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ARM wrestles assembly language guru's domains away, citing trademark issues
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- greysun 3y agoThis seems to be a bit of a non-story, these kind of cease-and-desist letters (when it comes to trademarks) are usually triggered by automatic systems that monitor trademark usage across the web. While Azeria is definitely a well respected member of the community, there was a lack of due diligence on her part, specially when she has claimed on her "arm-assembly.com" website "All Rights Reserved", which she can't clearly claim from the domain. It's not nice to receive a cease-and-desist letter but we need to put things in perspective and put the emotional part aside before throwing drama on Twitter.
- polalavik 3y agoJust because there are rules doesn’t mean they make sense in context. This doesn’t serve ARMs best interest nor Azeria. It’s a lose lose. Maybe it was automatically triggered, but I guess the point is a lot of things in the world are some shade of grey and employing machines to make a binary decision without any review process doesn’t serve anybody’s best interest. Perhaps throwing “drama on Twitter“ is the only way to get a real human in the loop of the automated insanity we’ve trapped ourselves in.
- greysun 3y agoI don't think Arm's boss is personally offended by any of this but trademark laws require companies to protect their own trademark, otherwise they might simply lose the rights to own it. It is explained in the article: "At the same time, we have a duty to protect the Arm brand, which has been built over more than 30 years. Like all companies with registered trademarks, Arm is legally obligated to ensure those trademarks are protected and used appropriately. We recognize that this activity is sometimes met with frustration and are actively working to find a solution that works for all parties involved." It's not about 'rules', it is a legal requirement.
- spookie 3y agoUnderstandable, it's unfortunate
- lesserknowndan 3y agoThis is wrong. Companies only need to “protect” trademarks by going after companies that offer similar products using that trademarked name. Unless a company gets a service mark, trademarks also only apply in certain categories. This was massive overreach by ARM. And frankly it was really inappropriate of the hosting provider to interfere with the websites.
- greysun 3y ago[dead]
- shkkmo 3y agoThose websites were not selling chips or chip designs. Those websites used the trademark to refer the same product and do not create any potential for confusion. Please show me where there is a "legal duty" to go after fair use and be callous and lazy towards someone who is actively working to make your product better. Edit: Even if ARM had been completely unwilling to allow the fair use here, they could still have reached out directly since there is already a close relationship, rather than to going to the hosting provider and getting everything, even unrelated stuff, yanked down. I sure hope this is the end of the Pro Bono work the author does for them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- clankyclanker 3y agoNowhere does acknowledging and permitting the use require a C&D. A simple “we see you and this is fine” letter would’ve also met the policing requirement. The C&D is only required when you want to shut folks up and get the lawyers their bonuses.
- Foobar8568 3y agoI highly doubt it was the case,and follow-ups should have cleared a few things and not a straight uncompensated handover, especially to someone who keynoted your conferences. In light of IPO, most likely the corporation wanted to kill any lose ends and it results in a PR disaster which eventually won't have any impacts. So for arm, it's a win win. Funny things, they registered a riscv domain in the past to bad mouth RISC.
- fencepost 3y agosomeone who keynoted your conferences. What are the chances that this whole mess gets regular mention in future conference appearances.....
- greysun 3y agoThe first letter she got, which she published on Twitter, explains very clearly what is happening with the case. Automatic system or not, the end result would have been the same. A trademark comes with legal implications.
- goku12 3y ago> A trademark comes with legal implications. Of course, that applies to Arm too, right? https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/10/arm_riscv_website/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/10/arm_riscv_website/
- pgeorgi 3y ago> A trademark comes with legal implications. Those would have been satisfied by a friendly "You know, we need to keep track of uses of our trademark and see that they're in line. You keynoted our conferences, your sites are valuable for our ecosystem. How about you put a trademark notice somewhere and we call it a day?"
- anigbrowl 3y agoFunny things, they registered a riscv domain in the past to bad mouth RISC. Who are you referring to here? It's sorta confusing.
- CommieBobDole 3y ago> This seems to be a bit of a non-story, these kind of cease-and-desist letters (when it comes to trademarks) are usually triggered by automatic systems that monitor trademark usage across the web. But you're still morally responsible when you set up an automated system to do an awful thing - if I set up an automated gun to shoot everybody who comes through the door because they might be criminals, it's the same as if I indiscriminately shot them with my own hand.
- anigbrowl 3y agoIt's not an awful thing. They have no easy way to assess whether a given domain is a cool project run by a cool person or a malware sheltering scam site. Histrionic comparisons don't alter the fact that it would have been smarter to respond to the C&D letter directly.
- jjk166 3y ago> They have no easy way to assess whether a given domain is a cool project run by a cool person or a malware sheltering scam site There most certainly is an easy way: have a human check the website. What you meant is there is no easy way that costs little to no money. Unwillingness to pay for an adequate solution is not a legitimate excuse for negligence. If you can't afford to do things right, you can't afford to do them at all.
- anigbrowl 3y agoThe trademark attorneys aren't well qualified to do that, which is why it would have been smarter to respond to them directly and refer them to someone at ARM itself. Unwillingness to pay for an adequate solution is not a legitimate excuse for negligence. If you can't afford to do things right, you can't afford to do them at all. This is how you want things to be, not how they are. Corporations are focused on maximizing profits and lowering risk and cost.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
- anigbrowl 3y agoWhere she went wrong was in contacting ARM to try to get it resolved. The smart thing to do would have been to politely reply to the C&D and refer the lawyers to her contacts at ARM, CCing it to the people she worked with there. "I wrote my thesis about Arm security features and exploit mitigations for Arm's internal use, [have] given internal presentations, keynoted their conference, advocated for them, visited them at their HQ in Cambridge – all without compensation because I wanted this to be a mutually beneficial relationship instead of a gig." When are engineers going to learn that corporate entities have no more capacity for friendship than a scorpion? They are run as and attract people interested in the mindless accumulation of more capital. You can have warm personal relationship with individual people at a company, but unless they are the top executives or largest shareholders those warm personal relationships don't mean anything compared to a spreadsheet. The corporate officers are not your pals. People are downvoting the parent comment here, but it's correct. If you're going to name your domain after a commercial product in some way and you are all buddy-buddy with the people that make the product, get it in writing instead of relying on good vibes.
- sitkack 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
- mort96 3y ago"It was an automated system" isn't a defense unless the entity which performed the automated action immediately reverses course when made aware. So far it seems like ARM/SoftBank is on board with this action, automated or not. Isn't "all rights reserved" a copyright thing, not a trademark thing? I don't think I've seen anyone interpret "all rights reserved" to mean "I own the rights to all trademarks mentioned".
- undersuit 3y agoThis is ridiculous. The domain was strengthening the ARM trademark, it wasn't infringing. The domain was made by collaboration. Now with the leg-assembly.com the author can branch out and focus on other less litigious microarchitectures if they want. Who gave SoftBank a gun that fires into their foot?
- pavlov 3y ago> “Who gave SoftBank a gun that fires into their foot?” They probably paid a billion dollars to the guy who invented ShootMyFoot.com, and another billion for him to walk away after everything collapsed. And now that this product is a strategic core part of their portfolio, the CEO insists that foot-shooting be part of every transaction because he is a visionary who thinks in 100-year cycles.
- diddothat 3y agoHaha that’s bang on and most likely so true
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- assimpleaspossi 3y ago> This is ridiculous. The domain was strengthening the ARM trademark, it wasn't infringing. This is like a small company or group asking for something from a company cause it will be "free advertising". No it's not and most companies won't do that.
- anticensor 3y agoFun fact, unpaid commercial advertising is actually illegal in some jurisdictions.
- lsaferite 3y agoSeems like it's a gun that fires into their LEG.
- spookie 3y agoRemember, you should help those who respect you. Hope she employs her great mind helping other, more respectful architectures. (edit) After reading other comments, I do hope they do come to some compromise. It's understandable from arm to do this, unfortunately.
- PhasmaFelis 3y ago> It's understandable from arm to do this, unfortunately. You had it right the first time. There's no excuse for this kind of behavior. Even if they do feel their trademarks are threatened, there are better ways to deal with it. Don't defend them.
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoMaria Markstedter should register new domains that are suitable to give ARM a bad reputation such as replacing "arm" by "harm" in the faulty domains (I did not check whether these replacement domains have already been registered): * arm-reversing.com -> harm-reversing.com * arm-exploitation.com -> harm-exploitation.com * arm-basics.de -> harm-basics.de and add some text to these websites why the author chose these new names. Feel free to get more creative with the replacement domains. :-)
- ajdude 3y agoReminds me of what nissan.com used to do: https://web.archive.org/web/20170120210929/http://www.nissan.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170120210929/http://www.nissan...
- LordShredda 3y agoDamn, did he finally give up? He used to do this since the 90's
- epc 3y agoUzi Nissan, the original registrant, passed away in 2020: https://jalopnik.com/uzi-nissan-internet-domain-owner-who-fought-nissan-in-1844535615 https://jalopnik.com/uzi-nissan-internet-domain-owner-who-fo...
- dundarious 3y agoShe's one step ahead, and has already registered http://leg-assembly.com http://leg-assembly.com
- sp332 3y agoThat's funny, but it's not absolutely safe. E.g. "South Butt" getting sued for trading on the North Face trademark. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna36334733 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna36334733
- tambourine_man 3y ago“…she shared on Xitter…” OMG, it took me a second to figure it out, but this is the perfect new name for the service. Just brilliant and hilarious.
- throwway120385 3y agoIt rhymes with pockmarks on teenagers.
- babypuncher 3y ago"Tweets" are now called "Xcretions".
- jazzyjackson 3y agoyou can just call them Xits musk brought this on himself with the smiling poop emoji responses to press requests, what are we supposed to think?
- jjtheblunt 3y agoIf the Chinese name Xi is pronounced like English "she", does Xitter get pronounced "shitter" ?
- talideon 3y agoPortuguese too!
- tambourine_man 3y agoThat’s how I read in my mind.
- FrankoDelMar 3y agoRelevant SouthPark reference https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/m31v1z/south-park-it-s-called-shitter https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/m31v1z/south-park-it-s-...
- regedit728 3y ago
- ctenb 3y agoArm wrestles... I see what you did there :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 3y agoSo all books and SO questions about anything related to the leg architecture also need a trademark license from the owners of leg? I mean, they have to protect their trademark. Do I need to get their permission to mention I have a Mulberry ϕ on my desk?
- barryrandall 3y agoWEI says yes.
- wmf 3y agoFair use of trademarks is pretty nitpicky. Most policies say that the trademark can't be the first word, so for example "ARM Reversing" is not allowed but "Reversing ARM code" would be allowed.
- solomatov 3y agoPolicies aren't always binding. There're companies which include a point about complying with the trademark policies in their terms of use, there're some which just located on their site under the name guidance. P.S. I am not a lawyer.
- nottorp 3y agoSo you two are basically telling me i need to hire a lawyer to learn about leg programming :)
- yieldcrv 3y agotreat your supporters as equals
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoTo make sure nobody missed this. From the article: > Yes, there is a need for trademark holders, like Arm, to assert their ownership and rights and protect their marks. Sad in this case but absolutely true.
- User23 3y agoThis is probably a non-infringing use, but who wants to pay lawyers for a multi-year lawsuit with a billion dollar company over a fan-site?
- Gibbon1 3y agoThing about corporate lawyers is. They'll never make a judgement call where they stick their neck out. And unless someone important is threatening them they're utterly lazy and unaccountable.
- samus 3y agoThat doesn't necessarily mean that they have to outright ban usage of their brand. They could have worked out a deal beneficial to all sides. Of course, they don't have to... There is a concept of fair use of trademarks. Just referring to them by name is fair use. Disseminating truthful information or using them in an academic setting is fair use. Though, I see complications if the information is true, but hurtful for the brand, or if the website gets ad revenue. Obvious mention: IANAL
- kalleboo 3y ago“Hi, we saw your site has our trademark in the domain name. Unfortunately we have to protect our trademark so we ask of you: please pay our $1/year license fee for educational resources and put in at least 12 pt font above the fold that you are not affiliated with Arm Inc”
- hedgehog 3y agoTo the people saying this is reasonable: Arm has a lot of options on how to defend the trademark that are not as wildly dickish as this, for example they could license the trademark to Azeria for this use, they could come up with a mutual process to transition her over to non-infringing branding in a way that was less disruptive to her work (and the benefit they get from it), or they could at least coordinate the whole mess with her internal contact to put a nicer face on it. Why they chose to go full lawyer hostile is not clear, probably they either don't care or are not internally well-coordinated enough to do better.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MR4D 3y agoIf only "farm.com" were available....or "F-Arm.com". Yeah, I like that second one even better. Obviously if someone decides to be more explicit, then this could get pretty funny. The trolling level here goes to 11. ------ EDIT: f**arm.com is available
- garba_dlm 3y agothe open and freely available documentation of anything is being taken down. it is expected that we pay to know things, this is what is ultimately being reasserted. this comes with the same techniques that all piracy, DRM, IPTV takedowns, and dynamic dns seizures and traffic blocking... because it's all the same on the computer level. the erosion of our purported freedoms is but collateral; maybe we should forget what the internet could have been and embrace the pay-to-click world that is incoming. it's strange that we will be able to pay with likes 'reddit karma points' and Retweets/boosts that we receive.
- phendrenad2 3y agoSomewhere between letting your trademark be overrun by unaffiliated trash sites and destroying the SEO of every fan site by forcing them to use keyword-weak domain names lies a happy medium.
- jake_morrison 3y agoThe fundamental problem is that domain name trademark enforcement is handled by the legal department when it should be handled by marketing, business development, and/or DevRel. While companies can enforce their trademarks, it's generally better to allow people who are using domains in a reasonable way to continue. Taking the domain away and then doing nothing with it doesn't benefit anyone. Even in parasitical scenarios, allowing squatters to get affiliate revenue by redirecting traffic to the company is better than fooling around with the legal process.
- pxeger1 3y agoCompanies have to be seen to be enforcing their trademarks, or they risk losing them. (AIUI, IANAL) Although again if it were handled by marketing, might they just agree to licence the trademark to this person for this specific purpose for a nominal sum?
- jpgvm 3y agoOr just adding a notice to the site that `Arm is a registered trademark of Arm corporation` or similar bullshit which gets exactly the same job done.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deelowe 3y agoNot quite. They simply must be seen as actively using the trademark. Simply sending the domain owner a notice with strict rules describing how to avoid trademark confusion would be enough to show ARM has not relinquished it's mark. There is no requirement that they must aggressively go after people like this.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoI vote that every time we refer to ARM in future that we write LEG instead.
- snvzz 3y agoRemember: ARM is a liability at all levels. It is time to embrace RISC-V.
- nvy 3y agoSemiconductors being what they are, I don't see how a grassroots movement can drive adoption of something that essentially nobody's making. Are there credible RISC-V based replacements for the Raspberry Pi, the STM32 blue/black pill, and the Cortex chips in phones? Honest question, because I'd love to dabble in RISC-V but last time I checked the options were poorly-supported, expensive, and sparse.
- snvzz 3y ago>but last time I checked the options were poorly-supported, expensive, and sparse. I recommend checking again, as growth has been exponential. >Are there credible RISC-V based replacements for the Raspberry Pi, the STM32 blue/black pill, and the Cortex chips in phones? I'd recommend a look at the market of publicly available cores[0], some lists of chips[1] and boards[2][3], and about MCUs specifically[4]. The one specific recommendation I'll make is to get VisionFive 2[5], the first mass-production RISC-V SBC from StarFive, with strong standards compliance and effort to upstream driver support[6]. 0. https://riscv.org/exchange/?_sft_exchange_category=core,cores https://riscv.org/exchange/?_sft_exchange_category=core,core... 1. https://muxup.com/2023q1/commercially-available-risc-v-silicon https://muxup.com/2023q1/commercially-available-risc-v-silic... 2. http://krimsky.net/articles/riscvsbc.html http://krimsky.net/articles/riscvsbc.html 3. https://hackerboards.com/?cpu_architecture=RV64 https://hackerboards.com/?cpu_architecture=RV64 4. https://codeberg.org/20-100/Awesome_RISC-V/raw/branch/master/RISC-V_MCU_development_boards.pdf https://codeberg.org/20-100/Awesome_RISC-V/raw/branch/master... 5. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starfive/visionfive-2 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starfive/visionfive-2 6. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
- nvy 3y agoThanks very much. Some light reading for when the kids are in bed!
- andromaton 3y agoThis is extremely short sighted. License the name to her, talk to her.
- jonah 3y agoRelated question - if you own a domain and then afterwards, someone comes along and starts a company with that name (and presumably trademarks their company name) do they have recourse to seize your domain?
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoThis feels like it's come down to "we own the trademark and no one can ever refer to the thing without our permission". It really makes me curious what if any limits there are to the power of trademark holders.
- samus 3y agoIt should actually be within fair usage limits, as long as the content is truth and no damage is intended. The company might still threaten to sue if they know the threatened party can't afford to fight the suit.
- wilsonjholmes 3y agoWhat a fantastic title (:
- zem 3y agothat's the register for you (:
- nickt 3y agoLand Rover did this years ago against some of their biggest fans and supporters- they received nasty letters from legal just because they used “rover” in their domain names. This is when the company jumped the shark, there used to be a bunch of petrol-head engineers who’d worked their way up to executive level who were passionate about the brand and product. They retired or were replaced by generic executives doing generic big company things which unfortunately you see across many industries these days…
- pseudotrash 3y agoLandrover jumped the shark even harder when the turned their Defender into a £100K+ abomination of a vehicle that is garbage in real off-road condition. Now it's just another SUV for the same class of people that buys Range Rovers or BMW's.
- roryisok 3y ago> ARM wrestles nice pun
- type0 3y agoI just hope they won't go after Armbian and similar cases
- nmstoker 3y agoI see that animal-farm-assembly.com has yet to come to the lawyers attention.
- PhasmaFelis 3y agoCompanies have no choice but to defend their trademarks with immediate, hostile legal action, every time! That's what their lawyers say, anyway, and why would they lie?