tothrowaway

> [Doppel] filed a trademark infringement complaint regarding his site, claiming to be working on Flock’s behalf. Doppel says that the site is using the trademark “FLOCK SAFETY” without authorization

Warning to anyone who receives these types of notices from Doppel. They are a defamation-as-a-service company. If the frivolous trademark notice doesn't work, they will follow it up with a letter to your host claiming that you're running a phishing website. If your host is lazy and paranoid (like OVH), they will block your IP immediately, and you'll have to deal with the fallout. Expect the letter to be sent on a Friday afternoon too.

Unethical IP lawyers spew that nonsense all the time. Failing to enforce your trademark against a tiny alleged infringer has no effect on your trademark rights at all.

Almost no chargeback will ever go to arbitration though. So it's not like this new fee is the reason behind the change. Patrick Collison is (probably) just exploiting his position in the market to squeeze more money out of merchants.

I sure wish there was more competition in the payment marketplace. During the early Stripe years, I thought Patrick would be above this nonsense (even without competitive pressure). Not so!

I think it's more about running up the legal bill of the defendant. It costs virtually nothing to include a spurious claim in a complaint (it can literally be a sentence or two). The defense has the burden of getting the weak claim dismissed with pages and pages of arguments (because they don't want any chance of it slipping through).

The bar for a "shotgun" complaint is way too high in the legal system.

That's been the case for a long time. I made a big stink about not being able to fill out my census survey to my congresswomen. It got nowhere.

This post caught my attention because I do the same thing! Yes, it absolutely works.

I would agree. I'm the defendant in a (frivolous) trademark infringement case and my firm (which does work for the EFF) averages about 2 hours per (substantial) page, at a rate of $500/hour. I do wonder in the back of my mind if I'm being taken to the cleaners...

1. Is it possible to cancel without contacting support?

2. Is it possible to refund the last charge within 3-7 days if the account hasn't been used (without contacting support)?

3. Do you send an email before each recurring charge?

Small businesses do not routinely send pennies to the UAE. Countries do not have unlimited resources to chase after you. The law cannot be universally enforced, so the government has to pick and choose its battles. And they aren't going to bother with you. You need to be concerned about the tax law in the country you reside and have citizenship.

Can you share which company your $5m policy is with? I'm considering umbrella coverage, and $25/month is a crazy good deal.

If you are the target of automated copyright trolling, inspect your server logs whenever you get a notice. Some troll bots will (surprisingly) use an honest HTTP user agent so you can easily block it.

Careful. Southwest is litigious about this.

https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2012/10/23/stanford-grads-we...

See also Southwest v Boardfirst https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.15...

I've done this a few times, and was pleasantly surprised it actually worked. It's a lot easier than going to court.

Someone tell this to the US Census Bureau please. They send you threatening letters demanding you fill out a survey ("Your response is REQUIRED by law"), but then block every non-US ISP from accessing it. I wrote my congresswoman, the US Digital Service (it was a hail mary) and Kevin Deardorff (the "chief" of the particular survey I have to take), and no one cares about the millions of Americans abroad.

I could probably sign up for a VPN service and take it, but then again, they could be blocking VPN services too.

> Friedman wrote, “implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.” (Of course, Kennedy had said that Americans should not ask what their country could do for them. But never mind. It’s that kind of book.)

It's hard to take this article seriously when it makes a glaring mistake analyzing the first two paragraphs of Friedman's book. Friedman was critiquing both statements in Kennedy's famous line ("Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society.")

The secret is JiffyShirts.com (or any other blank wholesaler). You can buy 3 or 4 tees for the price of one from a normal store. Buy a bunch of different "models", try them on, see which fits the best, and then order more. There is some variance in sizing if you buy the same shirt again, which is annoying. But at least it doesn't matter much at $5 a shirt.

Indeed. The problem may even be worse with other systems.

There are other trivial ways to prevent unsophisticated card testing. For example, I have a card tester who visits my checkout page every day via a direct link (he must have bookmarked it). Little does he know, the real checkout page is now located at a different URL. So I just reject every transaction at that page.

My opinion: It isn't worth it to do anything (especially because you only have a common law trademark). Even if you had the federal trademark, it might not even be worth it. A trademark dispute can easily be $100K and you won't get your fees paid for unless the case is particularly egregious.

Of course, someone will tell you talk to a lawyer. Getting legal advice from a member of the legal cartel is a crapshoot. There are so many terrible lawyers out there who won't hesitate to recommend legal action for every little thing even if it has zero chance of succeeding (I am currently on the other end of that). So proceed with caution. Do your own research on common law trademark rights before you talk to a lawyer. That will help you weed out the incompetent ones.

I would keep an eye out if they file a trademark application (check TESS periodically). You'll want to oppose it. That should "only" cost you a few thousand dollars.

I was down for 10 minutes (almost exactly). But it's back up now.

> Ultimately, the court’s CalECPA analysis proved fatal to the defendants’ case. Despite ruling the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, the court refused to suppress the evidence, finding the officers acted in good faith based on a facially valid warrant.

Incredible. This is like the government version of a corporation laundering its bad behavior through an undercapitalized shell company to shield it from liability.

That window between the last two steps is a killer. PayPal Checkout supports iDeal, and I get complaints about how PayPal took their money, but their account (on my system) was never setup...because I never got the money/notification from PayPal! It drives me nuts.

PayPal seems to refund them after a certain period of time automatically, but it takes a while. Naturally, the customer is anxious and mad at me, and not likely to risk checking out again.

I switched to Porkbun after Namecheap threatened to disable my domain in 24 hours when some shady reputation management company (izoologic) claimed a page on my site was phishing.

I don't know if Porkbun would handle that situation any better, but I take comfort in the fact that I can drive to their office and talk to a real person in an emergency.

Filing a complaint with the Washington AG has worked wonders for me: https://fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/ComplaintForm.as...

Logitech, Kaiser and Capital One all suddenly changed their tune when the AG simply forwarded my complaint.

Moving to another domain will make things worse (at least, for a while). New domains are flagged as suspicious just because they're new. I suppose you could prime the domain before moving to it, but I would just play whack-a-mole with the filtering software.

Unfortunately, the reevaluation request forms are hard to find, and some companies (like Zscaler) don't even have one. So they just casually defame your business and you can't correct the record.

You should disclose that you're the owner of that website. Your post comes across as an advertisement.

Not an expert, but it seems like it is true. Quoting page 11:

""" When a revocable trust owner names five or fewer beneficiaries, the owner’s trust deposits are insured up to $250,000 for each unique beneficiary.

This rule applies to the combined interests of all beneficiaries the owner has named in all formal and informal revocable trust accounts at the same bank. When there are five or fewer beneficiaries, maximum deposit insurance coverage for each trust owner is determined by multiplying $250,000 times the number of unique beneficiaries, regardless of the dollar amount or percentage allotted to each unique beneficiary. Therefore, a revocable trust with one owner and five unique beneficiaries is insured up to $1,250,000. """

I use B2 and Wasabi because I don't like relying on a single cloud provider. Files are uploaded to both. OpenResty (Nginx+Lua) sits in front to provide caching, and the logic for deciding which provider to pull from.

Wasabi gives you a free bandwidth allowance equal to the number of bytes stored per month. When I use up most of that, I start pulling from B2. And of course, if one of them is down, I pull from the other.

It's more time up front to build instead of just relying completely on GCP/Azure/AWS. But I don't have to worry as much about spontaneous account terminations destroying my business.

JScript is Microsoft's JavaScript that can run server side. I guess it was a thing in the late 90s and early 00s. The "Click Commerce" web CMS/framework was largely written in it. They pivoted from commerce to medical research, and the software is still being used by dozens of institutions.

This is similar to how I do things, minus the CPA and swap Square with Gusto.

> you need to be your own tax "champion"

Exactly! This is why I stopped using a CPA. I tried a few different people over the years, and I felt like I was doing all the heavy lifting. One year, I had a guy not deduct my payroll taxes (which I caught), once I was told I could fund two 401ks with the maximum amount when I was working for my company and another (nope), and once they told me I couldn't deduct my personal health insurance premiums because I paid for it out of my own pocket (the IRS lets you treat it as a business expense in certain cases).

The unforgivable one is that no one ever told me to pay myself ~28% of my distributions as salary (if reasonable) to optimize the QBI deduction (this saves thousands of dollars per year for SaaS businesses). I just happened to notice that when reviewing the QBI worksheet, and then Googled it to confirm. The CPA didn't have a clue.

Yup. The remote worker visa application was simple enough (I'm self employed). I live in a nice apartment in Tartu for 800 euros, 40 for internet, 30-100 for utilities, 70ish for health insurance. I've got a gym, store and pizza place within a few blocks. Most people speak some English. Estonians definitely look grumpy (no offense), but generally lighten up when they realize they're dealing with a clueless American.

My main complaint is that the remote worker visa gives you the right to stay in Estonia...and nothing else. You don't get an Estonian ID which is necessary for all sorts of things like setting up internet, getting a local phone number, or getting books from the library, and you can't get a bank account to pay your rent. LHV, Coop and SEB all claimed I could open an account with just my passport and lease agreement, but denied my application (after paying several hundred in application fees). The e-resident card is basically useless.

The tax situation is unclear. You become a tax resident when you stay over 183 days. But all US citizens are tax residents of the USA, so the USA-Estonian tax treaty kicks in with its tie breaker rules. Because I have a house in the USA, it means I would be treated only as a tax resident of the USA, so I would only pay taxes there...I think? But I can't imagine why Estonia would offer this visa program if they weren't getting something out of it.