8 ms·
Tumblr Stole My [Subdomain] At The Behest of A Corporation
- pyre 17y agoI went to the RSS feed, but I didn't see his old posts.
- nixme 17y agoThe title is a bit misleading. Tumblr took away a subdomain on their own domain.
- zaidf 17y agoOnly semantically misleading. We've come to expect that if we get a subdomain on a service like tumblr, it becomes ours...if not legally, at least by norm.
- pyre 17y agoThere is a difference between "come to expect" and "have a right to."
- sophacles 17y agoJust because something is within the rules, does not mean that something is a good practice. In this case I have learned that tumblr is willing to not honor a social norm on my behalf, which means I'll take my business elsewhere.
- pyre 17y agoNo doubt. I'm just stating that I feel he may very well be over-stating his case. I agree that information like this is vital in making a decision on whether or not I want to do 'business' with Tumblr.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- zaidf 17y agoStrawman. I don't think the OP is rushing to his lawyers, you're putting it to that extreme. Blog post complaining = come to expect Calling up lawyers = have right to
- pyre 17y ago> Strawman Not really. See this: Keep in mind that the word “pitchfork” is not a proprietary name, it is a noun dating back to the year 1364, so they had no legal right to the word or the subdomain.* By talking about how Pitchfork Media has 'no legal right' to the sub-domain, I take that to imply that he's claiming -- at least one some level -- that he does have a legal right to the sub-domain. I may be reading too much between the lines though. He also goes on about other 'rights' that he doesn't have. See: Sadly, I apparently no longer control this image or this information, nor can I exercise my right to remove it from the Internet. I'm pretty sure there is something in the Tumblr Terms of Service that gives them the right to redistribute his material, which would probably shield them in this case. He has no 'right' to 'remove it from the internet,' the best he has is copyright which could be used to prevent distribution.
- jacquesm 17y agoThey don't have more rights than he does though. And because he got there first probably less.
- noodle 17y ago> By talking about how Pitchfork Media has 'no legal right' to the sub-domain, I take that to imply that he's claiming -- at least one some level -- that he does have a legal right to the sub-domain. i think his point is that they aren't legally entitled to hijack the subdomain name. there was no infringement or impersonation or anything happening. tumblr wasn't put under the legal thumbscrews on this, they coughed it up willingly when asked. that is not a customer-friendly move, and so he is angry about it.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago>That’s because Tumblr stole my subdomain and gave (sold?) it to Pitchfork Media Inc. Keep in mind that the word “pitchfork” is not a proprietary name, it is a noun dating back to the year 1364, so they had no legal right to the word or the subdomain. It clearly wasn’t a case of impersonation as none of my posts had anything to do with music. If there was some kind of content quality threshold that failed to be met which led to my blog’s demise, then 98% of Tumblr should now be blank. FWIW this is poor reasoning. Whether a word is a noun, in common usage or of great age is not relevant to it's use as a trademark. A trademark has to be distinctive when used to indicate the origin of a specific category goods/services - pitchfork is distinctive in the field of music (I'm not sure which NICE class that would be) and indeed in most fields except farming AFAIK without specific research. The only way to determine if Pitchfork has a legal right to prevent others using this subdomain commercially one must inspect the TM records in the appropriate [geographical] domain. Pitchfork certainly can't demand to use the subdomain but they could prevent its commercial use. I expect this was well within the T&C of Tumblr.
- btipling 17y agoThat's also not the original post. It's a post that's been reblogged a bunch of times. I think this might be the original post: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-domain-at-the-behest-of-a-corporation http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-...
- terrellm 17y agoGood point - I've updated the title to indicate subdomain.
- hyperbovine 17y agoYou mean "on their own subdomain", right? Subdomains are domains and tumblr.com is a subdomain of com. And com is a subdomain of " " for that matter. RFC 1034. So why misleading?
- llimllib 17y agoshrug
- jodrellblank 17y ago"Sadly, I apparently no longer control this image or this information, nor can I exercise my right to remove it from the Internet." Do you have a right to remove pictures of you, or pictures you took, from the internet?
- sp332 17y agoIf you have the copyright, it would be illegal for them to distribute the image or text without your permission.
- houseabsolute 17y agoI'm sure by sending a DMCA takedown request he could get this done.
- aresant 17y agoI wonder how long he was inactive for - "several posts" in a year could mean he did the typical "blog" session - post in a flurry for a week, realize nobody is following you, give up. If that's the case tumblr may well have terms about rights to a subdomain based on inactivity.
- akkartik 17y agoReblog of a reblog. The original is here: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-domain-at-the-behest-of-a-corporation http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-... Yet another exhibit showing that nobody can parse tumblr's stupid retweet implementation.
- mattlanger 17y agoIt's not a "retweet implementation"--it's hypertext. If nobody can parse that then we've got bigger problems.
- akkartik 17y agoThat argument could defend any poor-usability site or mechanism.
- alexandros 17y agohe may have subscribed using google reader, which has an independent cache of the items in a feed.
- xal 17y agoThis happens on Shopify all the time now. Since we moved our servers to the United States we are being hit with DMCA related infringements almost weekly. If we get normal trademark disputes they are usually easy to deal with: we simply put the two parties into direct contact and they can figure it out. However, if the requester uses the DMCA method everything changes: We get an ultimatum from our hosting company (Rackspace) to resolve the conflict within 7 days or they will unplug our servers, which would disconnect many thousands of e-commerce stores and millions of sales. Obviously we cannot allow this to happen. Rackspace does this because they need to stay a "safe harbor" under the DMCA and this is how they pass the buck to us. Luckily there have been precedents where false DMCA claims have lead to hundreds of thousands of dollar in damages to the plaintiffs. Our only recurse is to point this out to the originator of the claim before forwarding it to the affected store. In most cases this leads to them dropping the complaint and/or pursuing the (correct) copyright/trademark avenue instead.
- drusenko 17y agoTo post up a counter-perspective here: From our perspective (Weebly) the DMCA is quite convenient for us. We turn away any DMCA complaint not related to copyright (like trademark infringement). Other than invalid complaints (did not meet the requirements for a complaint, was not a copyright complaint, etc) we have never had an abusive DMCA notice -- 100% of our notices (and we usually get a couple per day) have been valid. We don't have the issue with our host being able to unplug us that easily (we manage our own network) but we do have the issue of liability, which the DMCA solves for providers like us. Also -- I'd definitely be interested in the cases you're referring to, where false DMCA claims have resulted in major damages.
- Confusion 17y agoThere's not much to go on in this post. Has he even asked Tumblr for an explanation? Perhaps someone from Pitchfork Media asked for the password, claiming they had lost the original email account, hoping that the domain was abandoned? That would still call for an apology, but isn't half as bad as what it's made out to be. Also, claiming that your subdomain was renamed and claiming that your original posts are still on the unrenamed domain is inconsistent at best.
- cag_ii 17y ago| Has he even asked Tumblr for an explanation? Yes, apparently he has: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-response-to-me-being-libeled-by-a http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...
- brazzy 17y agoNo, Tumblr did not "steal" anything from you, kid. You used a service of theirs (for free) and they decided to discontinue that. Morale of the story: don't feel entitled to or become dependant on free services.
- sophacles 17y agoYou are 100% correct, yet upon reading this story my thought is not about that damn entitled kid. Instead I think "wow that is certainly an act of capriciousness that I would never wish to happen to me -- don't use tumblr".
- bstrand 17y agoI think, yeah, if I overtly state the account is no longer in use in the single post made over the previous year, and I've never used it for its proper purpose, I probably shouldn't expect that Tumblr are going expend company resources just to be extra, extra nice instead of following the letter of the ToS, especially since if I know full well that it's a desirable domain.
- pvg 17y ago"Moral of the story"
- mtarnovan 17y agoMoral of the story: don't use tumblr. I'm pretty sure blogspot (for example) wouldn't do that to a blog (call a blog inactive cause the last post is 2 month old), do-no-evil or not, free service or not.
- vaksel 17y agoI don't see why this would be the case with tumblr...I mean it's a blog, not a communication tool. Why couldn't the company just get pitchforkblog.tumblr.com and then just forward the A record for blog.site.com to it?
- sebastian 17y agoEmail techcrunch: tips@techcrunch.com They might be able to help you out. See: http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/
- wingo 17y agoAt some point the message that "web 2.0 is sharecropping" will sink in, one way or the other.
- grinich 17y agoFrom Ryan Schreiber, Founder/President of Pitchfork: It is not our wish to kick people out of active accounts. For example, the user @pitchfork on Twitter had an active account before we signed up. That’s fair, and in that case we don’t feel any more entitled to a ‘pitchfork’ URL than anyone else. We’ll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes. http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-community http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- greyman 17y agoHmm...anyway, they claim that the last post was made on November 18, 2009. I don't consider that to be an inactive account... I don't like what tumblr did here. Now it means, that if I subscribe to them and don't post something for 3 months, they can just take the subdomain from me and give it to someone else. They probably do have a legal right to that, but still, it's still impolite, if not nasty.
- Timothee 17y agoI think it was a combination of several things that made them consider it inactive: "the last post that had been made was on November 18, 2009, and said, “This filter is obsolete.” The post before that was from March 21. There had been a total of five posts ever made to the account." If this is true, this is in fact a good arguments for considering it inactive. Not enough to disable it like they did, but it's more in the gray area than the original post made it sound like.
- mattdennewitz 17y agoa tumblr employees response to the OP: http://meaghano.com/post/393246405/tumbledore-ive-run-pitchfork-tumblr-com-for http://meaghano.com/post/393246405/tumbledore-ive-run-pitchf...
- kellishaver 17y agoThis was well within Tumblr's legal rights to do, though still poor form for them to have done it, because there seemed to be no legal motivation to "take" the subdomain. The word "pitchfork" is not something that can be trademarked and pitchfork media has no more right to the subdomain than you or I, no matter how badly they want it. So this doesn't seem like a decision Tumblr was forced into for copyright/legal reasons. They just thought it would be a good idea either for profit by selling it or to get on the company's good side (mind you, however, we are only hearing one side of the story, so that assumption may be entirely inaccurate). I don't blame the guy for being a bit upset. Even realizing you have no actual legal claim to something, if you've been using a url, username, twitter account, etc. for over a year and suddenly it's taken from you without so much as a warning, it would be annoying. So no, in reality, nothing was "stolen" from him, but the manner in which Tumblr revoked the URL they had assigned to him feels a bit unethical.
- nandemo 17y agoThe word "pitchfork" is not something that can be trademarked Actually, it is a trademark. Just like the words "Apple" and "Java". I'm not sure if that's relevant to subdomains, though.
- petercooper 17y agoAnd Pitchfork responded explaining how it happened: http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-community http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu... - the account looked inactive, hadn't been posted to for ages, and Pitchfork asked Tumblr if there was a way to get the account. It's key to note, though, that Pitchfork played this right - they say that "We'll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes."
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- mattdennewitz 17y agohey guys, here's pitchfork's side of the story, from ryan schreiber [prez/founder]: http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-community http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu... im not going to personally comment on this one, so here's the gist of ryan's letter: the site had very few, very infrequent posts, and tumblr readily handed it over when we asked about it. nothing dubious, no back-alley handshakes, nothing funky. the original poster is welcome to take it back, we never had any intentions of evicting active residents from their property. give it a read. full disclosure: i work @ pitchfork.
- simonk 17y agoI don't think anyone sees something wrong with Pitchfork here, just Tumblr.
- bricestacey 17y agoIf Pitchfork is willing to relinquish the domain, they should do so immediately. What are you waiting for? "We’ll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes." The OP has already made a huge fuss about it. What else must he do to express his wishes?
- DougBTX 17y agoHe might enjoy making a fuss about it more than the tumblr account itself.
- ube 17y agoI'm curious - even if you have a domain that points to tumblr via A records (as detailed http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_domains http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_domains) then you are still at the mercy of tumblr...aren't you? I suppose that the upside of using your domain is that you can point it elsewhere if something like this happens (assuming that you backed up your content) and any users you have still use the same domain.
- imajes 17y agoJust to add a note here: I have worked for Pitchfork Media previously. As a client, they were always the most awesome people to work for: Ryan and his team completely get the web and how it works, and don't step on people's toes, rather just carving out their own niche and letting people come to them. There's zero chance of malice here, just a bit of ruffled feathers.
- tshtf 17y agoThis is how Tumblr followed up in email after being asked why the domain was taken: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-response-to-me-being-libeled-by-a http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...