

Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International - rms
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/

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Tichy
"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give
promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero"

The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think
that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then
proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about
the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consumers" as they are called
these days.

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joezydeco
Hey, corporations are people too! The Supreme Court said so! Be nice!

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nfnaaron
Actually corporations are more than people. This case is one data point.

I can't imagine Harman Int paid facebook so much money to be noticable when
it's added to their pile.

We (many of us) just assume that a corporation has a right, stronger than an
individual, to a name in a medium.

If I were human Harman I would have responded to corporate Harman that, thank
you very much but facebook has already stolen my name on your behalf, and cc'd
the LA Times in the response.

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joezydeco
I wish the article was more clear on which came first. I was under the
impression the friendly email was sent, _then_ the URL was stolen after a
short period.

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bensummers
We already have a good system for establishing identity on the internet.
They're called domain names, and they have reasonable ownership semantics and
established case law.

I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea to use a URL on someone's
platform with ToS allowing arbitrary revocation and reassignment.

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ohashi
Domain laws are pretty unreliable and disproportionally favor big companies
filing complaints. It's a VERY broken system.

EDIT: just wanted to add a case, lookup nissan.com

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qeorge
Even better, goto nissan.com.

Despite their best efforts, Nissan (the car company) has never been able to
get it from its rightful owner. Sounds like the system is working to me.

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ohashi
The guy couldn't use it commercially for many many years. That was one of the
_better_ outcomes.

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MicahWedemeyer
Really? This much surprise and outrage? I agree it sucks, but how can we all
feign so much surprise at Facebook doing this? They've never pretended to be a
good, or even neutral party.

Yeah, stupid that they claimed it was a TOS violation, but the whole "our
system, our URLs" policy should be pretty clear to anyone who signs up. That's
the gamble you take when you put down roots in someone else's system.

I just hope that it gives people pause before putting any marketing dollars
behind their facebook vanity urls.

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BRadmin
From FB's ToS regarding usernames:

 _If you select a username for your account we reserve the right to remove or
reclaim it if we believe appropriate (such as when a trademark owner complains
about a username that does not closely relate to a user's actual name)._

As an aside, where is evidence that shows (or even suggests) that Facebook
actually sold the URL for $$?

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jacquesm
It looks to be pretty circumstantial, but the fact that Harman International
contacted 'Harman' to try to persuade him to turn it over 'voluntarily' in
return for some beads and mirrors, and that within a very short time after
that his vanity url is taken back leaves open only two possibilities:

    
    
      - facebook has indeed sold the name
    
      - facebook gives trademark law preference over personal names
        (they may have been threatened to be sued, but then they should
         have simply stood up for their users).
    

Facebook uses 'impersonation' in their terms of service there is no reasonable
case that could be made the 'Harman' is trying to impersonate 'Harman
International', it is simply his name.

Facebook is first and foremost a site for _PEOPLE_ , not companies so the
rights of users should always go before the rights of incorporated entities.

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BRadmin
I'm going with the latter. They offer a guy some free swag, so they must have
come up with enough dough to pay-off FB to do the deed for them?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but based on just that I don't see how TC can
run such a headline... FB's actions being deplorable or not.

~~~
jacquesm
> but based on just that I don't see how TC can run such a headline...

You mean techcrunch would use a headline that is not 100% the truth simply to
get more viewers?

'Honour' and 'Techcrunch' have not been used in the same sentence other than
this one since they posted twitters internal documents, 'because otherwise
someone else would have'.

Using a misleading title is small fry on that scale.

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jacquesm
Corporation puts bottom line ahead of its users.

Color me surprised, really I am totally stunned.

The reason the phone company can't use your phone number the minute you cancel
your contract is so that there will not be a large number of people dialing
that number and getting someone else than the one they expect.

Since 'the real Harman' has probably done more than his share to promote this
particular URL he's not only screwed out of his vanity url, he _also_ has
spent time and effort promoting it.

After a t.o.s. violation that kills an account that account should simply be
declared 'dead', at least for a significant amount of time.

Re-sale or re-use should be expressly forbidden.

And t.o.s. violations should always be accompanied by the specific rule in the
t.o.s. that has been breached.

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andyking
_The reason the phone company can't use your phone number the minute you
cancel your contract is so that there will not be a large number of people
dialing that number and getting someone else than the one they expect._

Last time I took out a phone contract, I spent the first few months fielding
debt collectors, university tutors and various other people looking for the
number's last owner.

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jacquesm
Popular guy :)

It depends, from country to country and from company to company it changes.

The nastiest bit about that is that you end up fielding 'air time' charges in
some countries as well. In others you don't pay for incoming calls at all.

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jvdh
"I am thhe emerging media strategist"

That's funny, I wonder who is emerging, him or the media. ;)

~~~
mahmud
It was probably a TechCrunch typo, and it has already been corrected.

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d0nk
Reminds me of what my last isp did to me with email, to an extent. Every
account got 5 email addresses. The default was the bill payer's first initial,
last name. I had one of the secondary email addresses of my first initial,
last name too. One day, someone with the same first initial and last name as
me signed up, and they assigned him my address and removed my access. That was
really frustrating since I had that as my primary email account at the time.

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abdulhaq
A bit off topic but Facebook sends fake emails to me, claiming to be from my
wife's Facebook account, inviting me to join Facebook. She actually doesn't
use her account and only set it up as a test, months ago. I guess they can use
paid-for email logs farming the to: and cc:, to associate her to me. Anyone
else experienced that?

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brown9-2
Did she ever sign up for the "see email contacts of yours are on facebook"
thing?

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abdulhaq
She might have failed to untick some option when registering I guess - but
that wouldn't give FB the right to impersonate her would it? The email said :
The following person invited you to be their friend on Facebook: <wife's
facebook account name>

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mark_l_watson
It really just matters what FB's terms and conditions are. Who really owns so-
called vanity domains (really, not a domain at all)?

Still, if this story is true, this reflects poorly on FB.

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nobosh
Nice save facebook

