chimpo13 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Monster Cable uses bogus DMCA again (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @02:53AM

chimpo13 writes: "As it says on Techdirt, "It's no secret that Monster Cable is a notorious abuser of intellectual property laws often just to try to get any other company using "Monster" anywhere in its name to pay up. Of course, it's normally trademark law that it abuses. However, it looks like it may be abusing copyright law as well. The website Jaxed, which is a meta-classifieds search engine (it searches Craigslist, eBay and a few other sites via a single interface) recently had its entire site taken down after Monster Cable filed a DMCA notice against the site." Jaxed still isn't letting people search electronics. They say, "Due to a DMCA copyright notice received on Nov. 2nd 2010, we are currently filtering all Monster Cable products from our listings. Unfortunately, the filter is excluding other listings that may not contain Monster Cable products.""

Submission + - DMCA, Univ of Minnesota, pair Networks vs Me

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Monday August 10, 2009 @06:48PM

chimpo13 writes: "My ISP, pair Networks, tells me they'll remove my entire site if they get another DMCA request about my posting 17 out of 600 questions from the MMPI. It's the same issue that slashdot has posted before. My problem is, the same attorney, Carl W. Covert, Jr. from NCS Pearson, Inc., has sent my ISP two DMCAs about the same page, two months apart, and pair hasn't had a customer who sent in a non-compliance response.

With my first DMCA, I went to Chilling Effects and used a boilerplate response. I had a copyright attorney check it before sending it. The DMCA says they have 14 days to sue. I asked pair if it was settled after 14 days went by and only received the "we received your response and will respond". I figured if they ignored that, then the issue was settled. After two months, I got another DMCA.

pair removed my page for 14 days and sent an email saying that if they get another DMCA they will remove my entire site. My site covers a Star Trek band, Sacramento punk rock history, and a blog about riding a crappy old motorcycle round the world. Now I'm in Korea, trying not to fight with an ISP that I was happy with, over 17 questions. I know the easy thing is to edit the single page, and I let most things slide, but issues like this are one my windmills. Any suggestions? Is what pair is doing to me even legal?"

Submission + - iResQ (iPhone repair): No refund if you bitch (boingboing.net)

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @03:09PM

chimpo13 writes: "As BoingBoing points out iPhone repair company iResQ: No bad-service refund unless you delete blog posts complaining about the bad service. Apple's authorized iPhone repair service, iResQ, advertises same-day repair and overnight shipping. When Lindsay's iPhone screen shattered, she sent the phone to iResQ, and two weeks later it still hadn't been fixed. After she emailed to complain and posted the email to her (lightly trafficked) blog, iResQ agreed to eat the expedited shipping charge and part of the bill. However, now they're threatening to "rescind the refunds" unless Lindsay takes the blog post down."

Submission + - Paying people to say nice things about a company (nokilli.com)

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Wednesday February 04, 2009 @05:45PM

chimpo13 writes: "BoingBoing.net writes about Rob Cockerham once again. Rob posted an article about Cash4Gold offering him a few thousand to change his story describing how sleazy they can be. Ripoff Reports changed their story presumably after being contacted by Cash4Gold's PR guy. The PR guy who offered the money says he's innocent. He was busy fishing for dolphins when the story broke."

Submission + - The First Fifty Years of the Internet (vanityfair.com)

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Wednesday June 04, 2008 @04:11PM

chimpo13 writes: "Techdirt posts to an article from Vanity Fair about The First Fifty Years of the Internet. Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign. Each breakthrough — network protocols, hypertext, the World Wide Web, the browser — inspired another as narrow-tied engineers, long-haired hackers, and other visionaries built the foundations for a world-changing technology. Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb let the people who made it happen tell the story."

Submission + - MagicJack's evil EULA (boingboing.net)

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Monday April 14, 2008 @02:43PM

chimpo13 writes: "Boing Boing posts about MagicJack, a cheapie $20-a-year internet phone service, comes with a shriveled and shaking devil EULA that is hidden from the consumer. In short, it not only has one agree to ads with its paid-for system, but claims that the ads are necessary for it to work. It will also snoop on your calls to target ads more accurately, and has you sign away your legal right to take it to court if it defrauds or otherwise harms you. When you access MajicJack's instant web help page, a bizarre series of "compatibility tests" take place first, reporting lies like "Your MagicJack is functioning properly" even if you don't have one installed. Even the "look how many people came for a free trial" counter on the homepage is a fake, a javascript applet that increments itself automatically"

Submission + - Spoke.com is selling your address book

Submitted by

chimpo13

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @06:07PM

chimpo13 writes: "Phil Yanov talks about how Spoke.com is stealing your soul. Spoke says that it launched it's free service in August and that they have added 3 million new names since August. How did they do that? It was easy! To get access to Spoke's "free" service, you must install the Spoke toolbar. The Spoke toolbar then copies all of the information from your address book into the Spoke database. It's at this point you should be able to smell the burning sulfur. Spoke can sell those names, titles, companies, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers (listed and unlisted), passwords and PIN numbers to direct marketing organizations."

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