Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate?
I am not on the list, but I looked up 7 members of my family and four of them are, several of them showing up more than once. Including my 3-year-old nephew, who I am sure is very smart but definitely did not submit comments to the FCC in support of repealing Net Neutrality. (And if he did, he would not use wording identical to hundreds of thousands of other commenters. /totallynotrobots/)
Maybe there's nothing actually novel or surprising to discuss in it there, but I feel like covering the issue this way is absolutely burying the lede a bit.
Did you check the address on the comment to make sure it was the same person? Because I don't see how Comcast would even have the name of a 3-year-old.
None of the addresses matched at all, at least for my family members.
His parents post to Facebook, I don't know if that's the connection, but my nephew's name is definitely out there on the Internet, so I searched for him and saw two identical posts in his name from different states.
(It's probably a common name and I would concede there, but the comments match the regex formula[1] that's in the Reddit thread exactly, they are definitely not legitimate comments.)
Have you found one that matches exactly both name and address? Because I haven't found any, but I'm still convinced that something is rotten here in Denmark. (All of these family members never were Comcast customers or lived in Comcast service areas, so like I said, I'm not at all convinced this is some kind of Comcast data breach. Just that some kind of massive fraud is being perpetrated, by someone in favor of repealing NN.)
I heard a few people say that they found exact matches for names and addresses, but I haven't seen anyone say for sure that they simultaneously matched a real person's name with an address that they actually occupied. I don't think they're doing that.
I did see a comment from someone who looked up their town, found a lot of names they recognized, tried matching them to any county records and came up empty (eg. nobody by that name submitting those comments paid property taxes at the address.)
As a counter-example to the Comcast breach angle, I am a Comcast subscriber and my name was not used. But my wife's maiden name is more common and it was used, more than once. (I have a very un-common name and it was unlikely to be on the breach list unless it was a genuine match.)
> Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate?
The claim of slutsofinstagram.com that it is just a coincidence is bolstered by the fact that the site's content does not mention Instagram and what the site purports to be about has no connection to Instagram. If Instagram did not exist, slutsofinstagram.com could still make sense.
Comcastastroturf.com's content is about the industry Comcast is in, and actually explicitly mentions Comcast. That makes a slutsofinstagram excuse much harder.
Comcast is a portmanteau of communication and broadcast. So:
> Comcastastroturf.com's content is about the industry Comcast is in
So yes "communications broadcast Corp" would be mentioned in a site about communication broadcasting corporations BUT to assume that just because they are the most user-hostile, anti-competitive and vile of the ComC's doesn't give them some sort of claim over Communication Companies Astroturfing. It's just a portmanteau of the above 3 words; only 1 of which is found in that other company ;)
Referencing for the sake of Criticism (e.g. Societal Benefit) is robustly protected by the First Amendment and Fair Use Doctrine, which, unless the Courts totally fuck it up (it's possible), should be above the basic Trademark protections.
This situation is basically Monster Cables vs. Blue Jean cables, but without a snarky, go-fuck-yourself response (yet).
Only tangentially related, but some of you may be amused to learn that one legal standard for whether something infringes a trademark is the "Moron in a hurry" test: meaning, would a moron in a hurry confuse the thing at question with the thing claiming infringement?
They "... continue to strongly support a free and Open Internet and the preservation of modern, strong, and legally enforceable net neutrality protections."
Why is net neutrality important again?
Is anyone ready to respond with a defense of Comcast's monopoly on high speed ISP service? (edit: in many cities and locations)
I don't see how net neutrality regulations will stop trademark and copyright abuses, which is the case here. Now if Comcast were found to be hijacking or blocking the site in question, that's a net neutrality issue (as well as a likely civil issue in a US court).
But there is no trademark or copyright abuse here. The domain and website in question - comcastroturf - is protected under fair use. It's not impersonating Comcast in any way.
The concern is that if they're willing to be aggressive jerks in a situation like this, why make it easier for them to actually hijack or block the site? Of course, net neutrality is about much more than that, but that's how I understood the direct tie-in here.
The connection is pretty obvious. But I'll spell it out.
Comcast appears to be using patent troll level fuckery in an attempt to further their goal of stopping net neutrality. A goal, which itself is about controlling the flow of information, and mirrors this attempt to control information.
Attempts to control (like turtles) go all the way down.
I think the point is not that net neutrality would somehow stop Comcast from abusing its trademark like this, but rather that absent net neutrality Comcast probably would be hijacking or blocking it.
No spacecraft can hope match terrestiral latency, the speed of light is not your friend. There was an identical push for space ISPs in the 90's. Iridium was the only sucessful leo space "ISP". Elon has been sucessful with what he says he will do but all these space bases "ISPs" are vaporware until they deliver. Look at the joke of oneweb with their botched softbank merger with intelsat, consilidating billions of dollars of existing debt to fund another few billion to develop a new constillation does not bode well.
Echostar is doing a good job with their proven GEO ISP constillation. With several billion in the bank they are the most promising to be sucessful, keep an eye on their HTS development over the next couple years. The problem with GEO ISPs is they have 1-2s latency :(
Latency is not a problem for low orbit. You're adding a few hundred miles to the trip, which adds single-digit milliseconds of latency. Cost is a huge problem (that's why Iridium went bankrupt) but SpaceX will be able to launch their constellation far more cheaply than it cost Iridium in the 90s.
I agree that they're vaporware until they deliver, but latency isn't going to be the killer.
SpaceX was the launch provider for a 10-sat Iridium cluster 3 weeks ago so they must have restructured favorably as that launch succeeded on May 2, 2017.
The original Iridium was viable when it came to operating costs, they just had no hope of success when they also had to pay back the ~$6 billion in capital costs it took to build and launch the satellites.
The current incarnation of Iridium bought the constellation for only $35 million, effectively discharging the massive debt and allowing them to profitably operate the satellites without having to pay back what it cost to put them up in the first place.
Come forward to today and satellites are cheaper and more capable, demand for communications is higher, and launch services are much cheaper, so Iridium thinks they'll be able to put up a next generation constellation without repeating their history. It looks like they're planning on spending about $2.1 billion to build the satellites and $800 million to launch them, which puts the new constellation at about one third the cost of the original taking inflation into account, while being vastly more capable. (The current Iridium system gets you a connection which provides either a single voice line or 2.4kbps (!) data service. The next generation will go up to 1.5Mbps.)
Iridium is a fascinating story of hubris, spectacular failure, and eventual success.
Unrelated fun fact, an Iridium satellite was involved in the first accidental collision of two satellites. Iridium 33 collided with the defunct Kosmos-2251 in 2009. The relative speed was over 26,000MPH and sprayed a bunch of debris around the two orbits. Iridium has spares in orbit, so they were able to patch up the constellation without much trouble.
SpaceX carried an Iridium cluster 3 weeks ago. OneWeb, as you noted; also exists. Google has designs in the space and you can see a company like Planet (or even Planet) eyeing the economics of this. My point was that there are companies putting pressure on terrestrial ISPs.
As to latency; their tech woul;d be ~750[1] miles from the ground. They are targeting 1Gbps capabilities[2] vs a global avg of terrestrial companies around 20gbps. I don't know how viable that number is; but if it is physically possible then hitting 1/100th of that would still put immense pressure on ISPS as the floor for your weakest offering is 10gbps to be competitive. 2019 is scheduled date; so presumably 2020.
I mean, who can really say this isn't a clear-cut trademark issue? They're using Comcast in their URL. Any sane company would try to fight having their name associated with this debacle. If I registered "nytimeslies.com" and it got as much publicity as this site has, do you really think they'd sit idly by and let their brand be trashed by some idiot on the internet who has no proof that NYTimes actually, you know, lies?
Can somebody please explain why I'm wrong above, and Comcast is actually bulling the poor little guy throwing around baseless accusations? To be fair, I hate Comcast (and support Title II); but I also don't believe in defending crap like this just because it's targeted at a company I don't like.
There is no protection in the trademark law against people using your trademark to refer to you. Referring to you is the point of the trademark in the first place.
This is a clear-cut trademark issue, but it's clear that Comcast is wrong. Registering and publishing at nytimeslies.com without evidence that the New York Times actually lies could be a libel issue, but it can't be a trademark one.
Boom, here's the rub. Comcast will lose. Their lawyers will win, with plenty of tasty billable hours, but no, even a one-eyed donkey could pick this rotten tomato out of a pile.
I am actually really curious about this issue. They use a trademarked name in their URL and you are saying this is not a violation? Is that actually true? I'm trying to find some supporting docs on this.
The other day I was being cheeky and went to notreddit.com (it's owned by reddit and redirects to /r/redditalternatives) but if someone wanted to simply clone reddit (open source) and use that URL instead of something like voat.co, etc, that would be perfectly fine?
Then there are cases of direct name URLS like nissan.com of Nissan Computers which existed for a very long time before Nissan the car company had a web presence. They have been in litigation[0] back and forth for years and now Nissan the car company is attempting to do a federal trademark that would cover "...computers and computer peripherals among other classes of goods and services."
Interesting cases. Anyone else have any further thoughts?
Like @yebyen said in a sibling comment, satire and parody are protected and comcastroturf is pretty clearly satirical, even if it is pointed, critical satire.
Another comment further down on this post also references a few legal precedents protecting domains that demonstrate protection for domain names along the lines of <trademarkedname>sucks.com
Basically, if you're offering a product in a marketplace and benefiting from consumers' familiarity with the trademarked brand then you're probably in trouble. But if you're not, then you're probably okay.
Protected speech and fair use of trademarks include satire and parody. "Comcastroturf" is pretty clearly a satirical use of the name Comcast.
It would be hard to argue that "notreddit" was a brand that could be confused with Reddit, but it does use their mark, and if you did build a site that was confusingly similar to Reddit and used that name they would probably have a case that you infringed on their brand. By competing with them I think you'd be stepping closer to infringing and farther from a legal fair use.
Also, trademarks are only valid for specific lines of business. You could open a Comcast barbershop, or bottle Comcast Cola, or run a Comcast liquor distillery without infringing Comcast's trademarks in the realm of telecommunications, networks, and media content distribution.
The key is to assess the probability that the consumer might be confused with respect to who is ultimately responsible for what they are seeing.
It just so happens that "Comcast" is the company name and trademark, drawn from the list of companies apparently pushing to kill net neutrality, that best overlaps with "astroturfing". So it metonymically represents all those companies in the clever name.
The fact that Comcast has a widespread reputation for being one of the most hated corporations in America certainly doesn't hurt. Whether warranted or not, it is the poster child for everything wrong with the US telecoms industry. Even if it is not the ultimate source of the bogus public comments, I have no great hurdle in believing without further evidence that it could be, because of that poor reputation.
> You could open a Comcast barbershop, or bottle Comcast Cola, or run a Comcast liquor distillery without infringing Comcast's trademarks
* Maybe you could, maybe you couldn't. Comcast is such a well-known brand and that also plays into the decision. It's not at all clear-cut.
I think if you did this today, you would get shut down at the discretion of the judge for piggybacking on the established brand, but if you had Comcast Cola established before Comcast Cable or at the same time as them, you'd have a better chance at keeping your name.
(I am not a lawyer but I did study at Slashdot U in the 90's.)
I am not a lawyer, but I did work on software to create trademark search reports in the 00s.
You absolutely can open up a Comcast barber shop, by the existing trademark laws. But every trademark lawyer worth their retainer would recommend that you not do that.
In order to be a blanket trademark, you have to be instantly recognizable in every household in the US, and be registered for nearly every possible business category. Something like Disney qualifies, because it puts its kraken tentacles into everything, and sells many types of merchandise in its giant web of internal cross-promotion. About the only thing I would even attempt is (without searching the trademark database) Disney Firearms Manufacturing, and I'd better not have more than two ovoid shapes total in my entire factory. Those, I could mine tons of brass out of, for shell casings.
In addition to the law, there is the unwritten "better lawyer rule". And that means that any company that has enough money to hire more than one dedicated, full-time corporate lawyer will almost always beat you in court, even if the law is on your side, because they can tie you up forever with procedural rules and dirty tactics, until you run out of money and are forced to concede defeat. In order to win against Comcast, the judge would have to be on your side, but judges are supposed to be impartial, and those who aren't are more likely more partial to the ones funding their judicial retention election campaigns.
So any sensible person, not just your lawyer, will advise you not to throw rocks at giants. But the law would still be on your side, even if no one in the civil courts system is. Though everyone who knows you would think you're crazy, and would try not to stand too close to you in public.
I think it's important to note that the fundamental purpose of trademark is to protect buyers. The idea is that if you buy something that says Brand X, you should be able to know that it actually came from Brand X.
For example, if I buy a Coke, I can be confident that it came from The Coca-Cola Company, not Joe's Discount Soda and Rat Poison.
Companies holding trademarks benefit as well, but that's not the goal.
Given that, I think (IANAL either) that much of the decision will come down to whether or not they think buyers will be confused about who the product came from. I don't know how that would play out in the case of a Comcast barber shop, but that's going to me a major part of it.
Back to the actual case at hand, nobody is going to see comcastroturf.com and think that it's actually from Comcast, so there should be no case for trademark infringement.
OK that makes a great amount of sense using the differentiation between fair use, satire, etc.
In the case of the Nissan's, it seems less clear. As the Nissan Computer domain holder, he registered the domains and had an established business before Nissan Car had any interest. What would stop him from pivoting into car manufacturing/sales and even if he called his company something different, used nissan.com to promote his car sales?
Trademarks are not patents or copyright, there is no special protection for "getting there first" and the owner of a strong brand can absolutely (and in some cases must) use legal muscle to assert their rights over those people who got there first, in order to maintain the protection of the Trademark on their brands.
They do not always have to open with "cease and desist" -- alternatively they can even offer a license to use the mark, but if they are derelict at enforcing their TM brand then all of their associated legal protections can be taken away.
If you publish a work under copyright and someone steals it, you win if you can prove that your work came first.
If you are sued for patent infringement and you can prove prior art, you can potentially get the patent thrown out under review.
If you are "Mike Rowe Soft" independent software developer and went into business years before Microsoft existed, but nobody knows you, you will lose because your brand is confusingly similar and your market domain significantly intersects the more well-established mark. (This is actually a real case, and that was his real name.)
Microsoft can file an injunction forcing you to change your (company's) name and to cease and desist from any marketing that uses a mark that is confusingly similar, and they will win, even though you got there first. Just different systems for protecting different types of intellectual property.
If someone is referring to Comcast, then they are allowed to use the trademarked name "Comcast". The main consideration in trademark infringement is whether someone will be confused into thinking that someone else owns the trademark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use
As an aside, here's a funny, totally made-up story about intellectual property rights that has no bearing on this discussion. But your Wiki link made me think of it:
(_why the lucky stiff's Nobody Knows Shoes, which is definitely not titled A Gundible Journey)
I apologize in advance for wasting your time but it made me laugh. The fore-word is the thing. Also, the PDF version in case you actually wanted to read the whole book:
A trademark is a mark used in trade (sort of like how a copyright is a right to copy, and if no copying is involved, copyright law is irrelevant).
Comcast's trademark reserves the right to use the name "Comcast" in their trade. It prevents me from starting a local TV station called "Comcast", or a VPN service called "ComCastSecure", or whatever. It may or may not prevent me from opening a hot-dog stand called "Com Cast Hot Dogs" or a fashion label called "COMME des CASTES," depending on whether the courts think people will believe these brands are associated with Comcast the TV/internet/etc. company. It certainly does not prevent me, or you, from having use the word "Comcast" several times in our comments -- the entire point of a trademark is that when we say "Comcast" in a discussion about their field of business, we're all referring to the same thing.
If Comcastroturf.com is not engaged in trade, it will be hard to argue trademark infringement. If there is no risk that a Comcast customer or potential customer will believe that Comcastroturf.com is associated with Comcast, it will be very hard to argue trademark infringement.
That seems like more a trademark issue than the issue itself. I think they have to sue you to defend a trademark, and their lawyers are just overly conservative. So I don't really blame them for this, though they probably won't take it all the way to court and fight hard.
The company that sent the notice looks like they have some shell scripts running in cron that send out scary notices whenever they see a domain that matches a regex for a client that pays them money:
Your 2nd Techdirt article only provides evidence for my point: The brewery paid some firm to run a regex and file automated lawsuits, but didn't actually care about suing them at all. Comcast could be in exactly the same position.
Whether they're right or wrong about that doesn't matter: The topic isn't reforming trademark law, people are trying to hint that Comcast are specifically targeting this one domain to shut down the bad PR.
It could also be interpreted as trying to censor the website and using the trademark issue as a justification. I'm not saying they are doing that, but it would be an easy way to justify a lawsuit without looking too sinister.
You only have to sue to defend a trademark when there's an actual violation. Their lawyers being too conservative and trying to defend their trademark even when there isn't a violation isn't a justification, and you absolutely should blame them for this.
I think you also don't strictly have to sue even if there is an actual violation; you can approve individuals to use a mark without totally abdicating your rights, giving stipulations. That would be creating a licensed use (and then there is no longer a violation.)
You do sometimes need to formally assert your ownership of the Trademark in order to maintain your legal protections, but you do not have to open with "Cease and Desist" in 100% of cases where a mark may be confusing in order to retain protections. I can't think of a specific case where this happened right now, but I have definitely heard of this happening. Maybe someone here knows of such a case. I think it was a company that produces video games.
(A competent IP lawyer would probably advise you against diluting a brand in this way in most cases without having a very good reason for allowing the use. The case I am thinking of was something along the lines of "going after these people with a legal threat right out of the gate is likely to result in severe bad PR for us because they are likely to be seen by our customers as performing a valuable service." So let's ask them nicely to change the name, or offer them a license for a nominal fee of $1 to use the mark instead; bring them into legal compliance, maintain our protected position, reap positive PR and save on lawyer bills.)
In the case of this thread I definitely agree that the lawyer is totally out of bounds.
I am not on the list, but I looked up 7 members of my family and four of them are, several of them showing up more than once. Including my 3-year-old nephew, who I am sure is very smart but definitely did not submit comments to the FCC in support of repealing Net Neutrality. (And if he did, he would not use wording identical to hundreds of thousands of other commenters. /totallynotrobots/)
Maybe there's nothing actually novel or surprising to discuss in it there, but I feel like covering the issue this way is absolutely burying the lede a bit.