
Facebook Tries To Silence Lamebook: Removes Its Page, Blocks Links And Likes - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/facebook-blocks-lamebook/
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mmaro
You can't even send private messages that have a lamebook URL. At least
Facebook makes it obvious that we shouldn't trust them with private
communication / Facebook Messages.

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mikedmiked
What makes this frustrating is how few people care.

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rick_2047
That is not exactly frustrating. Not everyone thinks of their privacy in the
way people at HN do. And I have made my peace with it. Actually I see the
point, why would I be so worried about facebook reading something which I
would not be worried if someone overheard it while I was talking on the
subway.

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mmorris
It has nothing to do with privacy, it has to do with Facebook censoring
messages. What if you couldn't send an email with a link to a questionable
site? That wouldn't bother you at all?

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sbov
No-one likes spam, but I've noticed that at least some email providers do this
by domain/ip address of the emailed link in order to combat spam. Maybe its
different since it ends up in your spam folder, but its effectively the same
result.

Details: I've had a website that got hit once by this, which was funny because
we never even sent any email. When testing it out, it seemed to be being
filtered by the ip address the link resolved to. Even if I changed the domain
name I emailed, if it resolved to the same ip, it still was being marked as
spam. Note that this was being tested from a 3rd party email, not by sending
from our own mail server.

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mmorris
Interesting, I wasn't aware of this happening. Unless they had a setting to
disable it, my initial reaction is that I'd disagree with those email
providers blocking domains/IP addresses too.

I do think, though, that there is an easily identifiable difference between
blocking obvious spam sites, likely based on autonomous algorithms, and (I
presume manually) blocking a site towards which you clearly have ulterior
motives.

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mortenjorck
Though little consolation for their current trademark lawsuit from Facebook,
this offers a huge marketing opportunity for Lamebook. Slap a gigantic "BANNED
ON FACEBOOK!" stamp over the logo and play up the antagonism.

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scalyweb
Google could certainly make their own innocent "mistake" and have Lamebook be
the destintation for "I'm Feeling Lucky" for those who can't remember the url
for facebook.com.

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qq66
That would be a sad waste of the trust that users have built up for Google.

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travisjeffery
Google "Where you can find Chuck Norris" and press I'm Feeling Lucky...

Or back in the day with "Miserable failure" going directly to George W. Bush's
page.

These things have happened before.

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drivebyacct2
scalyweb was implying that google do it intentionally.

your examples occurred because of link bombing.

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finiteloop
This is Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook.

This was a mistake on our part. In the process of dealing with a routine
trademark violation issue regarding some links posted to Facebook, we
inadvertently blocked all mentions of the phrase "lamebook" on Facebook. We
are committed to promoting free expression on Facebook. We apologize for our
mistake in this case, and we are working to fix the process that led to this
happening.

~~~
agravier
Thanks for posting this explanation. I am curious about that part:

> inadvertently blocked all mentions of the phrase "lamebook" on Facebook.

Inadvertently seems to imply that this was not voluntary, more like the result
of some "misclick". Is that so? Are there such powerful control tools at
Facebook which use is not under strict review? If it was inadvertent, I think
there ought to be serious policy revision regarding the use of these big
brother tools at Facebook ;)

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andreyf
Hypothesis: Thousands of people around the world mis-flag content for a
variety of reasons every day. One of the outsourced content-reviewers working
for a consultancy hired by facebook made a mistake in handling the copyright
infringement flag, and blocked the site. It wasn't noticed by anyone until the
TechCrunch story went up.

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msy
If I were Lamebook I'd be registering hundreds of silly lame/facebook related
domains per hour and offering them as alt urls to use via Facebook. Make the
9-figure-valuation company dance and jump for a scrappy joke site, nothing
will make a mockery of them faster.

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citricsquid
If anyone wants to do this, the code GOBBLE will get a $1 .com with godaddy,
first 15k uses only.

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scythe
Is that a reference to GOBBLES, by any chance?

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kingkilr
What the heck is GOBBLES? Do you mean Goebbels?

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scythe
GOBBLES is a trolling/security outfit of sorts. They've given talks at Defcon
but as far as I know their members are basically anonymous.

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woogley
At what point does a site become "big enough" that it becomes a marketplace
monopoly which is not legally permitted to discriminate?

Obviously all sites have a right to control/filter content, but I wonder if
there is some law that a giant site must abide by some stricter rules of equal
participation ..

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jerf
Enforcing one's trademark does not constitute "discrimination".

Facebook is in the right here. Lamebook is clearly an attempt to cash in on
the Facebook name, trademark law does not permit that, trademark law is
correct here. Merely being "the little guy" doesn't make you right or give you
carte blanche to ignore whatever laws you want.

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CPops
Parody and commenting about something and humor and so forth is protected as
fair use even under our horrendously fucked up "intellectual property" system.

Now, I think Facebook has the right to block whatever links they want to block
on their own website. It's their website and they should do what they want
that they feel is in their own self-interest.

Casting this as Lamebook doing something that violates Facebook's trademark is
incorrect without any actual evidence that they are indeed violating
Facebook's trademark.

Merely having a name that rhymes with Facebook isn't enough to call that a
violation of Facebook's trademark.

~~~
jerf
You cited defenses against copyright infringement. There is no parody
exemption that I have ever heard of that applies to the active use of a
trademark. You can certainly create yourself a "Lamebook" to use in, say, a
web comic, and make it even look exactly like the actual Lamebook page, and
nobody would blink, just like nobody blinks at a Sorny in a web comic. But
you're not allowed to _actually do business_ as Sorny!

I have evidence that Lamebook is violating Facebook's trademark. There's the
name. There's the fact that their logo is clearly a Facebook hand, only
reversed. There's the fact they're in the same basic industry and a realistic
chance that Lamebook could be reasonably confused to be connected to Facebook
by a normal person. I'm not sure what other evidence you're expecting, a
signed affidavit from John Roberts?

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noglorp
>There's the fact they're in the same basic industry and a realistic chance
that Lamebook could be reasonably confused to be connected to Facebook by a
normal person.

The basic industry is the web? That is a stretch. Does that mean anything else
is in the basic industry of "physical things"?

Facebook is in the industry of social networking, while Lamebook is a
'lolpics' site targeted at funny things FROM Facebook. It seems like they are
clearly doing what Facebook says they are (attempting to piggyback on brand
recognition), using satire as a hook to get away with it.

Whether they will succeed I think depends on Facebook's ability to show that
this use will harm their name / confuse their customers, and that seems
doubtful. In a similar instance, Toys `R' Us successfully forced Guns `R' Us
to change names; the case was made that parents would think that Toys `R' Us
had a chain of gun stores!

~~~
jerf
[http://avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-trademark-a-similar-
name...](http://avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-trademark-a-similar-name-in-a-
different-indu-69533.html) , just to yank something out of Google very
quickly.

The law is not unfamiliar with your objection. In point of fact it has dealt
with this question rather frequently. And no, your made up pathological case
has no ground in the law, and no, I do not think the law would slice and dice
Facebook and Lamebook into separate industries. Separate industries are, as
the link says, things that can not possibly be confused for each other, like a
tax service and a farming implement company, not "a web-based social network"
and "a web site for satirizing social networks".

Taking your point to its logical conclusion, two companies _always_ differ on
some irrelevant dimension; the ability to find some trivial difference will
not protect you. It's the usual thing I think we computer programmers tend to
forget when arguing about law... you have to convince a _judge_ you're not in
the same industry. It's not a computer algorithm that can be gamed with a bit
of pathological input and a loudly-yelled "TAKE THAT!", despite how it may
sometimes appear.

Though your last paragraph entirely confuses me; you express doubt about the
court case going in Facebook's favor, then cite an example that I think is
actually sillier than the idea that Facebook might spin off a site or two?

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andolanra
One thing which mystifies me about this whole situation is that Facebook
arguably benefits from Lamebook's presence. Lamebook isn't a substitute for
Facebook, it's a complement to Facebook. Someone who enjoys Lamebook for its
humor will probably try extra-hard to find entertaining scenarios among their
own Facebook friends, meaning that Lamebook increases Facebook's usage. Why
you'd want to shut down a company that gives you more traffic (and therefore
revenue) for a relatively unimportant and legally dubious reason is beyond me.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that Facebook is already invoking the
Streisand effect by going after Lamebook at all.

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ma2rten
I can only guess someone at facebook thinks it's not good if their brand get
associated with lameness.

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linuxhansl
Good job Facebook. I had never heard of Lamebook before... today.

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Towle_
C'mon guys, everybody knows it's wrong to take a bunch of info and photos from
one facebook site and re-purpose them on another.

 _Mere hours before lamebook was hacked together:_

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're
going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a
nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be
true. It'll be because you're an asshole."

/irony

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sk_0919
Why is Facebook getting distracted with this? Facebook has so much going for
itself, why censor a 2 men company and cause all the negative PR?

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TeHCrAzY
They have turned over the company to business people and lawyers.

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YuriNiyazov
Even if they hadn't, they did the right thing here. Note that Lamebook struck
with the lawsuit first. It would've been easy enough to ignore Lamebook and
just go after bigger trademark infringers on a case by case basis, but since
Lamebook struck first, they actually had to strike back, because if they
allowed that lawsuit to declare that Lamebook doesn't infringe on the Facebook
trademark, there would be 200 <something>-book sites tomorrow created by
copycats, and Facebook would be powerless against any of them because of the
Lamebook judgment.

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topherjaynes
This is very unsettling. BUT, I was able to share the TC article about
lamebook on my wall. As long as there is still someway to voice dissent, even
if it is through a thirdparty site.

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wiks
They did the same with my profile too. I wrote something relating to frastu-
facebook user and they disabled my account.

