Can you see me on Marc’s Voice
This is a test to see if posting on the PeopleAggregator still displays on Marc’s Voice.
This shows off our ‘OutputThis’ web service.
Final post on O’Reilly and trademarks
I am so tired and bored of this, but I owe it to the audience to reflect a bit.
The obligatory NYTImes article has appeared, Ian Betteridge is still arguing how rightful O’Reilly is, FactoryJoe (Chris Messina) let it rip and made it clear where he stands as he states ‘BarCamp is a community mark’.
Denise Howell also left a thoughful comment which points out that I wouldn’t be too pleased if someone started calling themselves Broadband Mechanics - one day. But this isn’t that sort of situation.
Web 2.0 conference - to me - is not the affair that John Battelle so thoughtfully puts on (which I actually think is the best show around - after Gnomedex.) It is an explanation of a conference about a certain kind of technology, era and attuitude. That’s what I’d expect to find in Cork.
But I don’t agree with Denise about someone taking the term digiital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) and running with it. I’d love that - I just hope they give me some credit after their first $100M. Its more than Adam Curry gave Dave Winer.
We also have a law professor’s opinion (Eric Goldman) and a lawyer practicing trademark law opinion (Marty Schwimmer) on the whole thing.
So hopefully all the evidence is in place and we can now all just shut up and wait for Tim to get back - and apologize.
Trademarks vs Copyrights vs Patents
Continuing the conversation, Ian Betteridge writes (in a comment):
Marc, look into the history of trademark laws and you’ll find all the answers you need. Trademarks laws are designed to protect consumers, not to ensure a revenue stream for companies. They’re designed so that no one can make crappy vacuum cleaners and call them “Hoover” (except, Hoover themselves, of course
), thus fooling you out of money and incidentally protecting the company from damage to its reputation.
Copyright, on the other hand, is designed to benefit the creator of works by granting a limited-term exclusive license to the work to them. It’s completely different both in origin and in scope.
So let’s get back to the whole “Web 2.0 Conference” thing. O’Reilly/CMP have spent time and money building up the good name of the “Web 2.0 Conference”. People go to that conference because they know it’s well-run with interesting speakers and they’ll meet interesting people. Suppose someone comes along and just decides to create a conference called “Web 2.0 Conference London”. Because the names a similar, there might be an expectation from people that it’s an O’Reilly conference - but it turns out that it’s badly organised, badly executed, and has idiots talking at it. Now, the “Web 2.0 Conference” brand is damaged, and anyone who went along expecting something like the O’Reilly/CMP conference is going to be very unhappy.
That’s the difference. Trademarks aren’t about “owning a concept”, as many people have jumped into saying lately, but about ensuring that one company can’t pass off its product or service as that of another. People are confusing patents and copyright with trademarks, because they’re all types of intellectual property, without actually thinking things through and realising that they’re all different, and have different roles and functions.
No one sane - even in the anti-IP camp - thinks trademarks are a bad thing. You want that bottle with Coca-Cola on the label to be Coke and not SchmoCola made from ground up wombat shit, right?
UH - actually I’ll disagree. I have come up with ideas that someone else previously patented - and that’s why I don’t like patents. I have come up with creative expression which was a conglomerate of previously copyrighted materials (otherwise known as mashups or remixs) and I was told that I was breaking the copyright laws.
And I have come up with names and concepts - which were trademarked - so I couldn’t use them. To me its all the same - government trying to put some structure and control over something that should flow more freely in an open marketplace environment.
Lets go back to your ‘London con’ example. If the folks in London put on a shitty conference - which was called Web 2.0 something, then that doesn’t reflect badly on the term Web 2.0 - it reflects badly on the idiots who put on THAT show. As we’ve seen over and over again - shows like COMDEX, Demo, Agenda, TED, Syndicate, Digital Identitiy World, etc. have all been changing hands, management and structure recently. Conference attendes have to decide - almost on a yearly basis - which show is what, how well its put on and if its worth attending.
So that’s the way of the world and it is this exact point that the O’Reilly lawyers think they’re better than us.
“Ah hah - tricked you - we trademarked Web 2.0 - so NONE of you can use it - ‘cept us!”
Well tell that to the 80M hits in Google.
You know as well as I do (and certainly Cory does too) that the term Web 2.0 belongs to all of us. Period. And any more argument over its ownership just sinks O’Reilly into the pile of excrement where this conversation started from.
The term Web 2.0 is built on the backs of 1,000’s of entreprenuers who are creating it - as we speak. Web 2.0 means “we’re all working together this time, instead of the VCs driving us all towards an IPO!” So unless its not clear - THAT’s what we’re all complaining about - the nerve of O’Reilly to actually claim that they own the term.
That’s what we’re complaining about. They don’t own the term - regardless of what trademark application was filed and what Dale Dougherty thinks he thought up. Others were thinking the same thoughts then - as well. And just because some law protects O’Reilly - doesn’t make it right.
You state “O’Reilly/CMP have spent time and money building up the good name of the “Web 2.0 Conference” - well excuse me that’s not the case. Michael Arrington, Matt Mullenweg, Dan Farber, Mary Hodder, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Phil Windley, Andy Baio, Robert Scoble, Kaliya Hamlin, Jeff Jarvis, Brian Dear, Steve Rubel, Tom Coates, Arnaud Leene, Seb Paquet, Alf Eaton, me - 1,000’s have spent the time and energy building up that term - not JUST O’Reilly. To say different insults us.
Why don’t you just admit the truth - that O’Reilly scammed us, that O’Reilly is in the business of coining terms, standing up on stage and pontificating about the term and then monetizing the term. Plain and simple. That’;s what O’Reilly builds - hype - not products. Their products are the shows and books - which are propagated by OUR products and services - which the aggregate make up Web 2.0. Truth and honesty are the Web 2.0 way and its time that O’Reilly and it’s supporters just come out and and be truthful.
But we’ll have to wait til Tim gets back from his vacation - for that.
UPDATE: Prior art of the term Web 2.0 - dating back to 1999 [via Ewan via Loic]
Raju Bitter on the PeopleAggregator
Please read this excellent post by Raju Bitter (of Berlin and the German version of StructuredBlogging fame) on our strategy, my history and what its all about.
Thanks Raju.
Couple of details corrections:
- it was called MusicWorks - not SoundWorks
- don’t forget that we also put out Maze Wars+ and GraphicsWorks/ComicWorks!
- I’m sorry the white paper on the ‘new paradigm of tools’ is down, we need to get it back up!
- Besides joining a group, one should be able to CREATE a group as well
- one concept that Dan Farber cut me off on (in our podcast together) - is that there are three levels to this Identity Hub game:
>>>> the authentication layer
>>>> Import/Export
>>>>The vocabulary you mention in your post (create relationship, send message, create/join a group, post content)
- unless its not evident, the publishing portion of PeopleAggregator IS the StructuredBlogging code!
- Don Hopkins will be building our OpenLaszlo tool interface
- its not JUST broadband that is changing everything. Its also the values of Web 2.0/the Live Web, all these web services with open APIs are now available, the new business models are coming into practice and the fact that we’ve all learned a few lessons since the implosion
But besides that - its a fantastic post!
Thanks Raju!
I’m in
If I could remember long enough what I was just thinking through my ADD clouded rose colored glasses, I’d like to ask Steve Gillmor if I could suck up to him, help guide him through the corridors of ineptitude and participate in anything his Attention has long enough to focus on.
James Joyce may have invented stream of consciousness and Italo Svevo turn it into something Italiano, but only Steve Gillmor can play up to Ron Bloom on one hand and piss off Esther on the other in such acerbic tune. Steve lives in the valley that lies between a shrug and I love him for it.
Steve - NOBODY - gets comped to PC Forum.
What happens is that Esther invests in the company and you take that money to pay to get in. Just ask Mary.
Cory was off the grid - so my apologies to Cory
I accused Cory Doctorow of not speaking up regarding Tom Raferty getting C&Ded.
Cory later did - and so to the timing of said response, I was wrong. He was traveling and as I often find myself, we are not able to get on-line - for awhile.
Turns out that I had sat there and waited for Cory’s reply, assuming it would come. First I thought that he must have already done so - so I went backwards a few days to look for it. The fact that he replied is reassuring.
The issue of how much money O’Reilly is making off of the term Web 2.0 would be an interesting fact to reveal. Maybe folks would understand more how this game is played. Remember it was Levi Strauss who made most the money from the gold rush.
The fact that Cory doesn’t see the similarities between the injustice of trademark laws and copyright laws is disappointing.
That’s where ths conversation needs to go:
“How are trademark laws similar or different from copyright laws?”
“How can we diss one while embracng the other - or vice versa?”
“When does idealism of what a law SHOULD be overtake its current day interpretation or how lawyers use it - to no good?”
That’s what I’d rather talk about right now.
Besides Tim O’Reilly is off the grid right now anyway. Once he’s back, we can get it from the horse’s mouth.
And yes - this post will have no links in it.
Hire this man!
WTF? Someone at Buzznet fucked up.
How could you NOT keep Tony Pierce - one of the smartest, most talented, gifted, kick-ass bloggers out there - master with the camera and wit?
Anybody who can party with Heather Graham and mention me in the same blog post - is my kind of guy.
Apparently he’s available for hire.
I’d hire him if we had the money.
His title would be “party meister, host to the stars, killer blogger - dude”.
An important decision reached
Dave brings up some good points about the Apple decision- though I’m not sure how much we can really trust the courts.
Here in California we’re for gay marriages and legalized marijuana - but the courts are going along with the fascists in Washington - on a lot of these issues.
I really don’t care about Apple - as they have tried to put me out of business on several occasions - so I’ll NEVER EVER own any Apple product - ever again.
But its great to see them lose in court. Warms my heart on a chilly Saturday morning.
The only question is: “will they ever learn from this?” Dating back to the days of Guy Kawasaki - Apple was always bullying developers, pushing us around, telling us what we HAD to do.
I remember in 1994 - when they finally figured out who their customers were - creative types. It literally took them that long to figure it out. “Welcome” is what I said.
They thanked me by ripping off the Apple Cafe proposal I had made to them - and doing it themselves - without us.
Ever wonder why Jobs says people should buy aniPod every year?
Cause that’s how long they last.
So I sure hope everyone knows how hypocritical Apple is. Think about that - the next time you boot up. Microsoft at least is honest about their sliminess.
My response to Cory’s response….
Even though there are FAR more important things to talk about, I’d like to officially respond to BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow’s response regarding O’Reilly sending a C&D to my friend Tom Raferty.
1. Cory says: “The dispute seems to have been resolved amicably” - puuuuleeeeeze! Just go read what Tom has to say about that! I wouldn’t say its resolved - at all. This just makes Cory - who has my highest respect and is one of the TOP spokesman for our world - just look silly.
2. Cory does close with a nice statement - which hopefully clues us all into the NEXT time we jump on some buzzword du jour, like Ajax or Desktop Publishing. Marketing terms have little or nothing to do with reality. They are used to explain complex ideas to normal people. So my term “digital lfiestyle aggregation” is nothing more than my attemnpt at explaining ideas I’ve had cursing me - since the early 90’s. Some people call it ‘Personal Infoclouds’ - others ‘dashboards’. Whatever. But don’t turn these terms into religion and debate their existence. That’s what’s happened to Web 2.0. Old timers like me can see through this bullshit. Its time that everyone else woke up to this - as well.
3. Tom just had a kid. Leave him alone for no other reason then he’s staying up all night, being a dad!
4. I’d like to hear Cory’s comparison of the copyright and DMCA laws versus trademark laws. How are they similar? How are they different? I’m searching my brain for how it’s different that a creative person can copyright their work (with all sorts of CC licenses, DMCA repercussions, DRMs attached, bullshit implied) and be told “sorry - I can copy this and not pay you” - while Cory doesn’t seem to find any fault in a trademark system which wishes to ‘protect” somebody’s OWNERSHIP of a term - such as Web 2.0. I find these two legal issues - VERY similar - myself. Is it the free market place that rules or government? How much do you respect law? Cause if you disrespect copyright but embrace trademark - well isn’t that just a tide bit - shall I say - weird? Sure we can’t go around murdering people or stealing their shit, but stealing copyrighted materials seems very similar to encroaching on somebody’s trademark. No?
5. Perhaps Denise Howell could weigh in on that one - as well.
6. First thing that jumped out at me - as I clicked on the ‘permalink’ button to get the URL of this post: “who owns the term permalink?” Any C&D’s sent out on that one?
7. Cory sure likes O’Reilly - that’s for sure. He uses terms like “creating amazing, industry-shaking ideas” and “amazing, wonderful gift for popularizing hard ideas and for explaining abstruse technology in catchy ways”. But I think he’s missing the point here. This is not about what O’Reilly has done, but what Tom Raferty wants to do. And O’Reilly’s company is fucking with him. Tom’s group is a non-profit - and O’Reilly is a company which can afford LAWYERS to send out C&Ds.
8. Probably the MOST disingenuous part of Cory’s response is the statement: “The downside of creating amazing, industry-shaking ideas is that they become embedded in the popular consciousness.”
WRONG!
I’m sorry Cory - that’s complete bullshit and or just a completely naive statement. You know as well as I do that the UPSIDE of creating popular terms is that you get to MONETIZE THEM! HELLO! Conferences, books, magazines, speaking engagements, investments, schmoozing! How much MONEY has Tim O’Reilly made off of Web 2.0?
GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!
To say that poor Tim has to suffer the horrible downside of his cute little term - well as Dave says - it has something like 79,400,000 hits! Hell, we can just round that off to 80M hits! What a horrible suffering fate O’Reilly has to bear!
9. Cory closes with:
The O’Reilly Conferences’ unique selling proposition is that they rewrite the rules of the industry and coalesce meaning out of the stew of ideas floating around the field. If you’re going to name the next direction the world will take, you have to be prepared for the world to take that direction. Industry shifts become public property — or rather, things that are privately controlled can’t shift a diverse industry.
That means that O’Reilly needs to choose whether it’s going to retain control the word “Web 2.0″ for conferences, or retain control over the shifts that created the Web 2.0 phenomenon.
I think being able to call the shots is more important than being able to own those calls.
. which is the proper thing to say - so thank you Cory - for that.
10. The fact that Cory didn’t link to me, or Tom or any of the other criticism - I think plays his card out truthfully. What I wished was that Coiry would say “I’m on Tim and Batttelle’s side on this one” and just be done with it. He does make some good arguments for ‘fair usage’ - which is great. I just wonder why he doesn’t mention the shit storm, or my public demand for a response from him.
Blogging is about linking - that’s certainly one thing we don’t have to tell Cory Doctorow. And by Cory NOT linking…. well that says one thing - he either doesn’t respect us or me, care for us or believe in us. Oh well.
I still dig BoingBoing.
End of the week - links
Speaking from one who was branded ‘biased’ by the so-called ‘democracy writers’ of Wikipedia - I have to say I agree with Nick Carr. When I hung out with Jimmi Wales recently - even he and Joi Ito (who was also there) admit that their bio pages were branded biased. This whole thing is bizarre - but what it AIN’T is democracy. I’m STILL waiting (4-5 months later) for some sane person to come by and UNBRAND my page with that absurd bias claim. Is that what democracy is? Well all I can tell yah is that neither Joi or Jimbo’s pages have that ugly NOT NEUTRAL emblem on the top of thier pages. I guess democracy is kind of ’subjective’ then - right?
Condolences go out to Robert Scoble and family on the death of his mom.
Serial Killers or Inventors of Programming language - take the quiz.
I’ve been tracking Tracy Swedlow for years and the development of the Interactive TV industry. So check out this article on CNN. Man I sure hope CNN gets their act together - as I’ve always felt they would lead the world forward in this domain.
The scene was in Edinburgh this week - at the WWW2006. Man - I can’t wait to insert ourselves right smack dab in the middle of this mashup world. See yah at Mashup Camp July 12-13. PeopleAggregator is all about mashups and bringing social networking to that world.
Its great to see Thomas Vanderwal - taking his ‘Personal Infocloud vision - to the market. I can’t disclose too much - but he’s working on an actual product. This and the ‘live microcontent’ meme is gonna change our world.
Don Norman - an advisor to BBM - raps out why Google’s so-caleld simple interface - ain’t so simple. Others agree.
Happy Birthday to Euan Semple.
Ryann Hodson, Phil Torrone, the list grows……
More bubble blather. AIMpages rocks - not necessarily JUST because its great software, but because it represents a fundamental shift in one of the major players of our world. Between AIMpages and the open AIM APIs - AOL has proven they’re willing to play ALONG with us, instead on top of us.
Congrats to Dare and team. MSN Spaces is now the largest blogging platform out there. 100M unique visitors.
Congrats to Mark Cuban - and he’s blogging the whole thing. I want to hear a podcast of one of those pre-game rallying sessions!
Even former a-list bloggers have to suck up - sometimes.
Martha Stewart goes social network. More evidence of Context driven nets. All who will want to inter-connect to other contexts.
This dude has got it wrong - BloggerCon IV does NOT cost $100 - its free! But its a coolio list - anyway.
Ashish raps out what’s special about PeopleAggregator - as opposed to Tony Perkin’s GoingOn - which I designed (but Tony bastardized) and Ashish’ team - built.
Phil has been building our PeopleAggregator APIs. So he’s found new lifeforce in XML-RPC. Thanks Dave! Just a little reminder - we (BBM) we the FIRST company to build a UI - using XML-RPC - back in Feb. 1999.
