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Signal never gave canonical permission to distribute a binary called Signal. Canonical just went ahead and did it anyway. How is this Signal’s fault?

monocasa 4y ago
DMCA isn't a mechanism for trademark disputes.
- cyberphobe 4y ago
  Then complain about that. Honestly given the existing set of miscommunications about what happened, I’m not sure it is an actual DMCA request
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Canonical distributes the snap in the sense of “owns the store and infrastructure” but the publisher is not canonical - it’s snapcrafters which is a group of community volunteers.
jeroenhd 4y ago
It's Signal's fault for getting lawyers involved before communicating with the people that put the alternative up. If it's that much of a problem, asking nicely would probably have worked. They could even set up a mechanism to transfer users to the official distribution if they wanted to put in the effort to help their users. As a side note, "Signal" is a generic English word. The logo is a generic speech bubble. Copyright and trademark law should not be piecing up language and handing it out to tech companies that decided that all app names should be no longer than two syllables. I'm sure legally speaking there's a trademark case to be made here, but ethically speaking I think it's wrong.
- cyberphobe 4y ago
  Signal isn’t saying no one can use the word signal. The problem arises when you use all of their branding together in such a way that could plausibly fool someone into thinking it’s their software, which very much appears to have happened here (see this entire thread full of people who installed this trademark violating build thinking it was legit)
  - jdiff 4y ago
    Signal is not saying this, as evidenced by the cofounder saying that this is all a misunderstanding and that they're working to undo what's been done.
    - cyberphobe 4y ago
      yeah I noticed that. Quite a reversal from their previous position, which was incredibly clear. I wonder if they'll extend this policy to other groups that have previously been shut down for doing the same thing (F-Droid being the obvious one here).

monocasa 4y ago

DMCA isn't a mechanism for trademark disputes.

cyberphobe 4y ago
Then complain about that. Honestly given the existing set of miscommunications about what happened, I’m not sure it is an actual DMCA request

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

Canonical distributes the snap in the sense of “owns the store and infrastructure” but the publisher is not canonical - it’s snapcrafters which is a group of community volunteers.

jeroenhd 4y ago

It's Signal's fault for getting lawyers involved before communicating with the people that put the alternative up. If it's that much of a problem, asking nicely would probably have worked. They could even set up a mechanism to transfer users to the official distribution if they wanted to put in the effort to help their users. As a side note, "Signal" is a generic English word. The logo is a generic speech bubble. Copyright and trademark law should not be piecing up language and handing it out to tech companies that decided that all app names should be no longer than two syllables. I'm sure legally speaking there's a trademark case to be made here, but ethically speaking I think it's wrong.

cyberphobe 4y ago
Signal isn’t saying no one can use the word signal. The problem arises when you use all of their branding together in such a way that could plausibly fool someone into thinking it’s their software, which very much appears to have happened here (see this entire thread full of people who installed this trademark violating build thinking it was legit)
- jdiff 4y ago
  Signal is not saying this, as evidenced by the cofounder saying that this is all a misunderstanding and that they're working to undo what's been done.
  - cyberphobe 4y ago
    yeah I noticed that. Quite a reversal from their previous position, which was incredibly clear. I wonder if they'll extend this policy to other groups that have previously been shut down for doing the same thing (F-Droid being the obvious one here).