16 ms·
What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for sharing an alternative
- farrelmahaztra 6y agoThe Streisand effect strikes again!
- dylan604 6y agoFrom TFA: “This is not a battle worth fighting,” he said in a tweet. Toponce told TechCrunch that he has complied with the demands, fearing legal repercussions if he didn’t. Okay, but let's see what they wanted: "The letter also demands that he disclose to the law firm the identity of the person or people with whom he had shared a copy of the software, agree that he would not make any further copies of the software and to delete any copies of the software he had in his possession." Umm, F-THAT!! I will not send you personal contact info of anyone for anything without a warrant/suponea for any of my clients/customers/users/friends. Anyone that would be willing to do that should have that tattooed across their foreheads so anyone in the future will know.
- dataflow 6y ago> I will not send you personal contact info of anyone for anything without a warrant/suponea Unless you're (a) swimming in money, (b) have some kind of strong (and free?) legal/financial support behind you to battle such a thing, (c) are not in the US, or (d) are so poor that you have nothing to lose anyway, this sounds like a rather incredible claim. Most people facing potentially massive lawsuits would probably cave.
- badRNG 6y agoIANAL, but since you aren't actually in court, nor are you benefiting financially from the situation, couldn't you just...lie and say you don't have the contact information of anyone you sent it to? Or hell, just lie and say you didn't send it to anyone?
- dataflow 6y agoIANAL either but I would imagine if they gather any past or future data to suggest otherwise you might paint a target on your back. Not sure if there are any terms around that per se buy at least if it does come to a court case, I imagine having lied probably wouldn't help your case.
- batch12 6y agoOr if published publically provide the name of everyone everywhere...
- dylan604 6y agoA case like this usually means you've screwed so badly, you're going out of business anyways. Again, cops do not enter a house without a warrant, and lawyers don't get anything for free without getting a subponea. It's not a hard thing to stand up to make the opfor at least do the leg work, and then make it as expensive for them as you can. Once you do receive a subponea, you get to then see exactly how it is worded. Converting all of the data to hex or binary, and then printing it out at a 4pt font on greenbar paper with one character per line might not be explicitly stated as something not to do. If the request comes in as "delivered exactly as it is stored electronically" providing binary would seem apropos.
- MattGaiser 6y ago> Once you do receive a subponea, you get to then see exactly how it is worded. Converting all of the data to hex or binary, and then printing it out at a 4pt font on greenbar paper with one character per line might not be explicitly stated as something not to do. If the request comes in as "delivered exactly as it is stored electronically" providing binary would seem apropos. And if you need legal assistance to do something like interpret the wording sufficiently accurately to avoid running into further legal trouble, expensive for you as well.
- gadf 6y agoMaybe you just haven't done anything dangerous enough to warrant that sort of attention so you can have the luxury of that unchallenged opinion.
- ineedasername 6y agoUnfortunately, it doesn't necessarily have to be dangerous to be the target if a lawsuit like this.
- throwaway_kufu 6y agoMy guess is you have never found yourself in this kind of legal situation. In my experience, as someone that was detained for the first time at the age of 14 by the secret service for counterfeiting, has multiple subsequent arrests, and despite all that actually became a lawyer myself, while a lawyer later in life was abducted and kidnapped at gun point managed to escape by jumping out of a moving car and tracked down the guy 24 hours later and delivered him to the police (or police to him) - so I feel I have some life experience - it’s the person screaming the loudest about what they would do in the shoes of others that is usually the least likely to actually do it. Unless you can say what you have done in like circumstances you don’t know. So before you go around championing marking people with tattoos in order to readily identify them, at least consider where in history that very concept comes from. My suggestion if you feel so strongly, is help, maybe by donating money for a legal fund, or at minimum show a little compassion and moral support, but don’t tell someone else what you would do in their shoes and how you’d punish them if they don’t show the same moral convictions you pretend to have without being put to the test.
- dylan604 6y ago>My guess is you have never found yourself in this kind of legal situation. Even if I had, I'd be smart enough not to talk to them myself. Otherwise, I'd actually say something like this
- nyolfen 6y ago“pronouncible gps coordinates” is a great idea, but hardly seems like the kind of thing you can claim to own, barring specific implementation
- barry27 6y agoWhat3Words is only a business due to the stupidity of the US patent system, in which, apparently, you can claim to own anything.
- wackget 6y agoAs usual, the Techcrunch website is cancer and redirects via "advertising.com" which means uBlock Origin users can't see it. Happily, you can read the article (without ads) via https://www.printfriendly.com https://www.printfriendly.com
- dave5104 6y agoI have uBlock Origin installed, and can seem to read the article just fine. Nothing from advertising.com is popping up in the asset list.
- wackget 6y agoYou're right; it was uMatrix. Still crap though.
- proxygeek 6y agoI think u block origin displays the blocked urls without the intermediary like advertising.com which you can copy and paste directly in the browser
- llacb47 6y agoJust temporarily disable strict blocking for advertising.com.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoWhy do people today use "cancer"? Isn't that offending to people with cancer?
- cush 6y agoWhat on Earth is what3words' business model? Did they expect to own the concept of using words as coordinates?
- 1970-01-01 6y agoI just found out that yes, they in fact have that as a patent.
- cush 6y agoDamn. I wonder if the concept of mapping phone numbers to words is still up for grabs. I'd love to see the look on Oscar Mayer's face when they realize they need to pay me royalties for 1-800-HOT-DOGS
- paulv 6y agoThink of the 3 words like a phone number. They could try to sell access to the only phone book that exists. Requires some kind of critical mass, but I've heard of worse business plans. They could also probably sell novelty "phone numbers", like every professional sports team buys the equivalent of "boston red sox" for the location of their stadium. No clue what their actual business model is, I'm just spitballing.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoThey did have the novelty addresses in an early iteration (called “OneWord”) but have since dropped it.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoSounds an awful lot like they're trying to inject themselves as a rent-seeking middle-man.
- scrooched_moose 6y agoAs I understand it they're aggressively marketing and lobbying to become the standard mapping system in underdeveloped countries without a strong addressing system. Once they've achieved this (either informally or by getting enshrined in the legal system) they can start squeezing local businesses and the government for access to their service. It's pure rent seeking. As part of this strategy, it's in their interest to create an unnecessarily unintuitive service so you can't go anywhere without using their app. The three words provide absolutely zero geographic information about the location. They're about as close to a truly evil company as I can think of. Luckily they seem to have had minimal success so far, as the revenue numbers are awful.
- 1970-01-01 6y agoIsn't this just the thing a patent would solve? Does What3Words have a patent on their grid system or not? Updated: They have an active US patent. Why didn't they try gunning him down with this instead of the IP letter? https://patents.google.com/patent/US9883333B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9883333B2/en
- frankus 6y agoI suspect because it’s a lot easier to send a DMCA takedown notice of questionable legitimacy than to litigate patent infringement.
- batch12 6y agoIf someone made a version while avoiding the specific implementation would they be alright? I think that where the author messed up is by reproducing the algorithm altogether. The original article highlighted deficiencies in the implementation. Maybe it would have been better to fix those issues with a better, unrelated algorithm and release that for free.
- sturmeh 6y agoI can't wait until someone gets a patent on quick sort.
- barry27 6y agoI'm patenting the Mercator projection this afternoon
- anfilt 6y agoI still don't understand how this company managed to get a patent for what amounts to using coordinates to look up words in a table. It's also not the first todo this, there is prior art. For example this person was asking about what they would need to do to invalidate it because they built basically the same thing, but using 5 words before this company even had patents. https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had-invented-and-published-before-this-patent-application-how-do-i-get-it-in https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had-inve... Also on the OpenStreet Wiki, the EU seems to have doubts on the patents Validity. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words#Patent_Validity https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words#Patent_Validi...
- dleslie 6y agoThe American patent office assumes that if there is no prior patent then the new patent describes something new and novel. It's designed this way to encourage Americans to patent everything and anything, in order to dominate the intellectual property market.
- brobdingnagians 6y agoIt's also done by political policy to make it look like America is still "very innovative". It would make politicians (and other people) look bad if the number of patents started falling precipitously. I believe America is still innovative, but not as much as the number of patents might suggest.
- kindall 6y agoThe purpose of the patent system is to incentivize people to publish the details of their inventions instead of keeping them secret, thereby advancing the state of the art. The limited-time monopoly is the incentive.
- yossarian1408 6y agoExcept the limited-time monopoly becomes an until-the-end-of-time monopoly, and has a more toxic effect on innovation and creativity than what would exist in its absence.
- propogandist 6y agowhat3words is an app which, when installed, will provide 3 words which correspond to a location, but the location can only be decoded by someone else who has access to the what3words name resolution service or has the app installed. They've raised $39* million dollars in funding and they're "helping improve businesses around the world, and paving the way for social and economic progress in developing nations" [1]. Because developing nations really want to use a 3rd party app with a 'proprietary naming convention' to help them map and develop their land. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/what3words https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/what3words
- bredren 6y agoWhat’s bizarre to me is this company is funded by IKEA, including $20 million this past March.
- dehrmann 6y agoI'm a little surprised the locations aren't something like Poäng Ektorp Fintorp.
- meibo 6y agoApparently, yes, developing nations are happy to do that: https://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/ https://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses... (Article from 2016 describing how all post addresses in Mongolia were switched to what3words addresses)
- robgibbons 6y agoCopyright infringement aside, naming the project "WhatFreeWords" seems to teeter very close to trademark infringement. The legal term if I recall is "deceptively similar" which the OSS project arguably is.
- riffic 6y agolikelihood of confusion
- gmiller123456 6y agoThe term in "confusingly similar" https://www.bitlaw.com/guidance/trademark/dealing-with-a-confusingly-similar-rejection.html https://www.bitlaw.com/guidance/trademark/dealing-with-a-con...
- practicalpants 6y agoThe name is a clear satire/parody, they would be fine at least under US law.
- dehrmann 6y agoIf you only used profanity, celebrity names, only had locations in North Korea, or something absurd, I'd agree. If you're marketing an equivalent product, nope.
- cdash 6y agoI am not sure that is the case. You definitely have an argument if this was only done in satire but when you are also truly offering a competing product while using a similar name it is hard to argue that it is just parody.
- AussieWog93 6y agoThere was a comedian who successfully opened a coffee shop in the US named "Dumb Starbucks", logo and all. Every menu item was copied verbatim from the actual Starbucks menu but with the word "Dumb" added as a prefix. Despite a massive social media campaign that would have certainly caught the eye of Starbucks, they received no legal threats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo_deCOd1HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo_deCOd1HU
- sturmeh 6y agoI have a feeling this kind of legal attack is usually the result of someone misusing a company trademark. If he called it anything else they would never have noticed or cared. They risk drawing attention to their non-existent competition by raising this legal action if they don't have a "sure" chance of winning.
- Dylan16807 6y agoIn that case they could just send a trademark complaint about the name. This wide-reaching letter is guaranteed to make people mad.
- mozak1111 6y agoI've made an NFT project closely related to What3words - I've been giving away a few to friends for free but exactly ZERO people have actually bought one so far! https://solum.hormozimmen.com https://solum.hormozimmen.com
- smt88 6y agoYou're surprised no one has bought something that is imaginary and has zero value?
- niceairport 6y agoAt least the delusion is very real here.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt's seems like it's roughly the equivalent of paying to name a star. Only there's at least a real star out there. Also this statement is kind of weird: If you've been involved with the NFT community you will know that NFTs are not about money. They are about love.
- info_free 6y agoThe whatfreewords.org site, including the source code, is archived here: https://archive.is/e26a7 https://archive.is/e26a7 (Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has it manually excluded from their index, but this site is still fine.)
- info_free 6y agoSome of the source code is also mirrored on cryptome.org: https://cryptome.org/2021/04/WhatFreeWords-Javascript-Library.txt https://cryptome.org/2021/04/WhatFreeWords-Javascript-Librar... https://cryptome.org/2021/04/whatfreewords-py.tar.gz https://cryptome.org/2021/04/whatfreewords-py.tar.gz
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gfaure 6y ago@cybergibbons also discovered that whatever algorithm they use has the unfortunate property that points fairly close together only differ in whether one word is singular or plural. For support to be sent to the wrong location in an emergency situation just because "fields" was misheard as "field" or vice versa is unconscionable. https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1388844414450155521 https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1388844414450155521 The company simply denied that the analysis was correct.
- musesum 6y agoInteresting idea. Dividing England into 3m^2 blocks requires about 34 bits of address space. But, then again, given the propensity of surveillance, just say "hey, this is <your name here> coming home from work" -- should be enough clues to let Big Brother figure it out. CCTV is your friend.
- shakna 6y agoWhat3Words has always confused me. It has a bunch of misleading encodings, it claims to be somehow innovative when there's prior art, and they are very heavy handed on the legal side of things. And it isn't even like it's difficult to come up with. Here's my 5-minute implementation of something similar from a couple years ago: [0][1] Which encodes to 10cm, and not just a few meters. [0] https://j6map.netlify.app/ https://j6map.netlify.app/ [1] https://git.sr.ht/~shakna/j6 https://git.sr.ht/~shakna/j6
- mbirth 6y agoW3W have shorter words for urban areas and longer words for rural areas. And this in various languages (all incompatible to each other, obviously).
- anfilt 6y agoI think the bigger problem is W3W some how got a patent on basically using a fixed pointed number (aka fixed size grids) as a look up into a table. Nothing is too complicated or really innovative about using bits to look up words in a table. Their table has about ~40000 entries. And all it basically does is concats the two fixed point numbers into one longer binary number and splits that into 3 different numbers. Then each number is used to lookup a word. It's also quite bad compared to other geo-hashes that have hierarchical structure that can get more accurate as you specify more information.
- hef19898 6y agoYeah, why would international compatability be good thing for a location service? Snarkiness aside, I never understood the benfit of W3W ompared to existing things like coordinates and location sharing using Googlemaps, Whatsapp and so on.
- shakna 6y ago> Snarkiness aside, I never understood the benfit of W3W ompared to existing things like coordinates and location sharing using Googlemaps, Whatsapp and so on. Relaying coordinates over static-filled radios, with background noise like the sea, etc. Basically, emergency situations where if you can't hear a number clearly it can be significant. Unfortunately, W3W encodes using words that can create problems in those circumstances too. (Like plurals misdirecting rescuers. [0]). [0] https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1386455377949122561 https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1386455377949122561
- can16358p 6y agoWhat a loser move. I will never use What3Words again. Hope they get bankrupt.
- aidenn0 6y agoYou mean you've actually used them before?
- can16358p 6y agoKinda tried. Might give a chance to its OSS alternative just to support the competitor.
- anfilt 6y agoThis company and has been a legal bully for quite some time just read the OpenSreetMap Article on it. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words It's been a known thing about this company for a while. There are better and open geo-hashes out there. Just look the wikipedia article on geo hashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash
- 12ian34 6y agoThis OSM article seems to sum everything up quite well - I'd encourage others to read it.
- dang 6y agoRelated thread from earlier today: What3Words – The Algorithm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27015046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27015046 - May 2021 (148 comments)
- gmiller123456 6y agoI can't imagine how What3Words is actually useful. According to [1], 5 decimal places in Lat/Lon coordinates gets you 1.11 meter accuracy at the equator (more accurate than the 3m w3w claims). If you're in a densely populated area, your cell phone would provide the location in most circumstances. If you're really lost 100 meters, or 3 decimal places is likely all you need. That's twice as many words (three before the decimal, and three after). But I'm sure if you break it down into syllables, Lat/Lon coordinates will likely win or at least be enough every time. Once you factor in the ambiguity of what words are being spoken, words you don't know how to pronounce, and language barriers, I can't imagine a use for W3W. To use an example from the article, "circle.goal.leaders" is six syllables and could easily be interpreted as "circle.go.leaders". Of course, if you count the dots or pauses, lat/lon wins pretty much every time. And even a lot of Americans can count to 10 in multiple languages. [1] http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees
- ghusbands 6y agoYou seem to be forgetting that lat/long is two numbers, not just one. "Seventy six point three five two comma minus one fifty three point nine oh one" is definitely harder to work with than "circle goal leaders". Especially as you don't need to say "dot". (I do agree that the What3Words approach is flawed, both technically and commercially.)
- ryankrage77 6y agoUnless the person reading the words to you over the phone has a strong japanese accent, and in addition to not being sure if they're saying 'go' or 'goal', you'll also have a hard time knowing if they're saying 'leaders' or 'readers'. I can't imagine a channel of communication that's clear enough for W3W, but not clear enough for some numbers.
- gmiller123456 6y ago>You seem to be forgetting that lat/long is two numbers, not just one Good point, mea cupla. Though I think my point that confusion over pronunciation still trumps how many numbers you have to say.
- neilv 6y agoMapping numbers to words from lists has been used for a while. I first saw it in S/KEY in the mid-'90s, maybe it was elsewhere before (phone numbers?), and have seen it numerous other places since then (including XKCD's bit on easy-to-remember passwords). It doesn't seem great for a locale -- especially a developing nation -- to use a geo addressing scheme that is outright owned by some company. Especially not a scheme that appears (from this post) to be excessively proprietary. I wonder whether it would make sense for some subset of OpenStreetMap, Google (Maps), GIS-using government orgs, UN, development NGOs, etc., to agree on a free open standard for number-to-word lists for geographic locations. And maybe provide free-as-in-beer (preferably FLOSS) technology implementations in support of those open standards. Some of those organizations might also have relevant "shield" patents that might come in handy. This could be a good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/KEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/KEY https://xkcd.com/936/ https://xkcd.com/936/
- hef19898 6y agoLarge enough orgs, and development NGOs, just use coordinates and maps. Like they always did. Because even a service like W3W needs to know that a place exists in order to name it. Once someone knows the place exists, and where, you can just put it on a map. Problem solved. Regarding general addresses, Ireland has no ZIP codes (at least until 2017, last time I had to worry about that). Their postal service works just fine.
- neilv 6y agoI was thinking that some of these orgs could collaborate on an open standard that serves the same purposes served by What3Words, for the people for whom it serves those purposes. But with an open standard that doesn't sound overly proprietary.
- simonswords82 6y agoDoes anybody have a link to the open source alternative? I'd like to dust off my old Twitter account and tweet it.
- Snoddas 6y agohttps://archive.is/e26a7 https://archive.is/e26a7
- ponytech 6y agoHere is my take on converting coordinates into 3 words: https://freews.org/location-to-w3w https://freews.org/location-to-w3w and the reverse: https://freews.org/w3w-to-location https://freews.org/w3w-to-location This is based on Python code I found on a previous post about What3Words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21196402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21196402
- zibzab 6y agoBut why 3 words? Why not 4? Here is crazy idea: take the standard long/lat system and trim it down to numbers that can point to any 20m2 square in the world. Now translate each number to two words. Now you have a much simpler 4-word system that can be translated back to the standard system. Furthermore, since you use 4 identifiers instead of 3 you may be able to exclude many similar sounding words. Now, is this covered by their patent?
- sixhobbits 6y agoSome more background on the dispute between what3words and whatfreewords https://justpaste.it/39hat https://justpaste.it/39hat
- wraptile 6y agoThere's already popular open alternative that is arguably better: Googles Plus Codes [1]. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code
- benhurmarcel 6y agoAnother address: https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ It's a nice system indeed, and fully open. It would be nice if it was implemented in most apps, not just Google Maps.
- bhickey 6y agoWhy are these guys throwing money after what appears to be the Juicero of geospatial indexing schemes? As others have pointed out, their word list is huge, multiple stems are included, there's no hierarchical relationship between words and so on. The whole thing seems like a bad design interview question where you start by explaining S2 to the candidate.
- throwaway823882 6y agoSince a lot of people criticize their design, and obviously we all hate their business/legal practices, can we all just develop an alternative that is not patent-encumbered, give it a permissible license, and release it? That would put a knot in W3W's britches. Aside: Is there a way to crowd-source [non-monetary] efforts like this? I don't want to get paid for it, I just want to put it out there for free and get some help.
- yosito 6y agoCan't someone publish the w3w lookup tables on a blockchain and then anyone could use some generic blockchain > REST API converter to access the lookups for free? Would completely destroy w3w's ~business~ extortion model.
- tpoacher 6y agoBarbra Streizand? Is that you?