So you think you own your Twitter name?
ac31004.blogspot.com
ac31004.blogspot.com
The surprising thing here is not the obvious injustice or the callousness of the Twitter team. Rather, it's that people think they somehow have a right to use Twitter's services and accounts like they were their property. The same goes for people who build businesses on Facebook and every other monolithic site. I think users need to understand that they are on someone else's turf, and they are subject to whatever the company decides to do. There is no reasonable expectation of fairness, or of free speech for that matter.
That's why building a business on Twitter is foolish. I hear it's done successfully all the time, yet people have to understand this is a very shaky foundation. We're not even Twitter's customers. Advertisers are Twitter's customers. Nobody should be surprised about this, in fact it's a miracle "outrageous" stories don't happen more often.
Takeaway: Having a Twitter name is not a free substitute for having a presence as a legal entity.
The key is this: if this new organization GIRLGEEKS has a trademark, they have a trademark. What's Twitter's motivation to challenge that in court? None whatsoever. If the original @girlgeeks wants to challenge it, she's welcome to do so, but the point is that trademark law does exist, a trademark was granted (even though I think it probably shouldn't have been) and somebody has to foot the bill if it's going to be contested, and as much as I'd like to think it's the person with the money, even I don't think that's Twitter's obligation.
Now, if it were me (and it was, for years, at Despammed.com), I'd say, sorry, that name is taken unless you get a court order, leaving the ball in the court where it should have been to start with. Twitter is obviously more craven than I am, but then I was very small and not concerned with paying a staff.
The point is, if you want rights to a name, just using it on some free service is sadly not enough to get them, and complaining that a large organization is not being fair is no substitute, even if true.
If you have a consulting company named "thisisourname" and I have a muffin bakery called "thisisourname", we can both have trademarks on that name without any conflict.
I was pointing out that the domain name process also does not require that a domain owner surrender a domain merely because someone asserts a trademark claim (I can use another's trademark, in cases where I make it clear I am not causing confusion in the market).
I think we are in agreement about a better policy for Twitter; it should let users keep their account names unless required to transfer them via some legal process. I think it would be OK to show some sort of banner on a disputed account's home page, so that visitors are not confused about the true owner - but I don't think it should be just redistributing them.
So, yes, the "nickname honor code" is an unwritten rule, well it's more of a guideline, a ...suggestion really. The only true rule is rule one, see above.
My larger point is that people think Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Gmail, etc... are basic infrastructure services, and that they are entitled to use them. They pay their ISP fee and believe that includes a Twitter account and the right to use it. I suspect many can't tell the philosophical and technical difference between generic email and Facebook anymore. This leads to a false sense of entitlement and an unreasonable expectation of being treated fairly.
Legally speaking, Twitter is probably okay here, but if Facebook or Google did the same thing, I would expect they could be legally liable. Google's TOS for example states:
>We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, including appropriate encryption and physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data.
It's reasonable to assume that people are using Gmail as a verification email for other services, so they could actually be breaching their own TOS by giving someone's username to someone else, since when you've used a Gmail account for even three months, it becomes personal information that should be protected.
Ethically speaking, all services should be doing due diligence when reassigning usernames. This isn't IRC, all of these services are marketing themselves as identity gateways, and reassigning identities without cause borders on outright fraud. In this case of course, they're actually acting as they normally do, trying to make sure that online identities match legal identities, so it's more understandable, and probably protects them from allegations that they're facilitating fraud. But your authoritarian system is ethically dubious, and furthermore unlikely to hold up in a court of law.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/NumberPortability/
Now you are paying for the service and if you stop paying for service it can go to anyone, but that's not the carrier's decision. Telephone numbers are federally regulated.
The Wikipedia article on telephone numbers also suggests that the bureaucracy managing them tries to avoid reassigning disconnected numbers if those numbers are still receiving regular calls. And this makes sense, since people receiving messages intended for someone else is bad for operators, and bad for the users.
As others have noted, there may even be regulations [1] that apply here, though Twitter seems pretty safe from a legal perspective, even if ethically they're in the wrong.
[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002511----...
you seems to take a mental image created in your head by marketing for a contract fine print.
>Ethically speaking, all services should be doing due diligence when reassigning usernames.
Ethically thinking God shouldn't have created the human race, at least he shouldn't have released such a buggy early alpha version.
Representations given to a user ("marketing") can constitute an implied contract, or at least a cause of action if they aren't fulfilled. It'd be one thing if Google said up front that their service should be considered unreliable, and may be discontinued at any time, or user accounts even arbitrarily given to third parties. But if they claim otherwise up front, that can be at least somewhat legally binding. Not sure how a court case would turn out, but they aren't automatically in the clear.
Twitter has how many tens of millions of users? Twitter doesn't need to be an arrogant, corrupt gangster corporation to screw over people many times a day. With the number of complaints they get, I can only imagine the sort of pressure they feel to develop some sort of standardized process for dealing with these issues with an amount of perceived objectivity.
This seems very much like the iOS App Store situation: any system that is designed to make decisions at a sufficient rate (and at a sufficiently low cost) is going to perpetrate injustices. I am quick to flip the bozo bit on people who see dark conspiracies in these sorts of things.
Seriously: you should have to earn the usage of your name. Before this stupid world where poorly thought-through websites allow people to, for the remainder of all time (or until the company dies), reserve a name, multiple people could use the same name as long as they didn't cause confusion to the populace (at which point it should be expected that the courts become involved, as that is a matter of fraud).
Regardless, if you want to take the definition of "first == fair", GIRLGEEKS had that name in 1999. Everyone is making it sound like "if you don't get a trademark on your name someone else can take it from you", but that totally ignores the fact that they'd have to get a reasonable trademark /before/ you established your name (and conflicts with your use class, which I believe this situation did, and causes confusion, which I can see this situation also doing).
In this case, the thing people should be bothered about is that GIRLGEEKS has a "DEAD" trademark that was cancelled for its use class: they don't have a trademark, and Twitter made a mistake in honoring it.
key element in your sentence is unwritten.
yes, it's annoying. but no, you have no right when you're sharecropping. and no, and it's not really clear that the @girlgeeks girl has any more right to that name than the @GIRLGEEKS organization. The larger problem here, the elephant in the room perhaps, is the notion of someone "owning" a name or word, combined with the fact that two or more people can simulateously or independently decide they both want to use that name. One party might be the first to create a Twitter account with it. Another party might be the first to create a Facebook page. Another to create a domain name. Another to write song with that title. Another to write a book or story with that title. Another to release a code project with that name. And so on. Inevitably, there will be conflicts. It sucks, but until/unless we have some central globally-unique-and-authoritative Registry of Names For Anything Anywhere with clear written rules, then, this is just going to keep on happening and happening.
Me? Old news. Knew about this flaw prob at least 25 years ago.
[note to self: there's a startup idea and/or political initiative in here somewhere]
As for people somehow thinking they have the right to use Twitter's services like property - this is actively encouraged by Twitter themselves. They have an entire website dedicated to teaching its users how to develop their accounts as official representatives of their organizations/businesses/brands. You can check it out at http://business.twitter.com/.
The main issue here wasn't that the original owner of the @girlgeeks account assumed that they were entitled to ownership of the username. It was that the name was taken away from them without any opportunity to dispute Twitter's intentions, nor were they given any due notice, so that they may inform their followers and communicate alternative plans to keep in contact with them. They were simply cut off.
Those _are_ reasonable expectations.
> As for people somehow thinking they have the right to use Twitter's services like property - this is actively encouraged by Twitter themselves
I know. But that's not reality, that's marketing.
> The main issue here wasn't that the original owner of the @girlgeeks account assumed that they were entitled to ownership of the username. It was that the name was taken away from them without any opportunity to dispute Twitter's intention [...]
In my view, one follows the other. Allow me to clarify: the outrage over Twitter's behavior comes from the (mistaken) perception that Twitter must provide a service to its users and that it has to do so in a fair and balanced fashion. This sense of entitlement, however, does not correspond to reality. In reality, they can do whatever they want.
I don't mean to defend their actions, personally I don't think this is a nice way to treat users, though there may be legal issues that leave them little choice which we know nothing about.
> Those _are_ reasonable expectations.
Companies certainly want you to believe they are in order to gain their users' trust, but that doesn't mean we should forget who is holding the strings.
The article doesn't just serve as an account of someone who was wrongfully burned by a company who couldn't care less. It serves as a warning for anyone else looking to foster a relationship with their community/fanbase/customers via Twitter.
> I'm not arguing that Twitter is bound to any laws of decency, or due process. I am just debating that they should be.
This is where I think our opinions diverge. I don't believe it's reasonable or even possible to bind websites like this legally. But even if it was possible, I assert it's a very bad idea. The justice system in any country is extremely fallible and exploitable, and there are too many laws regarding the net already.
Instead, I think we should move back to a web that operates like a federation of services, as opposed to just giving the reins to a select few companies who make a living from selling advertising. Monolithic sites are great incubators for new ideas, such as Twitter and Facebook. But they're a terrible idea both technically and socially for safekeeping the world's data.
>I know. But that's not reality, that's marketing.
If you offer something in your marketing that is accepted by the person receiving your service then working directly in opposition to implied expectations of that offer strikes me as a breach of [implied] contract, and certainly contrary to trust and honourable action.
> I know. But that's not reality, that's marketing.
When marketing is based on lies, that's called fraud.
When we think of traditional marketing, we think of a company selling a service, marketing it to its customers.
When Twitter encourages you to build your brand on their service, is that really marketing to you? You are not Twitter's customer. They provide a free service. The advertisers are Twitter's customers.
Is it fraud to "market" something in a not-entirely-honest manner to someone who is not and will not be your customer? (Seriously, I'm asking.) I'd consider it morally wrong to lie to someone like that, but is it actually fraudulent in the legal sense?
EDIT: Also a related question: when Twitter says "build your brand on Twitter," are they even marketing to you, the Twitter user? Seems like maybe they're telling potential advertisers (remember, their real customers), "hey, we're getting people to build their brands here, that should be valuable to you!"
IANAL, but my reading of UK law is yes. The relevant law is section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 -- http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2
Fraud is (I paraphrase) lying to get money. It doesn't matter if the person you're lying to isn't the person you're getting money from.
If Twitter reassigns your username to someone else, it sucks for all the reasons described in the blog post, but I find it hard to see potential security issues or the potential for identity theft. Confusion, yes, but hardly anything more serious.
So yes, I would hold Google to a higher standard than I would Twitter.
I suppose also an examination of their respective Terms of Use documents might shed some light on what you can expect and the standards you should hold, as well.
From this particularly cursory perusal I do not think that it raises any flags.
I do not, as a matter of order, hold a blogs name against it.
The google results for "girlgeeks twitter" are different from the twitter account. (e.g. Twitter lists no personal name, google does. Twitter has no lists, google does) This difference in information supports the idea that the twitter account has recently completely changed.
However, it does make a twitter @name a whole lot less certain though.
It would be in Twitter's best interest to have a policy for disputes so there is no uncertainty.
Users think that the site is granting them this right when they sign up and select a name. I don't see it as "entitled" thinking at all. It seems to be a reasonable assumption, more so for paid services than for Twitter or Facebook.
There's a saying: "If you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product."
Honestly though, the medium suits Bieberfest a lot better than it suits meaningful conversation. It's tough to have a good conversation in less than 140 characters. I'm not surprised they went with the angle that's better marketing/money, either.
Unfortunately, we don't have an analogous mechanism for instant message traffic. Actually we do, it's called a jabber server on a domain that you registered.
But we don't have a way to publish our short, trivial thoughts to the world, and still maintain ownership of our identity. But, really, we do. It's called RSS.
People should publish their "tweets" via RSS feeds from their registered domain name. You could "follow" people by subscribing to their RSS, and you could "tweet" with a front end on your phone/computer that looks exactly like your current twitter client, but is linked to your RSS feed.
An open source library that made all this easy could be written, for the geeks, and for the non-geeks, there would be services that popped up that would host for you, but since the domain name is still in your name, you can move to another hosting provider at will.
Now, how to get everybody to switch?
Plenty of micro business owners have found this out the hard way on sites like Etsy or eBay, for instance - they might think that the shop is theirs, and put the URL on their business cards, promote it at craft shows, on their cars, in expensive promotional graphics. All it takes is one idiot admin to close your account, and it's gone (Etsy in particular has notoriously poor practices regarding closing customers accounts, going back for years. There are plenty of of customer service horror stories there. eBay has a long history of NARUing sellers also). I've heard stories about flickr recently, too, deleting accounts - people lose photos, messages, contacts going back years and the company responsible simply doesn't care.
The only thing to do is to have your own domain, own website, use open source software, and know what you're doing technically or be close to someone who does. The only people who can take that away from you is courts or the government. This is also why we need networks that work like Diaspora vs. ones that work like Facebook.
"Just for the record, I have personally sacrificed personal savings and a full time salary for the last few years for this cause Girl Geeks. I certainly did not do any of this for self-promotion or gain and believe in supporting those who need it 100%."
She done a pretty good job of promoting herself in the response.
She should never have contacted Twitter to commandeer a @username. Saying you did it on "[advice] by legal councel" is _not_ an excuse. She can't hide behind that. Everybody makes sacrifices in life for their causes. That is not an excuse. Lots of people are passionate and genuine. That is not an excuse.
I'm glad she apologised. If she genuinely wishes to resolve this, I've got a suggestion. Return the username.
I'm ignoring the question of whether Twitter should be a medium for private communications.
Sure, but I bet you'd be pissed if N. J. Harman, LTD demanded that your change your name to avoid confusion, and could enforce their demands.
More to the point, there are laws governing what names you can trade under. For example in the UK I think (this isn't my field, info could be wrong/out of date) sole traders and partnerships can legally trade under a personal name - so if your name was McDonald you could run a restaurant under your real name, but you'd probably have to be careful to always carefully list it as J. McDonald (London) or similar to avoid infringing McDonald's trademarks.
Consider the Nissan Computer Corporation website: http://www.nissan.com/
Or read about when a company called GAIL tried to take gail.com off a woman named Gail: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006...
Now obviously girl-geeks is not a personal nickname, nor apparently was it previously the name of any sort of registered company or other entity, more of an ad-hoc sort of thing. Given that someone later formed a company with this name and trademarked it, should they get the rights to that Twitter name? Would they be able to take girl-geeks.com off a previous owner who was using it in good faith?
My suspicion is that they wouldn't, and Twitter's behaviour is bad netiquette.
It boggles my mind that anyone would seriously need to ask that question.
Entitlement much?
Yes, it would not be nice of them to do it. Yes, it could be bad for their image and ultimately even their business to do it. No, they shouldn't do it.
But they can, and it's not illegal.
If it's just shutting down an account, probably true. But if GMail started giving people's email accounts to other people, which would allow other people to start receiving their bank statements, business correspondence, password resets, etc., I don't think it would be an open/shut case. Courts would likely want to do something about it, and there are various legal theories that are broad enough to potentially be employed, e.g. detrimental reliance on representations, tortious interference, or contributory negligence.
Consider an extreme case: someone is using GMail for their business. Google cuts a deal with their competitor to intercept the business's email and send it to the competitor. Would this be legal? If Gmail accounts and the email in them are unrestricted Google property that it may dispose of as it wishes, then it would be; Google can of course sell its own internal email to anybody it wants. But my guess is that this scenario wouldn't be legal, despite the fact that the business is not paying Google for the email account, and Google owns the servers that are receiving the mail.
Considering that the expectations here seem pretty reasonable, I'd personally rather the latter.
If only the decentralized Twitter proposed a few years ago would have been built, we (users) would have more control about our identity, probably it is a little bit late now.
The original owner could have pursued similar protection and avoided the problem.
Trademarks cost money - international protection costs quite a lot of money.
Do Twitter accept any registered trademark, like if I've a registered trademark in Afghanistan (say) will they protect me against someone with the same mark registered in the US or in Europe?
It seems that Twitter aren't bound to give a RTM holder the name but the person using it could be sued if they're using it to trade and not making it clear that their goods&services do not originate with the RTM holder.
Filing is expensive ($3-400), but it's a thought considering how many of us have online identities that are legally unprotected.
Is there a better way to state this? Should I not state this at all?
what would have been your decision in such situation if you were Twitter Inc, i am just curious ?
Why should the government get whitehouse.com - they are entitled to whitehouse.gov. Are you saying governments should have precedence over the priority of other entities?
Since we are discussing here, an international trademark system, I think the properties of the domain registration system are much preferred to the properties of the fragmented and ill-defined international trademark process.
Are you saying that a .com should have precedence over the priority of a .org, .edu, or .co.uk? Should Harvard Book Store (harvard.com) be somehow entitled to @harvard over Harvard University (harvard.edu)?
Examples:
Live with Regis and Kelly
Windows (or XBox) Live
Live (the band)
BBC Radio 5 Live