeserved attention. The community moved out, and the old domain's owner threw a fit, threatened lawsuits against anyone involved (as if people related to AnonOps would care...), and to this day we have enemies of ED claiming it is dead (like a furry community member SilverSeren, repeatedly abusing his WP admin right to vandalize the "ED [wikipedia.org]" page against the wishes of pretty
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Simple, they're yet another group of 1%ers whose pile of cash is dwarfed only by their sense of entitlement.
CC by-sa? (Score:5, Interesting)
What the hell is a CC by-sa? I did RTFA, but perhaps my reading comprehension is lacking.
Re:CC by-sa? (Score:5, Informative)
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
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Here is a definition [creativecommons.org] of CC by SA
Re:CC by-sa? (Score:5, Informative)
"CC by-sa" means:
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.
There is not any other restriction on commercial use of the work, or making derivative works based on it.
(source: Wikipedia)
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It's a Creative Commons license. It's like GPL, except designed for broader works than code (the GPL has many sections dealing with code- and program-specific things).
In particular, it's the BY-SA license. There are a number of CC licenses, with significant differences; these are marked by which "features" they include. BY means "with attribution" - you have to list who you took the original version from. SA means "share-alike" - any derivative work is also subject to the same license (making it a viral lic
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CC stands for "Creative Commons", "by" stands for Attribution (must give some credit to original creator), "sa" stands for "Share Alike".
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It's not your reading comprehension that's lacking, it's your ability to use a modern internet search engine. It's actually much faster and easier than bitching in a public forum.
But I suppose airing your lazy ignorance is probably... wait, why would you want to do that again?
Re:My Horse Is Higher Than Yours (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be daft. I could walk into my office and ask who knows what CC is and after dealing with the multiple "carbon copy!" answers there'd be around 3 out of 40 people that would know.
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Could you walk into your office of about 40 people (especially if they were technology geeks) and ask "what is the CC license?" and get a reasonable answer?
No doubt that there would be some clueless souls, but it really is a pretty common term. Particularly here on Slashdot as stories regarding open source content of various kind are typical to the point of even defining Slashdot. I'd say CC-by-SA should be as common of knowledge as GPL for those who are regular visitors.
Now the original GP post asking wh
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CC means Credit Card doesn't it?
Private Equity Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that Internet Brands was bought by a private equity firm a couple years ago. This stupidity is consistent with the private equity way of doing business. They always seem to have a really poor understanding of the businesses they buy. And indeed they don't need to, since their business model seems to be acquire, pillage, and abandon.
This is what I most hold against a certain private equity capitalist who's now running for President. Bain is most often criticized for costing people their jobs, but layoffs can be justified if cutting back helps save the company.
But Bain never saved anything. The acquired previously healthy companies and drove them into the ground. Inasmuch as they actually tried to run them, they did so ineptly. But mostly they just found ways to pass assets onto their own investors and pay themselves fat management fees in the process.
So of course Internet Brands is acting stupidly Stupidity has become a valid business model!
I like that graph in the linked article (Score:2)
I've seen exactly that happen before (minus the lawsuit). I actually found a GM script and used it for a while to automatically go to the equivalent wowpedia page whenever I directed my browser to open a page on wowwiki, after they moved all their content and allowed the original wiki to continue to exist as a stagnant shell. Fun times.
No Love for Internet Brands (Score:4, Informative)
As a former employee of theirs (worked for a company that IB bought, left about a month post-acquisition), I can't say I'm surprised. It was clear they had no interest in developing or maintaining a quality product, but that their business model was simply to milk their assets for revenue while leaving them to wither on the vine. Several weeks after the acquisition closed they brought the hatchet down, and in return for severance pay, asked all fired employees had to agree *never to apply for a job at IB or any subsidiaries, ever* - not that it was really a risk, but WTF?
Will be nice to see them get spanked.
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I've heard some horrible things about how they've treated Randy Peterson, the Flyertalk fonder. I've more or less stopped using the site since.
Counter Claims from these victims (Score:2)
Not about forking...seriously, foks. (Score:2)
Trademarks vs. free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
I was active in Wikitravel at the time Internet Brands bought the site. They knew damn well that the content was CC-BY-SA licensed and what that meant (that the content was not theirs, and could be taken and reproduced anywhere), and they explicitly promised the community that they would abide by the terms of that license. Obviously they have no intention of doing so, as demonstrated by the fact that they have spent the last several years dragging their feet about their promises to make the content easily portable.
Suing volunteer contributors for casually using the name "wikitravel" in reference to a community of contributors which existed long before IB bought the trademark rights to the web site, is unconscionable. Trademark rights are intended to prevent customers from being ripped off by other companies, not to squelch the free-speech rights of individuals to talk about the company. This is fundamentally no different from if employees of Widget Corp identified themselves as "employees of Widget Corp" and talked about why they were organizing a strike, or calling for a boycott, or threatening to quit.
IB owns a domain name and the exclusive rights to use the mark "Wikitravel" in trade. That is all. They do not control the right to say "Wikitravel" or to talk about "the Wikitravel community" in reference to the people who use the web site that IB hosts.
Re:It's theirs no matter what they did with it. (Score:5, Informative)
But it's not content theft; the volunteers who are forking via Wikitravel via CC-sa are obeying the license that the source site uses; it's even on the original site right now:
"Wikitravel uses a copyleft license for all text, images, and other content on the Web site. Anyone can use Wikitravel content according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license."
via: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Copyleft [wikitravel.org]
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This case has very little to do with the content or the CC-sa license. That seems to just be a red herring used to raise the righteous indignation of slashdot.
The actual suit seems to be about trademarks and misleading statements. Namely statements that say that WikiTravel is becoming or moving to WikiMedia. WikiTravel is a trademark owned by Internet Brands, and is not moving to WikiMedia. Some people that used to be associated with WikiTravel are moving to WikiMedia and taking content with them, but t
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The citation showing that current materials on WikiTravel are licensed under CC-BY-SA is in the post to which you've replied to. You can go and read the text of the license yourself, it's public. Finally, all Wikimedia projects to date (Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc) are also under CC-BY-SA, so of course this one will be, as well.
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http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2012/2012_9_4_Internet%20Brands%20Files%20To%20Protect%20Its%20Wikitravel%20Trademark%20From%20Deliberate%20Infringement.pdf [ibsrv.net]
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Wikipedia's rules actually only apply to Wikipedia itself. "The rest of the internet" does not actually need to follow them.
When the internet welcome party gets done with me, I'll have them commence immediately on the epic bash welcoming you to the planet Earth. You know, that place where citing a lawsuit filing is not and has never been a valid citation of how copyright can be interpreted or whether the terms are being obeyed by a particular party.
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What you linked explicitly says that others can copy the wikitravel website because of the licence. So according to your own document it's not theft if it's attributed.
The complaints are about trademark infringement and various things which had nothing to do with the fact that wikitravel was copied but merely deals with the circumstances around it being copied. In other words it's nothing to do with the licence so your statements are utter BS.
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The lawsuit, at least according to the Wikimedia Foundation and its legal counsel, is about intimidating the "administrators" who initiated this move from Internet Brands to Wikimedia.
Saying that the WikiTravel community is moving to Wikimedia sounds pretty reasonable, at least in the context it was used. Internet Brands is crying foul and trying to make sure none of the other admins for any of its other websites would ever consider to do something like this. It really is a preemptive strike trying to kee
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Statement ending with a question mark?
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Declaration ending with a period.
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Exclamatory!
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The Creative Commons License that it was under gives you the right to do exactly that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ [creativecommons.org]
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There's no theft here. All the web site content is published under a license that allows copying, provided you attribute the original.
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That would be true but the materials they purchased the rights to had already been made available under the Creative Commons License BY-SA. Internet Brands has the rights to the content, but they can't revoke licenses already given. The license under which the material was already made available permits redistribution as long as the redistribution is done with an identical license to the original and provides attribution, so if Wikimedia follows those guidelines they are free to redistribute it, create deri
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However most copyleft licenses are not revokable. The CC-by-SA 2.0 license in particular can't be revoked for anybody who has obtained content distributed in that manner. Ditto for something like the CC0 1.0 license [creativecommons.org] that goes even further and is essentially placing something in the public domain... but with legalese to make sure it stays there.
Most licensing arrangements outside of the "copyleft" type are much more restrictive, such as granting exclusive sales for a region or country. In order for them t
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They bought the servers and the rights to the name of the site, but they did not buy the information, since the information never left the ownership of the people that posted it in the first place, according to the terms of the Creative Commons license under which that information was provided to the site. The site is only able to display the information because they have the right to do so under Creative Commons, but those same rights also allow anyone else to freely copy it and host it elsewhere.
If they w
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe you should read their actual lawsuit.
http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2012/2012_9_4_Internet%20Brands%20Files%20To%20Protect%20Its%20Wikitravel%20Trademark%20From%20Deliberate%20Infringement.pdf [ibsrv.net]
Re: (Score:3)
What you linked explicitly says that others can copy the wikitravel website because of the licence. So according to your own document it's not theft if it's attributed. In other words your original statement was utter stupidity and you just admitted as much. Good job.
The complaints are about trademark infringement and various things which have nothing to do with the fact that wikitravel was copied but merely deals with the circumstances around it being copied.
Re: (Score:2)
The complaint is about an admin saying "WikiTraval is moving to Wikimedia" in a mass e-mail to all users who associated an e-mail to their user account on the wiki.
I really want to see where in trademark case law it states that is an infringement of trademark usage, and on top of that where in the policy pages and agreements for admins (if there ever was any at all) that kind of activity was prohibited?
I highly doubt that the admins were required to sign any sort of agreement at all (even a click-through ag
Re:It's theirs no matter what they did with it. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that is entirely false. Read the lawsuit, not the bullshit flamebait summary.
The suit is about Trademark Infringement, Unfair business practices under the Lanham Act, Unfair business practices under California Business Practices Act, and Civil Conspiracy. Copyright is not mentioned at all.
Basically, WikiTravel (Internet Brands) is claiming that the site was forked, which they admit right in the suit is legal. However, these two 'unpaid volunteers' , who were admins for WikiTravel (and are the ones who forked the site) then went on WikiTravel's web site and made statements to the effect that WikiTravel was moving to or becoming WikiMedia. That is a lie. WikiTrave is a trademark owned by Internet Brands, and is going nowhere. They also used their admin authority to send emails from WikiTravels email to WikiTravels customers stating the same thing.
They can fork the site if they want. They can not claim or imply that the site is WikiTravel (a trademark violation). And they can not make it appear as if the WikiTravel business no longer exists or has become something else. That is a Lanham Act violation.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't find a reference now, but wasn't there a lawsuit about Popeye where the court decided that if the copyright is expired a trademark can't prevent copying of the work? Isn't this a similar situation?
I mean, if Internet Brands adds text containing the trademark "WikiTravel" to a CC work, they gave permission to use the trademark in the work under the CC license.
If they use their own trademark as the title of the work, I don't see how they can prevent people to refer to the work using the trademark
Re: (Score:2)
That may well be the case, but that does not appear to be what they are complaining about here.
They are not complaining about somebody referring to WikiTravel, they are complaining about somebody pretending to be WikiTravel.
If these two guys starting this new site were not trying to deceive anyone they could have sent a letter saying "Hi, we're trying to start our own website to compete with WikiTravel. We have legally copied all of the content from WikiTravel. We hope that as a contributor, you will s
Re: (Score:3)
The civil conspiracy, such as it is, involves admins of WikiTravel sending e-mail messages and "private meetings" at events like WikiMania (the annual "convention" of Wikimedia volunteers) to discuss the possibility of moving the WikiTravel community to become a Wikimedia sister project.
I don't even see how that is illegal.
They aren't saying that the new site is WikiTravel, but the community that once upon a time was maintaining the WikiTravel website (especially the grand majority of the administrators and
Re: (Score:2)
I have no clue about the merits of the case, and frankly I don't care in the slightest about the case.
That said, the fact remains that the case is not about copyrights, CC-sa licenses, suing people 'for wanting to leave', or any of the other crap that the summary said and subsequent posters think it is.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, 'volunteer administrators' are not being called a corporate officer, William Ryan Holliday, owner of "Holliday IT Services Inc" (a California corporation) is being sued, as is James Heilman, a board member of WikiMedia Canada.
And the problem is not that they a speaking on behalf of the company, it is that they are acting as if they are speaking on behalf of the company.
Also, since when are 'adminstrators and beaurocrats' the community? The community is at the very least ALL of the contributors, and
Re: (Score:3)
I guess all of that is up to a judge and jury to decide, if these folks want to go forward.
The awesome thing is that the Wikimedia general counsel is essentially offering his services (with permission of the WMF board of trustees) to act as their attorney so this can set a precedent to tell would be idiots like Internet Brands to suck an egg. They have the WMF at their back.
As for if it was a lie or not, that is also the point of this going to adjudication. I really don't think IB is going to succeed here
They did not claim the *site* was moving (Score:2)
They claimed the community was moving, not the site itself. There may be an issue calling it the "wikitravel community" because the wikitravel name is trademarked, but they never claimed the site itself was moving. It may appear that way, and that may or may not be illegal and probably would be confusing at least, but that's up to a judge and/or jury to decide. To say the least, it's not very nice to the owners to (ab)use the website and mailing platform of wikitravel to inform people that you are forking t
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot is moving to bws111.com!!!! Check it out now!!!.
There's a slight difference between an Anonymous Coward saying it and, say, Timothy Lord [slashdot.org] saying it. Remember that these people were basically trying to get contributors to change from contributing to WikiTravel to contributing to their site by sending messages from Administrator accounts that people would pay attention to.
Re: (Score:3)
Except Tomothy Lord is an employee of Andover.net with a specific employment contract and policies that he has agreed to follow.
In the case of the admins of WikiTravel, there were no policies governing their use of the mailing lists and administrative tools... other than "use common sense" and "don't be an ass". Those are hardly contractual requirements to avoid at least suggesting that all of the admins have moved on to another website and it would be nice if they would follow along. There were policies
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently, what they actually said is that the Wikitravel community is moving to Wikimedia. It'd be more like someone saying (for instance) that the Slashdot community was moving to Hacker News, or the Digg community moving to Reddit - they carefully never claimed that Wikitravel itself was moving.
wiki-copy-right-rick-rolling for the lulz (Score:2)
Time for the internet to rise up and light these detection firms up like Christmas tree with false positives.
I concur [wikipedia.org].
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
I hope Internet Brands wins. Fuck the freetards.
So, um, I notice you're using words from the English language without a license, freetard. See you in court.
CC-BY-SA is copyrighted you teutonic twat (Score:2)
the whole basis of the GPL, BSD, CC, and all other 'open source' licenses is founded in copyright law, you bulbous, leaking colostomy bag.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope Internet Brands wins. Fuck the freetards.
You are posting AC, so I think it is fair to assume you haven't paid for a slashdot subscription.
That makes you a freetard. So, you first - let's see you fuck yourself!
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)