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Incoming Mastodon Lawsuit, To Fight or Run? - Page 2
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Incoming Mastodon Lawsuit, To Fight or Run?

24

Comments

  • @ralf said:
    Put mastadon on that domain, make it laggy as hell using tc, and make a notice on it saying that due to legal action, you've been forced to "downgrade" to mastadon and that for security reasons you recommend everyone migrate to your new server as soon as possible.

    Taking a page out of the Apple playbook, eh?

    Thanked by 1Offshore_Solutions
  • @Offshore_Solutions said:

    @jmaxwell said:
    Not at all an excuse. Raindog308’s comment is spot on.

    @raindog308 has had an axe to grind against me for sometime. I take everything he says with a grain of salt because he appears (in my opinion) to hold grudges.

    The last time he commented on my thread he chose to act like being "mentally ill" was something to joke about & throw around loosely:

    @raindog308 said:
    You have a mental illness and will be both happier and more successful in life if it's treated

    The guy is on fire in terms of helpful advice to you. It's a shame you're ignoring it.

  • BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep
    edited October 2022

    @Offshore_Solutions

    Just move to a different domain. Put up a 301 permanent redirect.

    I know it sounds a bit curbing the "freedom of selecting one's preferred software" but at the same time it is a bit confusing/misleading to the audience.

    So save the mindless hassle and either offer the domain name for some good $ and move or simply move, retaining the domain with a 301 redirect.

    Use the money on hookers instead and enjoy life!
    EDIT:
    Pr0nstars are available at $2k to $5k for few hours on the East Coast.

  • @jar said:
    Just put mastadon back on it and call it a day. If you want to protest, make it a "mastadon for white nationalists" instance and you'll both conform to his demands and send him into the absolute maximum amount of rage possible.

    No one needs a mastadon for white nationalists instance, and it's a stupid idea, but damn would it be an effective revenge tactic because it's something that would specifically target that guy's internal rage. Might come with endless death threats though but these days, what doesn't? I've watched people on Facebook make death threats over things that would look petty in a PTA meeting.

    This is just beautifully funny in every aspect! I'm coming to you for revenge advice in future 🤣

    Thanked by 1jar
  • @Offshore_Solutions I'll give you $7 😝

  • edited October 2022

    @chria838373 said:
    @Offshore_Solutions I'll give you $7 😝

    😄 😆 🤣
    I would sell it for the same $150 I purchased it for on DAN.com
    Private message me if someone is interested.

  • pkrpkr Member
    edited October 2022

    My grandmom used to say, "do not do anything in your life that you need to hire a lawyer or go to the emergency room because doctors and lawyers are real bloodsuckers on the earth."

    In the US, these two professionals are like a mafia.
    So, I would say take your decision wisely.

  • Fuck it. I'll buy rocketchatserver.com and run mattermost on it. Cause it makes sense somehow.

    Thanked by 2TimboJones Tony40
  • After thinking about it, I reckon you'd be best cutting your loss to a degree! Just offer to sell the domain to them for a fee equivalent to getting a domain more relevant to your new software choice! It would avoid a silly lawsuit.

    Although a fire sale of assets would be fun..... do that first.... I'll dust off my credit card 😝

  • I do think it's pathetic on Mastodon, but let him do what he wants, until you get a letter from a court, I think it's laughable that a non-pofit company would take offence to your domain unless they wanted it for themselves. If they sue you in Germany they can get your domain from ICANN.

    Thanked by 1Offshore_Solutions
  • jmgcaguiclajmgcaguicla Member
    edited October 2022

    Mastodon is trying to sue you?

    Just tell him @Mastodont

  • zedzed Member

    this thread is some subtle joke that flies completely over my head.

  • edited October 2022

    @Blestastore said:
    I do think it's pathetic on Mastodon, but let him do what he wants, until you get a letter from a court, I think it's laughable that a non-pofit company would take offence to your domain unless they wanted it for themselves. If they sue you in Germany they can get your domain from ICANN.

    I appreciate that advice sincerely.

    The "Fediverse" is a giant Network of social media services much larger than just "Mastodon" including: Lemmy (like Reddit), Pleroma (more efficient, less resource intensive version of Mastodon), Misskey, GoToSocial (like Mastodon but efficient written in "Go", only in "alpha" testing without yet an interface), Pixelfed (like Instagram), PeerTube (like YouTube), Friendrica (like Facebook), Anfora (image storage), BookWyrm, Drupal (a more secure WordPress), Funkwhale (like Spotify), Hubzilla (like Facebook & more expandable than Frienderica), Littr.me, Mastodon (like Twitter) & many others.

    I've observed that Eugen Rochko refers to the "Fediverse" as the "Mastodon Network" instead of the "Fediverse" indicating not only his egocentrism, but that he has tunnel vision that "Mastodon" IS the Fediverse or at least more important than the rest of the Fediverse ("Mastodon" makes up at least 40% of the Fediverse).

    @jmgcaguicla said:
    Mastodon is trying to sue you?
    Just tell him @Mastodont

    🤣 😂

  • @zed said:
    this thread is some subtle joke that flies completely over my head.

    Sheer absurdity of the post made me think OP was trolling at first but then saw Raindogs308’s opinion about OP. So you never know.

  • Stand up to him and don't allow him to bully you.

    He is using the threat of legal fees to bully you the way big companies with huge legal budgets do, not the legal merits of his case.

    Stand up to him and lets see how deep his pockets are. Just call his bluff and he will back off.

  • @LTniger said:
    The term "inherent weakness in ruby"... What the actual f is that? Digitalocean runs on ruby, should I abandon my server farm? Also how about shopify?

    Ruby is shite which isn't good at running multiple tasks or threading or concurrency or whatever you call it.

    Elixir is built on Erlang's BEAM VM which is the technology that powers WhatsApp, Discord, and a shitload of telco switches, and guess what, the creator of Elixir was a major Ruby on Rails developer who realized he could fix most of the problems present in Ruby with Elixir, a language with Ruby flavor.

    It is the new hotness of RoR developers.

    OK, OK, OK, OK - Ruby isn't shite, but just like Python it wasn't designed with concurrency and performance in mind. It grew popular because its expressive power coupled with DRY conventions made it a very quick way to develop web software so long as you could throw more and more hardware at it and restart the server processes before they went south.

    People who have switched from Ruby to Elixir just see their hardware usage just drop right through the floor, and yes it is the best software language for high concurrency applications, until some high CPU operations need to be processed in another new hotness, better known as Rust.

    https://discord.com/blog/using-rust-to-scale-elixir-for-11-million-concurrent-users

    Thanked by 1Offshore_Solutions
  • @rchurch said:
    Stand up to him and don't allow him to bully you.

    He is using the threat of legal fees to bully you the way big companies with huge legal budgets do, not the legal merits of his case.

    Stand up to him and lets see how deep his pockets are. Just call his bluff and he will back off.

    Yes, I think you are right ✅️
    He tried to bluff me already that he had a Trademark in my country which he did not.

  • neverainneverain Member
    edited October 2022

    @jar said: Just put mastadon back on it and call it a day. If you want to protest, make it a "mastadon for white nationalists" instance and you'll both conform to his demands and send him into the absolute maximum amount of rage possible.

    Platforming nazis to own the libs, Nice!

    Thanked by 2jar bulbasaur
  • Those who criticize Ruby, please differ it from Ruby on Rails which is going in to the void on rapid pace. Ruby lang is a good and versatile tool. Which, of course, needs clear separation from such crappy constructs as RoR. Ruby != RoR.

  • @LTniger said:
    Those who criticize Ruby, please differ it from Ruby on Rails which is going in to the void on rapid pace. Ruby lang is a good and versatile tool. Which, of course, needs clear separation from such crappy constructs as RoR. Ruby != RoR.

    Har Har. Ruby was a little known little used language until RoR. It is RoR which is the killer app that made Ruby popular, so saying that Ruby should separate itself from RoR doesn't fly. As I said Ruby is an expressive language which makes it suitable for a scripting and other administrative work, but sucks performance wise.

    I was just not designed for the task which popularized it and that is why companies that use it need to switch to something else or replace parts of their web stack with other languages and continue to use Ruby for the less demanding parts.

    Thanked by 1Offshore_Solutions
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @LTniger said:
    Those who criticize Ruby, please differ it from Ruby on Rails which is going in to the void on rapid pace. Ruby lang is a good and versatile tool. Which, of course, needs clear separation from such crappy constructs as RoR. Ruby != RoR.

    I've found Ruby to be a great scripting language. Never used rails. For scripting though I found it easier than bash or python even.

  • scookescooke Member
    edited November 2022

    Pathetic. Your post suggests that the linked Mastodon exchange covers the private DMs between you two. It doesn’t. It’s just you, and other accounts (some using suspiciously similar terms and wording… like it’s also you but from a different account!) ranting. Geez, just drop this already. Sad.

    Particularly so when both pleroma.tech and englishlanguage.tech are both available! If this was the real point of your instance you’d have snapped those up. What are you gonna do when someone buys those and you got nothing?

  • Yeah, this whole thing sounds suspicious now.

    Selling a ton of assets to pay to try to keep a stupid domain name worth $30, when that domain is knowingly being used to infringe someone else's trademark. Even if they don't have the trademark in your country, only their own, your best case outcome is having a ruling that blocks you using that domain in their country and having to implement geo-blocking.

    Or you know, just take your knowingly infringing stuff off that domain and just leave it as a dead domain. You don't have to give the domain away if you feel strongly about it, just don't use it to knowing infringe.

    But now in the light of the other thread, this whole thing just seems like something to get a bit of attention so that people might buy that stupid forum. Seriously, if the forum is worth $5k to you, it's not worth giving it away for the sake of a stupid $30 domain.

  • denellumdenellum Member, Host Rep

    @Offshore_Solutions said:

    @jmaxwell said:
    Not at all an excuse. Raindog308’s comment is spot on.

    @raindog308 has had an axe to grind against me for sometime. I take everything he says with a grain of salt because he appears (in my opinion) to hold grudges.

    The last time he commented on my thread he chose to act like being "mentally ill" was something to joke about & throw around loosely:

    @raindog308 said:
    You have a mental illness and will be both happier and more successful in life if it's treated

    Serious Q here : Why wouldn't people be happy if someone they believe has a mental illness gets help for it?

    You are spinning this around in a way to play the victim card here. Sure, you don't have to run Mastadon on a domain that clearly states it, but, you know what you're doing. And it is quite shady.

  • This case has no legs to stand on.

    Mastodon is not a brand name or a trademark. It is not a name which is seen as the name of a company a protocol owned by a company and it was never represented as such.

    It is the name of a free open source technology.

    Anyone can use the name. It is like saying that the provider of an Email service cannot use Email in the name. I mean why haven't a coalition of postal service providers joined up to sue Email providers for using "mail" in the name of the product?

    It is basically a set of technologies that provide a microblogging service and each instance is called a Mastodon instance. Spelling it in capitals thus making it a proper name doesn't make it a brand name or a trademark.

    The name did not come into use as representing a particular company. It is like Amazon going after companies which were called Amazon even if they were created before Amazon became popular or became a recognizable brand. I think they tried to do something silly regarding naming rights and the Brazilian government slapped them down.

    Lets face it. The name has now become rightly associated with trashy goods from China with all kinds of weird brand names.

    Just check out the domain mastodon.com and find out why they are not suing Eugene Rochko for using their name.

    Mastodon.tech simply says it is a Mastodon node which probably focuses on tech. So long as it is not used to represent something that it is not then there is nothing inherently wrong with having it.

    Lets put it this way. If the OP retained the domain and did not use it to host any Mastodon instance for and used it as the domain name for his rat-catching business would Mr Rochko have a case?

    The vast majority of computer users don't have the slightest idea as to what "microblogging" is, let alone that there is some technology called Mastodon that provides such a service.

    Thanked by 1Offshore_Solutions
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @rchurch said: Mastodon is not a brand name or a trademark. It is not a name which is seen as the name of a company a protocol owned by a company and it was never represented as such.

    @Offshore_Solutions stated that he checked and Mastodon is trademarked for this purpose in Germany.

    @rchurch said: Anyone can use the name.

    Not true, at least in Germany (and elsewhere, if they filed). And of course, it's limited to this purpose.

    @rchurch said: The name did not come into use as representing a particular company.

    You don't need a company to have a trademark.

    For example, Linux is trademarked and Linus owns the trademark.

    @rchurch said: Just check out the domain mastodon.com and find out why they are not suing Eugene Rochko for using their name.

    Because it's a totally unrelated industry.

    Getting a trademark does not mean you "own" a name, especially if it's a common noun or common name.

    You could open a McDonald's Tax Service and be completely fine.

    If you make the M yellow on a red background and refer to yourself as the "Golden Arches of Tax Preparation" then you'd have a problem.

    The purpose of trademarks is to prevent brand confusion, intentional or otherwise. Mastodon Forestry doesn't confuse anyone. Mastodon.tech likely would. That's the problem.

  • denellumdenellum Member, Host Rep

    very well worded.

  • @raindog308 said:

    @Offshore_Solutions stated that he checked and Mastodon is trademarked for this purpose in Germany.

    It is the name recognition that is important and Germany is neither the centre of the world nor the Mastodon universe/fediverse. If the name itself is not used to represent a proprietary, trademarked or a recognized brand name there is no case. Mastodon is the name of any kind of software that implements the protocol and enables it to federate with other instances. That is all.

    Lookup the domain name mastodon.de or mastodon.eu and check if they are registered to one Eugene Rochko.

    There is a Mastodon.social and Mastodon.tech becomes a problem only if it gets confused with Mastodon.social by Mastodon users in general, focuses on whatever niche Mastodon.social, or is promoted in way that gets it confused with Mastodon.social. If Mastodon.tech establishes its own name and niche in the Mastodon protocol-based Fediverse then there is no problem.

    Rochko cannot claim that having a group prefixed with Mastodon, gives him the right to block any group with the Mastodon prefix, because Mastodon is the name of a free open and open software protocol and has not been trademarked or branded for use in the Fediverse for sites run or backed by Eugene Rochko.

    If you read this article for instance https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-fediverse-eugen-rochko/, the usual case of some unknown members of marginalized communities complaining that they can't find safe spaces anywhere, you will find an eol called cybre.space. Would that give the owners the right to sue any site prefixed with cybre, eg cybre.cociu.sister?

    Someone should have told the owner of cybre.space to get hosting from buyvm or one of the many vendors here and switch to Elixir based pleroma.

  • LET users can establish their own Fediverse, but they should keep in mind that sister and PMS jokes will limit their federation appeal.

  • IANAL and I rarely ever want to see crybabies like Eugene get his way, but the problem is in the US and in Germany, the courts have upheld WIPO opinions that trademark holders have a right to their domain names. Running a competing instance of the Fedi on your domain may prove to be an infringement on a market reserved for Eugene in the eyes of the law.

    A copyright trial in the US would cost $75,000 and in your instance you may not win. Eugene is looking at at least $5,000 just for a lawyer on retainer.

    Here's what I would do.

    1. Offer the domain for a good sum ($10,000~$20,000) on condition there's a year of redirects. This would genuinely save him money over taking it to court and it's fair to both sides. He has no right to complain because he guzzles EU taxpayer dollars to fund his bullshit. If he accepts, great. If he refuses,

    2. Move anyways. You should not want to promote his garbage implementation of the ActivityPub protocol, nor should you promote his garbage woke politics, by associating a well managed instance using foreign software with his trash.

    3. Dedicate mastodon.tech to shitting on Mastodon and Eugene. Instead of making it a Fediverse instance, make it an expose. Explain why Mastodon sucks and why Pleroma is better. Criticism is the most protected form of speech.

    It sucks that people are like this, which is why it's important to bully them.

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