ARM wrestles assembly language guru's domains away, citing trademark issues
theregister.com
theregister.com
* 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. :-)
Probably settling because they're a teenager without the resources to fight a legal case adequately, but that's just me guessing.
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.
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?
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…
Now it's just another SUV for the same class of people that buys Range Rovers or BMW's.
Do I need to get their permission to mention I have a Mulberry ϕ on my desk?
P.S. I am not a lawyer.
OMG, it took me a second to figure it out, but this is the perfect new name for the service. Just brilliant and hilarious.
musk brought this on himself with the smiling poop emoji responses to press requests, what are we supposed to think?
https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/m31v1z/south-park-it-s-...
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.
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.
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.
It is time to embrace RISC-V.
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.
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,core...
1. https://muxup.com/2023q1/commercially-available-risc-v-silic...
2. http://krimsky.net/articles/riscvsbc.html
3. https://hackerboards.com/?cpu_architecture=RV64
4. https://codeberg.org/20-100/Awesome_RISC-V/raw/branch/master...
5. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starfive/visionfive-2
It really makes me curious what if any limits there are to the power of trademark holders.
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
That's what their lawyers say, anyway, and why would they lie?
nice pun
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
This was massive overreach by ARM. And frankly it was really inappropriate of the hosting provider to interfere with the websites.
Yet it seems to me that is is pretty unclear that this is an open and shut case of trademark infringement. This appears to an example of fair-use to me as there is nothing her that would indicate any potential for confusion to the market or harm to the brand.
Part of problem here is that the incentives support over enforcement, there is little to no legal consequence when companies go after fair use and a lack on enforcement does carry risks of eventually losing the trademark.
However, that doesn't justify ARM's actions here. There are plenty of ways that ARM could have approached this that would have protected their trademark without the loss of goodwill from someone they have a valuable relationship with.
Taking this approach is indicative of laziness and indiffence.
Funny things, they registered a riscv domain in the past to bad mouth RISC.
What are the chances that this whole mess gets regular mention in future conference appearances.....
Automatic system or not, the end result would have been the same. A trademark comes with legal implications.
Of course, that applies to Arm too, right? https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/10/arm_riscv_website/
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?"
Who are you referring to here? It's sorta confusing.
But someone made this, https://www.arm-basics.com/ nice work!
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.
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.
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.
Calling it negligence is a judgement, not a wish.
And that's very much how things are. Go into any court room and argue "it's okay that someone suffered material damage as a foreseeable result of my actions because I saved money" and see how it goes. Corporations maximize profits within the limits of still carrying out their obligations.
"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.
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".