Response from Pitchfork Regarding Tumblr Subdomain | Hacker News Reader

Response from Pitchfork Regarding Tumblr Subdomain

pitchfork.tumblr.com

59 pointsaichcon29 comments

I can see why Tumblr though it was abandoned:

From March 14, 2009:

  DON'T FOLLOW ME

  I AM NOT A REAL TUMBLE BLOG, I AM USED AS A FILTER
  SINCE TUMBLR TOOK AWAY MY REAL FILTER.

From Nov 18, 2009:

  I Have Found The Tumblr Filter

  This Filter is Obsolete

How can this guy claim (with a straight face) that he was actually using this as a blog, when he has posts on the blog explicitly stating that it is not a blog?

Personally, I think there is enough blame to go around:

* Meaghan is probably trying to cover her ass because she over-stepped herself in removing this blog without notification to the user because she though it was abandoned.

* Tumbldore is just using this to generate drama and publicity. It's also possible that Tumbldore is just a giant troll that had this whopper of a piece of bait dumped onto his lap, so now he's just going to milk it for all it's worth.

The original owner of pitchfork.tumblr.com has his own response with a screenshot of an email from Tumblr stating that they didn't ask him before reassigning it:

http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...

Sorry! :-)

From Tumblr's TOS: "Tumblr reserves the right to remove any Subscriber Content from the Site, suspend or terminate Subscriber’s right to use the Services at any time, or pursue any other remedy or relief available to Tumblr and/or the Site under equity or law, for any reason...or for no reason at all."

Just because they can, does it mean they should have? It doesn't seem like a fair assumption that the account is abandoned if there are a few posts form the past year, especially when Tumblr didn't contact the user (assuming they did not).

It sucks, but you get what you pay for.

I can't say that the original owner has made the best case for himself. Throwing around terms like "libel" and "exercise my right" is off-putting and makes it hard to empathize with him.

November 18, 2009 isn't exactly what I'd call inactive. Sure it wasn't super recent, but still, it's less than 3 months ago.

If you've posted five times in a year, and the last one sounds like you've decided your blog is obsolete, then it's not an instance of somebody abandoning a longrunning thing. It looks like somebody gave the service a few tries and gave up.

Still, sending them an email is good customer service.

People often "give up" on a site a few times before they become a regular user. I do this all the time; For example, I signed up for HN "675 days ago" but I think I might have made 1 or 2 comments in the first 200 days.

Yeah, I can't say I feel all that sorry for this guy. He got his 15 minutes of HN fame, if that's what he was after.

This is a more interesting to me as a Pitchfork copyright/trademark issue: http://pitchforked.com/ (Context here: http://twitter.com/zachklein/status/9188476155 )

I hope the guy doesn't get the smackdown after just building the site, but who knows. (A lawyer knows.)

Personally, I'm all for ridding the internet of name-squatters, though Tumblr really should have deleted all of the old data first. I think Pitchfork Media's response is fair and more than I would have expected.

It sound like they did not try very hard to contact anyone, this is pretty bad even from a free service. If this was a facebook or google doinging this there would be a huge shitstorm from you guys.

When the user says he isn't using the URL anymore, and tells people not to use it... that's pretty definitive in my mind.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you cannot trademark the name of an everyday object, such as a pitchfork, and then have rights to any use of the word in a domain.

So do they have the rights to pitchfork.wordpress.com, pitchfork.heroku.com and pitchfork.github.com ? Of course not.

This is not about IP, this is about a company doing their friends a favor. I will now stay away from tumblr. If I cease posting for a few months they could take my domain away.

> Correct me if I am wrong, but you cannot trademark the name of an everyday object, such as a pitchfork, and then have rights to any use of the word in a domain.

You can trademark the name of an everyday object. See 'Apple' computers vs 'Apple' the music label. Now they only have a trademark dispute is someone in their industry has the apple.com or apple.github.com or whatever (e.g. if Microsoft or Dell registered apple.wordpress.com, Apple might have a case to take it away from them do to brand confusion -- which was the original reason for trademarks).

I did not say you cannot trademark an everyday object, I said trademark it for all uses.

Microsoft could register apple.wordpress.com and use it to blog about apples (the fruit).

Edit: Spelling

Rule #1: own your domains

- Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_domains

- FeedBurner MyBrand: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand

A refreshingly drama-free resolution to the affair.

Except it's not a resolution. Tumblr's response (http://meaghano.com/post/393246405/tumbledore-ive-run-pitchf...) totally contradicts it.

And is extremely immature

Tumblr lets you change subdomains easily. If Pitchfork chooses to relinquish the subdomain, the original owner could take it back immediately, regardless of how Tumblr Support acts.

Pitchfork's response implies that they will give back the subdomain if the guy asks. That should be the end of this. Except I'm almost certain this guy is going to continue complaining in order to keep attention on himself.

and hey, why not? i was amazed at the attitude difference between his blog post (extremely angry, implying that tumblr SOLD it to pitchfork and did not care of his interests) and the letter he sent to tumblr (polite, to the point). whats more, it doesn't look like he waited to hear back from either party before the letting loose the slander and finger-pointing. did he even email pitchfork for an answer???

hopefully tumblr will release some sort of official position on it like pitchfork did. and 3.5 months is not very long, but the its not like the posts were actually anything important accorindg to that screen shot. maybe tumblr should add a new feature that shows a message on login to let the user know that their domain may be reclaimed.

Ha! This is fun.

ROUND I

Pitchfork: Within 10 minutes, a tumblr representative responded: “Hi, Megan. Those URLs are now free. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with. Thanks for using Tumblr!”

Tumblr: "After you failed to respond for 72 hours, we released the domain."

Tumbledore: "Tumblr stole my subdomain"

ROUND II

Tumblr: "There were not “several posts,” on that account, there were zero."

Pitchfork: "...the last post that had been made was on November 18, 2009, and said, “This filter is obsolete.” [ includes screenshots of posts]

Tumbledore: "I had several posts up and I followed 28 people with the account."

Someone is wrong on the internet!!!

There is only 1 contradiction: the part about notifying the original owner through email. There is really no way to verify this since the screenshot of the email may have been forged.

The part about having 0 posts was explained by Meaghan all the way at the bottom of the page. The RSS feed shows deleted posts.

I found this comment thread amusing though. http://meaghano.com/post/393246405/tumbledore-ive-run-pitchf...

> The part about having 0 posts was explained by Meaghan all the way at the bottom of the page. The RSS feed shows deleted posts.

The screenshots that Pitchfork Media posted would have to be RSS screenshots because that is the only place that you can access the old posts right now, no? Pitchfork Media had no reason to screenshot the old pitchfork.tumblr.com before this whole drama-fest started.

I think that it's telling that Pitchfork Media also dealt with a 'Megan' (the same person?). To me, it's equally likely that this Meaghan was the person that deleted the account and turned it over to Pitchfork Media, and now she's trying to cover her ass by saying that the person was notified, and that the blog was completely empty. Has she really stated anything that could not be a lie on her part? This whole thing looks like it could just be a he-said-she-said deal.

[edit] The best I can come up with is this:

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:HRNL2z4fQcwJ:pitchfork....

The Google cache for his last blog post was fetch on Nov 24.

Well, Pitchfork claimed that the subdomain was handed over by tumblr 10 minutes after their inquiry. That would imply that it would have been impossible for tumblr to have sent a "72-hour notice" mail.

Also, it appears that the person was actively using the account as a filter (following people and reading news), so the "inactive" part seems to be a contradiction as well.

i dont care what he was using it for. he registered it. he should be able to sit on it and let it die.

thats my opinion... taking it away under any circumstance is sketchy in my opinion.

Bottom line- who here will put anything they care about on Tumblr now?

Exactly.

Is pitchfork too poor to get a blog on their own domain? Why they gotta be taking domains from other people?

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