
A discussion about the breaking of the Internet - mproberts
https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of-the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d
======
inerte
Not sure why kik thought this post would make them look better. While "Bob's"
choice of words is soft and creepy-friendly, his request wasn't. The npm
escalation after Azer gave what they wanted, a price for "the hassle" of
changing the project name, really shows what they really wanted is the name
for cheap. They might say "unreasonable", but it really means "unreasonable to
us".

It also shows they don't know how to negotiate at all, but that's tangential.
You don't escalate to threat and then let the other side anchor the price.

And while if I was Azer I would have renamed the project (because someone else
has a trademark on it), if I was kik I wouldn't pretend that bringing lawyers
and being unable to negotiate is "a polite request", because imaginarily "I
don't mean to be a dick"

~~~
vlribeiro
> It also shows they don't know how to negotiate at all, but that's
> tangential.

They tried to. But how do you negotiate with a guy that doesn't want to
negotiate and calls you a dick?

~~~
flowersjeff
Don't know where you see that fantasy? In the chain that kik published
(probably the one that they thought made them look the best - mind you), I saw
a load of passive aggressive/weasel words. Where's the offer?

If I call you up and bug you to do something for me (a stranger mind you);
then it is up to me to come right out and explain the value proposition. Not
hem and haw, dancing here and there - hoping that you will just drop to your
knees, just because. And then when you don't - I can then get mad and threaten
you? What world do you want to live in? That one sounds insane to me.

------
vulpino
This is ludicrous.

> "hahah, you’re actually being a dick. so, fuck you. don’t e-mail me back."

This is the developer the community gathered behind? Not only is that
incredibly unprofessional (to say the least), kik is a registered trademark.

And - I've said this before, but I will repeat it here - unpublishing all your
modules from npm ("liberating") is such a selfish and childish move,
especially when so many people depend on your modules. That's the behavior of
a preschooler. That's not "power to the people," as Azer put it in his
original post. That's just an attempt to show that Azer has the power to bring
chaos to the ecosystem.

People are so quick to jump to the defense of someone who is having their
"freedom" suppressed, without knowledge of the situation.

~~~
howeyc
Since when do people have to be 100% professional in all their dealings 24
hours everyday in order to be in the right?

~~~
outworlder
Maybe not professional at all times, but what about polite?

~~~
brazzledazzle
I think threatening someone with lawyers is exactly what it sounds like: a
threat. This is not polite behavior even if the text was written in a polite
manner.

------
thruff
Under close reading, I can't help but wonder if this was all just a big
misunderstanding. What sticks out to me is this line from the third email:

    
    
       ... if you actually release an open source project called kik, our trademark lawyers ...
    

But that makes no sense! The "open source project" Azer is talking about is
already out in the open[1]. "Actually release" is an extremely weird way to
talk about that, right?

That makes me wonder if when Bob saw "Sorry, I’m building an open source
project with that name", he read, "There is a larger project called 'kik' I'm
working on, maybe including a web site, marketing materials, other developers,
SEO..." That would raise a flag, right?

So he tries to point out, quite reasonably, that they'd really have no choice
but to try to protect their trademark in that case. They'd have to go after
the domain name, the Twitter handle, anything else that was confusing
consumers about what "kik" refers to. Wouldn't it be easier for everyone to
change the name _before all that stuff is launched_?

But of course Azer doesn't have plans for any of that, and he didn't pick up
on the hint, so what he hears is "Contrary to our claim to be friendly, we're
planning to get our lawyers involved to shut down your npm module." And his
response is, understandably though maybe not rationally, "Fuck you."

And here we are.

[1] [https://github.com/azer/kik](https://github.com/azer/kik)

~~~
thisischris225
What makes me wonder is that nobody mentions the fact that they'd have a
really hard time to fight for the 3-letter word "kik". A quick search in the
USPTO's Tess database or WIPO's ROMARIN shows that there are way too many
registrations under this name to make protection of a word mark likely
(disclaimer: I'm very far from being a trademark expert, just interested in
all the shenanigans some companies try to play under the name of
patent/copyright/trademark laws).

Edit: Even worse, they don't seem to have a word mark registered. It's a
design plus words mark (so basically, they protected their logo, not the word
"kik").
[http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:1rt...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:1rtlwo.3.14)

------
howeyc
Am I the only one that doesn't have a problem with Azer here? So what if he
wasn't super professional. He's got a guy invoking "lawyers will come and mess
with you if you don't do this for us." That same guy then goes to npm
afterwards and says "please, Azer wont do what we want."

I'd be a little pissed too.

~~~
metaphorm
I agree with you. Azer's response was pretty normal and understandable
considering the circumstances. I too would be extremely annoyed if a corporate
lawyer threatened me.

------
cjbprime
> We're sorry for creating any impression that this was anything more than a
> polite request.

This is some truly epic weasel-wording, surely. It is literally impossible to
read "our trademark lawyers are going to be banging on your door and taking
down your accounts and stuff like that" as not being "anything more than a
polite request". That’s not how language _works_.

Maybe you mean to say that you regret explicitly threatening Azer with the
full force of your lawyers?

~~~
Isofarro
It isn't a threat though, the company has no choice but to enforce their
trademark when they see it infringed. Otherwise they lose the right to that
trademark. That's the mess trademark law is in, fail to enforce it once, and
that will risk any future trademark action.

~~~
gnud
If they were honestly worried about trademark, they would have asked him to
put a 'Not affiliated with Kik interactive, inc.' in his readme. His project
is still on Github.

They weren't worried about trademarks, they wanted the NPM package name.

~~~
outworlder
Which, perhaps, could have been arranged, were not for the childish responses?

~~~
cjbprime
No, Azer's wish was to be left alone to continue to use kik for the open
source project he created.

~~~
herbst
He offered it to them for $30k according to that medium post. Thats something

------
Guyag
Funny how there are two sides of a story. Azer's representation of his message
'hahah, you’re actually being a dick. so, fuck you. don’t e-mail me back.' as
'My answer was “no”' is disingenuous.

~~~
jdbernard
Yeah, I don't know. Azer was very rude, and yes, the Kik guy was very polite.
However, if you strip away the tone of the messages, it pretty much boils down
to this:

"We want this name. Will you sell it to us?"

 _" No"_

"We are going to take this name by force if we have to. Will you sell it to
us?"

 _" No"_

"What would it take for you to sell it to us?"

 _" 30,000"_

"NPM, give us this name or we bring in lawyers and use legal force."

~~~
Guyag
I'm no lawyer, but if Kik's assertion of 'because you have to enforce
trademarks or you lose them' is true then I understand their actions - that's
just the world we live in.

It was decent of the Kik guys to try and amicably sort it out before calling
in the lawyers given the situation, though admittedly it's also cheaper for
them this way. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect confusion between
Kik's product and Azer's node module - the names are identical. NPM's stance
is kind of covered by their policy[0], point 3.

[0]
[https://www.npmjs.com/policies/disputes#description](https://www.npmjs.com/policies/disputes#description)

~~~
ubernostrum
_I 'm no lawyer, but if Kik's assertion of 'because you have to enforce
trademarks or you lose them' is true then I understand their actions - that's
just the world we live in._

To which I say:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4bnrn4/a_discu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4bnrn4/a_discussion_about_the_breaking_of_the_internet/d1aw3d7)

------
maxerickson
I'd have a really hard time saying with a straight face that the _Bob Stratton
(Mar 11, 11:26)_ message was in keeping with it being nothing more than a
polite request.

I guess I think the expectations of the dev aren't very realistic either, but
I don't see what the goal of this post is, the messages pasted onto it don't
paint the picture that the first part of the post tries to say exists.

~~~
uuoc
The second Bob Stratton response (the one implying that lawyers will rain fire
and brimstone down on Azer if he does not comply) was so far from a "polite
request" that it implies something is wrong with Mike Roberts understanding of
"polite" for him to say what he did.

What Mike Roberts should have done, upon seeing Bob Stratton's second email,
is walked over to Bob's office/cube/desk/where-ever and had a very long heart-
to-heart talk with Bob about his incredibly poor handling of the situation.

~~~
maxerickson
The language is amiable enough, it just isn't in any way a request, it's a
statement that they believe their trademark is being infringed and that they
will enforce it.

~~~
uuoc
It is a overt threat of lawyers attacking if he does not comply.

Nothing "amiable" about it. It is a threat, pure and simple.

~~~
Guyag
It's not unreasonable by any means.

------
bluedino
When they asked the question, _Is there nothing we can do for you that would
compensate you for the hassle of changing the name?_ , what was a reasonable
response?

>> Yeah, you can buy it for $30.000 for the hassle of giving up with my pet
project for bunch of corporate dicks

Obviously that wasn't the correct response. What should he have asked for,
that Kik would have complied with?

"Send me a loaded MacBook Pro"

"I'll take $250 Starbucks gift card"

?

~~~
ajoy39
probably leaving the "corporate dicks" part off would have been enough. Maybe
the don't fork over the $30k but they'd probably have made an offer at least.
Calling them "a bunch of corporate dicks" at the end makes it clear you're
just throwing out what you think is a high enough number to tell them to fuck
off.

~~~
bcruddy
That's a negotiating strategy. Not calling them dicks, but when someone
pressures you to make the first offer and you don't know what ballpark you're
in, toss out a really high number and see what happens. In this case the
response was thinly-veiled legal threats.

------
eridal
> I found out about this problem like a lot of you, when our builds started
> failing because we use the extremely helpful JSCS. Through a long chain of
> dependencies, JSCS relied on left-pad@0.0.3, which was removed by the author
> yesterday. Our team was confused at the time as well.

I love the irony on this

~~~
scotty79
They forgot that internet does not run on law but on good will of capable
people.

------
Mandatum
I think Azer should have just said no, waited for npm to force the
rename/removal and then pulled all of the repo's. To me, this thread reeks of
corporate damage control.

Also it should be stated that mproberts spent the last 6 years ladder climbing
at Kik and I can understand that this likely feels like his baby.

But Kik's self-entitlement in this case is abhorrent. The package has existed
for years and imposing themselves on the developer the way they did is sad,
but not surprising given the current patent/trademark climate.

It's clear that npm has also done some cleaning, they've gone and tried to
remove all evidence of the kik npm package being available in the first place.
Even the single "kik" page on npmjs.com has been removed from the Wayback
Machine. Talk about thorough.

~~~
greglindahl
It is not removed from the Wayback Machine. It was never in the Wayback
Machine.

~~~
Mandatum
Ah, I stand corrected. Cheers Greg.

------
awesomerobot
So Kik's point is essentially: "We were really polite about threatening Azer"

------
striking
It's sad to see someone behave so poorly over something like this.

But I can't blame his anger for "breaking the Internet." The blame for that
goes squarely on npm, who allow unpublishing of modules.

What if you... couldn't do that?

~~~
debacle
Most other packaging systems use an owner/name model for package naming, which
would have prevented the entire debacle.

~~~
striking
Really? Which ones? I've only every worked with ones that allow you to
register particular names, except for Vim and how it downloads packages from
GitHub.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I know Meteor pushed all of their package management to a namespaced system:
[https://atmospherejs.com/](https://atmospherejs.com/)

------
timdorr
Wow, pretty rude response by Azer. I get being anti-corporate and all, but
there are human beings involved here. A more polite response might have gone a
long way.

kik could have named it something like 'kik-api' or use a private namespace
('@kik/api'), but it seems like Azer just goaded them into a legal course of
action.

~~~
gnud
Yes, there are human beings involved here. The sort that contact you out of
the blue and tell you "I don't want to be a dick", and then threaten to have
"our trademark lawyers [...] banging on your door and taking down your
accounts and stuff like that ".

And you think Azer is the one being rude?

------
thedz
I think it's important to note that none of this was Kik's fault, really. Kik
isn't the first company to send a trademark email to an open source project,
and likely won't be the last. This merely shone a light on an area of NPM that
was problematic.

The resulting behavior and side effects in NPM is unfortunate, but I'm pretty
glad it happened so that it'll hopefully get addressed.

~~~
aporetics
Yes. It's not Kik's fault.

Yes. I'm glad that we have a moment when we can try to discuss and influence
how this problem will be addressed.

But... (maybe I'm reading this wrong) what, exactly, is problematic with NPM?

@thedz, I'm not really picking on you, but the words you've used have made it
clear to me that there is an assumption underlying this issue that's pretty
common. The assumption that this conflict is a problem with NPM, i.e., with
open-source.

Is that really true? And if it is, should it be?

Let's hypothesize that for the most part the "corporate world" and the "open
source community" keep to themselves, have their own concerns, and don't
conflict. -- When they do conflict, why does anyone assume that corporation
should get its way, that their concerns are more legitimate?

It's as though we believe that, unless you get paid for something you do/make,
it's not yours and you don't have any rights to it. We should think about
that. And then we should look at the thing that Kik did to try and draw Azer
into their world (onto their turf): they offered to pay him for it. They tried
to to transmute something he was doing for free into something that belongs to
the world of money.

I agree that it's not Kik's fault. They're just a company. Or rather, "it" is
just a company. You can't expect it to act like a person. -- But this just
hammers home the point that I'm trying to make, that these are really and
truly different worlds colliding. Its not a big thing vs. a small thing. Its
two different kinds of things. And we can't just default and use the terms and
ways of the bigger thing to decide how to mediate the conflict. That's not
right. That lazy. At best. Really it's just cowardly. A failure to think. A
failure to believe that anything has meaning.

(Turns out there's a whole phenomenon studied in historiography (that's the
academic discipline that studies how history is made) about how when two
parties go to war, it is inevitably perceived through the lens of power and
technology, -- specifically that the side with better technology is in the
"right". Hm.)

In this context, it's uncanny that the discussion has centered around "who was
polite" and "how much money". That's not really what this whole conflict is
about. It's about whether we value a person's labor, and whether we're willing
to devalue it if a company says "jump".

~~~
rifung
> But... (maybe I'm reading this wrong) what, exactly, is problematic with
> NPM?

I think the problem is that people should not (except in rare circumstances)
be able to just remove packages. They should be immutable and have versions
associated with them so that your builds are reproducible.

Sure I think that in some cases you should be able to have them removed like
if there is a security vulnerability or something but I don't think some guy
being upset should be sufficient.

------
herbst
That whole thing is crazy, but what sickens me the most in this article is
this part:

> Isaac: In this case, we believe that most users who would come across a kik
> package, would reasonably expect it to be related to kik.com. In this
> context, transferring ownership of these two package names achieves that
> goal.

How is that remotely a reason? Is a .com domain a trademark now?

------
lucisferre
A trademark is not required to be defended against any and all usages.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-
not...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-
companies-tirelessly-censor-internet)

------
kazinator
A character string like "kik" should not be trademarkeable, period.

It's an obvious spelling play on a common dictionary word in standard English,
of ancient origin. Should "thru" and "nite" be trademark names?

And it's just too darn short.

~~~
dTal
I think it's entirely reasonable. Trademarks are not like copyrights or
patents - they don't have to be novel ideas or anything, and they don't do
very much. Trademarks exist to protect a brand, and that's it. For example,
"Subway" is a perfectly normal, historical word, and it hurts no one for
Subway Sandwiches to have a trademark on it; I can talk about it here with
impunity, I can write novels about subways, I can even start a business called
"Subway" as long as I don't sell sandwiches. Seems okay to me.

More broadly, if you don't allow English words or spelling plays on English
words, what's left to allow? Chinese? Line noise?

------
baldajan
You can say Kik was a dick, but they were actually super nice about it. They
own the name kik in world trademark offices (this is a long and expensive
process), they, under law, would be considered a famous mark and get the
highest trademark protections, and they wanted to release a package called
kik. If they didn't get Azer to change it, they would lose their entire
trademark (it seems silly, but true).

I actually have received a nasty Trademark C&D in the past from NY attorneys
(I live in Canada), and being told by our lawyers that it's actually on the
"friendly" side of C&Ds they've seen. So what Kik did, and not get lawyers
involved was actually the best way to handle it. Just look at the C&D and
convo between Pair and Pair on TechCrunch.

Azer was actually the one being a dick, responding with "fuck you". You
wouldn't expect someone to name an npm package called Disney or Apple or
Microsoft or Intel.

Side note: if Kik were really being dicks, they could have sued Azer and
forced him to appear in court, and Azer would likely lose. Also, kik also has
a unique spelling and Kik owns Kik.com, it makes it harder for Azer to argue
"look at square" (where square is too generic of a word). Trademarks are
weird, and unless you're a trademark lawyer or been sued, they may come across
as stupid, but they really aren't.

------
flowersjeff
Kik (the company) are some shady ass m/f'ers. Yet the open source programmer
is getting all of the lashes for telling them off? "He could of used a more
grown up tone...???"

Also - NPM really dropped the ball. Shows how little they care about the
developers that make them relevant in the first place.

Lastly - at the end of the day Azer's holding a big bag of jack....And has had
his work effectively stolen (I'm referring to left-pad). How does this
incentivize anyone to put their work in this resource going forward?

Azer is the hero of this story - make no mistake. He refused to make way for a
big corporation, his only mistake was trusting that his choice of software
host would have his back. Shame on npm and shame on kik.

------
dvhh
Curiously the "square" package linked by Azer has been removed (by npm or the
contributor ? ).

I would be curious of how many package are being affected by these ripples and
will end up being removed/renamed.

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/square](https://www.npmjs.com/package/square).

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PL8U_6...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PL8U_6u5TIAJ:https://www.npmjs.com/package/square+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=jp)

~~~
Macha
Has it? Still there for me,

does come with this warning though:

This project is discontinued, better compilers (i.e. gulp.js for instance) are
around and should be used. Use at your own risk.

------
nikolay
kik actually looks worse after this post. So, they kept bringing up the L-word
(lawyer), when they clearly know they don't have a case. Basically, they
really are dicks.

------
_greim_
Definitely could have been handled better on both sides. Kik should have just
bluntly offered $N (where $N was however much it was worth to avoid bringing
in lawyers) and bluntly offered it up front. Hinting around like "is there
something we could do for you" seems disingenuous.

------
nurettin
Like threats on your well-being and earnings is not "being a dick".

None of us should be subject to such behavior no matter how many trademarks,
patents, consumers or money they have.

They should name their package kik/dick-kik so it "won't be confused" with
other packages. Ever.

------
polotics
I find it quite masterful the way Bob introduces a certain level of language
with his opening sentence: (quote) "We don’t mean to be a dick about it". Azer
totally takes the bait and the rest of the email exchange descends into
reusing that word a lot, quite rude really. So glad I managed to avoid to have
to code in the mess that is the Javascript ecosystem so far. Oops I got to
start on an Angular project soon :-p

------
hysan
Ok, I know some people like the openness presented here by Kik and don't like
Azer's response, but I just wanted to point this out from the perspective of a
teacher who works with children from kindergarten to the 9th grade. If you get
a short response like this as the first reply:

> Sorry, I’m building an open source project with that name.

This indicates that the person feels an emotional attachment to the name.
Also, since the response is short and to the point, it is clear that they
don't see any logical reason to give in. When responding to this, you __need
__to use empathy (honestly, something severely lacking in a lot of these types
of conflicts in the programming world). So rather than responding with this:

> We don’t mean to be a dick about it, but it’s a registered Trademark in most
> countries around the world and if you actually release an open source
> project called kik, our trademark lawyers are going to be banging on your
> door and taking down your accounts and stuff like that — and we’d have no
> choice but to do all that because you have to enforce trademarks or you lose
> them.

A good, proper response would have been something that:

1\. Explains that Kik is their company's name and why not being able to use it
would put them in a hard spot. Yes, it would be reiterating the point from the
first email, but objectively, that first email wasn't exactly clear. No
company links, no explanation of what this "important" package is, etc.
__NEVER __expect someone that you are asking a favor from to go out of their
way to figure out what you are saying. That 's your responsibility.

2\. Don't mention trademarks or lawyering up. That's a power play and all
teachers know that you don't need to wield the authority stick most of the
time. With something like this, it's worse because you are threatening a
person's livelyhood. If that's your go to response, you will 100% get
instantly shut out both emotionally and logically. Expect compromise to end
right there.

3\. When asking for a favor, cause this is a favor, and trying to compromise,
don't ask them what they want. They obviously want the package name. For those
of you who have been in salary negotiations before, this should ring a bell.
This is a power play by Kik to give up as little as possible for what they
want. __Kik __is the one asking a favor. Say the word __favor __. Make it
known that __Azer __would be doing a good thing by compromising and helping
you out. Make the first offer. Give Azer something to think about and go from
there.

Having seen Kik's initial attempts at communication, I can now 100% understand
Azer's response. It's the obvious result. Immature? Overblown? Honestly, this
is pretty much par for the course with most humans no matter the age. Some of
us are just better at stopping and taking a moment to think before replying.
On the internet where you cannot see who you are talking to? There is even
less of a barrier.

I can make a lot of parallels to teaching and working with children, but I
think what I wrote should be clear enough. Kik is in the wrong here and really
needs to apologize for their actions - to the community and to Azer - and
should put in some effort to helping NPM fix this fiasco.

------
Kristine1975
They do have Azer's consent to publish the mails he wrote, right?

------
logfromblammo
Here is Azer's side of the story: [https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-
liberated-my-modules-...](https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-
modules-9045c06be67c#.tvwbzt249)

------
chrisbennet
If he changed the name as they asked, would that make it I findable ("break
the Internet")? (Sorry, don't know how nam works.)

~~~
chrisbennet
Edit: Meant to say, if he changed the name, would it make it _unfindable_?

------
duncan_bayne
I am really, heartily sick of people saying "X broke the Internet".

The World Wide Web is but a subset of the Internet. It's one of systems that
comprises it.

------
bakztfuture
I recently published some thoughts around the whole kik-developer controversy
(before this official response):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11346987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11346987)

I'm still going through these emails, but I will give Kik credit for at least
being polite about the whole thing - I criticized them in my post earlier
about not representing the Canadian tech industry well through their legal
action haha

