Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consumers" as they are called these days.
I can't imagine Harman Int paid facebook so much money to be noticable when it's added to their pile.
We (many of us) just assume that a corporation has a right, stronger than an individual, to a name in a medium.
If I were human Harman I would have responded to corporate Harman that, thank you very much but facebook has already stolen my name on your behalf, and cc'd the LA Times in the response.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-684415688278839051&...
Documentary is standard movie length, but highly recommended. The readable bytes, if no time to watch:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2004-03-28-corp_...
Further, /avtr is probably not much better than /avatar, /avatarfilm, or a number of others. When the demand is for precisely one unit, and more than one unit of supply exists, it seems natural that the price is going to be low.
A more accurate statement would be "clearly they think somebody not using one particular variant of their name as a facebook vanity URL is not a big deal". I would tend to agree.
If somebody not using a particular vanity URL is not a big deal, then why does Harman Inc need the URL anyway? Why don't they just go for /harmanInc or something like that?
I am also not saying that it is that much of a big deal - not like they are supposed to odder millions. But to just offer worthless junk is offensive.
Also I think "he needs it more than you, so it should belong to him" is not a good basis for conducting business.
I know lots of people drink it every day - I admit "poisonous" puts it a bit provocatively.
Edit: just looked it on on Wikipedia, this seems to be the cited article: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/104084407015161... - That talks only about cancer and the nervous system, but not about obesity (for instance).
> Ok, why the poison? Maybe the owner simply wanted to do something cool.
So doing something cool means intruding on other people's rights? The threshold must be getting really low these days.
Really, people should start paying attention to the online world, and what does "property" mean in such a context.
And if your online presence on a social network is so fragile (since, after all, Facebook is a business and the users don't really have lots of implicit rights) ... than there should be national campaigns against it (after all, your online profile being mismanaged could cause some people more harm than smoking, so why the discrimination?) ... not to mention that people think of Facebook as a "common carrier" which couldn't be further from the truth.
Isn't it easier to just play nice and stop acting like a douche bag?
> It's an URL, not a wife.
It isn't just any URL, it's the link to your online profile. Your friends might have you bookmarked, Google might have you indexed by that URL.
It's like saying domain names like "sex.com" aren't worth anything. Well they do.
I think we have a misunderstanding here. First thing to clarify, I think, is whether the owner of the "avtr" name gave it up willingly. If he didn't, the discussion it closed: it was at best bullyish. But what I understood from the article is that it was mutual:
> ... but I wanted to explore opportunities to work with you to acquire the name. In the past, we have offered product in exchange for social domain names. One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar , we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero.
I read this as a transaction. Now, the GP is still very very upset. Personally, I think it simply isn't GP's business what the avtr owner did with his domain. It's very much like Richard Stallman berating you rudely in public for buying commercial software. His ideals, just like GP's, should not dictate what one does with his property, time and money. If the GP thinks offering "useless plastic crap" was an offence, he's free to reject such an offer whenever it's made to him. But I do not understand why we should all align to his standards and refuse transactions we may find profitable or charitable or just the right thing to do. Not to mention that a promotional item can easily be anything from a t-shirt to a bike or a car.
Now again, if I misunderstood something I apologize. But I find the GP to be the one trying to push things here, not the big corporation.
I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea to use a URL on someone's platform with ToS allowing arbitrary revocation and reassignment.
Of course they don't 'have to' as in nobody is holding a gun to their head but if the terms of service have been lived by (and I don't see anything that this guy has done to cross the rules, except that his parents named him 'Harman') then he should have a reasonable expectation of being able to use it.
If he had named his vanity domain 'harman international' and his real name was 'John Smith' I could see the point but in this case in my opinion they are simply plain wrong.
EDIT: just wanted to add a case, lookup nissan.com
Despite their best efforts, Nissan (the car company) has never been able to get it from its rightful owner. Sounds like the system is working to me.
Yeah, stupid that they claimed it was a TOS violation, but the whole "our system, our URLs" policy should be pretty clear to anyone who signs up. That's the gamble you take when you put down roots in someone else's system.
I just hope that it gives people pause before putting any marketing dollars behind their facebook vanity urls.
If you select a username for your account we reserve the right to remove or reclaim it if we believe appropriate (such as when a trademark owner complains about a username that does not closely relate to a user's actual name).
As an aside, where is evidence that shows (or even suggests) that Facebook actually sold the URL for $$?
I just quoted the ToS and tangentially remarked that, despite the articles title, I couldn't find any evidence that Harman International actually paid Facebook.
I edited to avoid ambiguity.
- facebook has indeed sold the name
- facebook gives trademark law preference over personal names
(they may have been threatened to be sued, but then they should
have simply stood up for their users).
Facebook is first and foremost a site for PEOPLE, not companies so the rights of users should always go before the rights of incorporated entities.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but based on just that I don't see how TC can run such a headline... FB's actions being deplorable or not.
You mean techcrunch would use a headline that is not 100% the truth simply to get more viewers?
'Honour' and 'Techcrunch' have not been used in the same sentence other than this one since they posted twitters internal documents, 'because otherwise someone else would have'.
Using a misleading title is small fry on that scale.
Sued? For what? Under the Fair Facebook Vanity Names Act? There is no conceivable case Harman would have against FB for URLs on their own site!
FB might have a policy which would give companies priority. I think Twitter has been doing something similar when it reassigns celebrity names; in such cases the personal name of the original user is irrelevant as the decision is based upon what most people would expect from that name/what the company wants. Obviously, both Twitter and FB want to encourage companies and celebrities to endorse their service and offering them the names they want is a great way to get that endorsement.
Whether they would win the suit or not does not matter, they can sue.
Whether they have a case or not is for a judge to decide.
Errm. No, sorry. I wished that was true but it really isn't.
If you are a corporation suing another corporation for trademark infringement on something as silly as what is essentially a path name then you can only lose, even if you win. After all, both parties can expect to pay a solid amount of money to their lawyers, and only in rare exceptions will you be able to recover that.
The monetary loss due to the lawsuit could only be offset by an unknown quantity of PR backlash in case you give in too early.
But lose you will. So by suing, even if the one party 'has no case' there is a fair chance the other one will call it a day and give in.
Simply because it isn't worth $50K to $100K or thereabouts to facebook to stand by this one individual user.
On the one hand I don't blame facebook, on the other I think they are underestimating the $value of that PR backlash.
If facebook is lucky some of the PR flak will be directed at Harman International and they will reconsider their stupid request.
Facebook is between a rock and a hard place on this one. On the one hand a company that has a legitimate (even if it is a stretch) reason to sue, which will cost them money, on the other hand their users who will all feel their vanity urls are going to be given to the highest bidder or the one with the largest legal department.
Neither is good.
Facebook giving in this quickly is definitely a losing proposition to them, they should have said, 'ok, this user may be infringing, but since that is not proven in a court of law you will have to get a ruling, and then we will yank the account but you can not have it'.
By rolling over like this and potentially giving harman international the url they have clearly crossed a bunch of lines.
By caving they are in effect setting their own precedent that trademark holders can demand and will receive arbitrary URLs on their private web site. You would think that this outcome would be so bad for them that they'd gladly pay practically any amount to avoid it.
So no - I don't think there is any credible legal reasoning behind FB's decision on this one. I would expect it is an internal policy, probably combined in this case with money and/or advertising commits changing hands.
That's not so 'routinely' as you think, and these costs are not equal to the actual costs billed by the defendants lawyers.
I wished it was, then I could recover a 100K or so from various idiots that sued us over the years.
> especially since they are quite likely to get it back,
They really likely would not. The judge might even rule against them for a variety of technical reasons.
Going to court is much like going to the casino, only for much higher stakes.
> By caving they are in effect setting their own precedent that trademark holders can demand and will receive arbitrary URLs on their private web site. You would think that this outcome would be so bad for them that they'd gladly pay practically any amount to avoid it.
Yes, that's what you would think. But the fact that they don't should make you wonder if you aren't missing something.
They're evil, but they're definitely not stupid. I really do not think that this case behind the scenes is as simple as what it looks like on the outside.
Trademark law is tricky and the outcome of such a case is by no means certain. I'm fairly sure that facebook made that provision in their terms of service exactly for cases like this, because standing up for the 'rights' of their users over what is essentially a string of bits on a server is not in the interest of their bottom line.
Only a very small fraction of their users will ever run in to this problem, and only a very small fraction of those will have sympathy on their side.
> I would expect it is an internal policy,
Agreed, in fact it is a published policy.
> probably combined in this case with money and/or advertising commits changing hands.
If there ever is any proof of that then I think the sentiment will change drastically, for now - and I stress that that could change any moment - it does not look as though 'harman' has been assigned to any other party.
See the case of 'Nissan' vs 'Nissan'
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/01/40939
and:
Any hard evidence will be on private email servers and we may never see it. But the fact of the confiscation and reallocation is obvious; it is its own evidence.
Whether or not money actually changed hands or whether it was part of some quid pro quo arrangement or whatever is kind of besides the point. Obviously FB is getting something out of the deal, or it wouldn't have done it. Either way the user is getting screwed.
Color me surprised, really I am totally stunned.
The reason the phone company can't use your phone number the minute you cancel your contract is so that there will not be a large number of people dialing that number and getting someone else than the one they expect.
Since 'the real Harman' has probably done more than his share to promote this particular URL he's not only screwed out of his vanity url, he also has spent time and effort promoting it.
After a t.o.s. violation that kills an account that account should simply be declared 'dead', at least for a significant amount of time.
Re-sale or re-use should be expressly forbidden.
And t.o.s. violations should always be accompanied by the specific rule in the t.o.s. that has been breached.
Last time I took out a phone contract, I spent the first few months fielding debt collectors, university tutors and various other people looking for the number's last owner.
It depends, from country to country and from company to company it changes.
The nastiest bit about that is that you end up fielding 'air time' charges in some countries as well. In others you don't pay for incoming calls at all.
Google's imperfect but still clear bias towards "don't be evil" helps them to avoid poisoning the well; if Facebook maintains its current culture, it might not end up well for them. Victory can be fleeting (e.g. see MySpace).
Facebook will eventually be supplanted by 'the next facebook', in whatever form it will come.
Lots of people disagree with this, but I feel that the root of their demise is in the seed of their origin. You can go a long way on a bad mentality but eventually it will catch up with you.
That said I don't think they'll ever die completely, just very slowly wither away while one or more other networks will take its place.
I believe facebook does not partake in open social precisely because they are afraid of that.
A really good social site has no fears of losing its users and so does not need to lock them in.
That's funny, I wonder who is emerging, him or the media. ;)
Still, if this story is true, this reflects poorly on FB.