Is big brother watching your group?

Image by nospuds via Flickr

You run a group and do so off your own bat using your own skills.  Then you receive a C&D notice from TFN.  This Big Brother has nothing better to do with its time than attack small groups using C&D notices.  If you or your group receive a Cease and Desist notice then what should you do?

1. Complain using Yahoo’s Group Abuse Form citing harassment and then
2. Report the offence to Chilling Effects as either a trademark or copyright issue.

Optionally you could reply to TFN.  Some people argue you should not reply.  The choice is yours.  Whatever you do you should not accept that they have any valid claims.

What is FreeMesa?

Well I think I have underestimated FreeMesa.  From what I can see it is a stand-alone website with its own groups technology.  In fact everything (in a distorted way) that TFN’s My Freecycle project might want to be.  You can create an account and manage yourself in a social networking way, associating yourself to several groups.  You can even create a group using FreeMesa.  They have a Google Ad revenue sharing model which can help subsidise group owners, though my guess is unlikely to raise a lot of funds.  It seems that Freemesa started in part as a response to Hurricane Katrina.

The disadvantage, to me is twofold – firstly it is a closed system, that is one is forced to use FreeMesa for your groups service.  The second concerns getting new groups going.  The best that can be said about TFN, and it hurts me to say this is that it is inherently viral.  Freemesa does not strike to be able to hit that note.  Is it in the name?

Nevertheless Freemesa is a working system.  You can even search across many groups for items and Freemesa will tell you which is the closest.  Neat.

Time to wake up

Image via Wikipedia

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………….

This blog had largely gone to sleep.  I had written so much about The Freecycle Network (TFN) that at the time perhaps I had written as much as could be written.  Satiated I moved on to pastures new.  In part that was proving that I could create and run my own freecycling group.  Well, almost a year on I have proved that in volumes.  My own group has grown organically without recourse to any help from TFN.

Well my slumbers must now be broken.  Their trademark abuse team has decided in its infinite wisdom to go after my group.  Whether they succeed or not in whatever goals their distorted brains have dreamt up, they shall not find my group wanting to allow them to issue threats and harrassment without my doing something about it.

So hello, once again.  I shall now reawaken this blog, bringing events up to date and letting you know how this threat proceeds.  The starting point then is to understand the threat.  This comes in to my inbox as a quasi-polite email which in content is exactly the same pro-forma bullshit aimed at many other Yahoo Groups and group owners who just want to help society freecycle better, viz:

“Dear Owner of the Yahoo group  Kidlington-Freecycling-Group,
I’m writing on behalf of The Freecycle Network(TM) to notify you that your group is not an official Freecycle group and therefore does not have permission to use the trademarked Freecycle name or logo or the copyrighted materials provided in the Start-a-Group process or the Freecycle.org web site, or any confusingly similar derivations thereof.

The list of all local groups is available on The Freecycle Network’s web site at www.freecycle.org.

We have invested considerable time and resources in insuring that our organization is associated with only appropriately moderated, legal, and totally free services that have a common source of origin from The Freecycle Network.  This is why we only allow one group per community — to avoid any confusion among the public as to with whom they are dealing
when the Freecycle name is used. Accordingly, please consider this your official notice to stop using the trademark-protected Freecycle name and logo, as well as any and all copyrighted texts, graphics, rules, and guidelines, in any part of the group including the title, or its URL
(Yahoo group name).

Please understand that our intent is not to stop your or your group from recycling or exchanging unwanted items with fellow users. Should you wish to remain independent of our organization, you are; of course, free to operate your own gifting-based site under a name that is not confusingly similar to Freecycle.

Sincerely,
Simon
TFN Trademark Agent, Tucson
TM Co-Coordinator”

What follows now is my response to Yahoo using their Groups abuse form:

“I am reporting The Freecycle Network, as represented by tmagent@freecycle.org.

Please find enclosed their harassment and my response to the trademark team at The Freecycle Network who have insinuated that my group used their trademarked or copyrighted materials.  My reply is that my group uses no such materials.

Additionally the closest that could be said is that my group uses the word “freecycling”, however it should be noted that official TFN materials specifically exclude use of such a word.  They have never, to my knowledge claimed any ownership of the word freecycling and thereby I consider it to be available for non-TFN use.  Also note that any claims by TFN to any trademarks are subject to considerable controversy and there exist various judgements against TFN on exactly this matter, including the proceedings between TFN and Oey for example, known as a SLAPP suit at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  (See http://timoey.blogspot.com/2008/01/and-protecting-free-speech-is-important.html for more info on this.)

Also may I further note that TFN have known, officially of my group’s existence under its original and current names since its inception on 1st, November 2007 which is almost a year ago.  If they wished to complain then they have had ample opportunity.

In the additional information please find a copy of the entire email dialogue between TFN and my group thus far.

Dear readers, I will keep you updated as to how this proceeds.

Good moderators do not grow on trees

It takes a certain person to become a moderator, never mind a good one.  It takes someone with some free time.  It takes someone with the zest to do something more than “take”: it takes someone who wants to give something back.  Add to that the mix of freecycling and you then find that a good moderator is someone who SIMPLY wants to run their group well.

Unfortunately on top of all that goodness comes a load of crap.  Sorry for putting this so bluntly but that is what it is.  FC.ORG thinks it “owns” some kind of concept and that moderators owe them something.  Well such bullshit only goes so far.  Eventually good moderators question the ground around their feet and see that they can get by quite well without the bullshit.  Not only that they simply do not have time for being talked down to.

If you want to know what I am talking about, then don’t take it from me but instead take it from others who have woken up to the fact that they only have so many hours in the day to give to freecycling, and that has to be focused on running their groups well rather than dealing with some hierarchy that has grandiose ideas of dominating the planet.

To read more take this open letter.

Named… and praised

It has taken a number of years, but the stalwarts who largely created and defined and shaped what freecycling is today have been given due honour.  On Tim Oey’s blog entry doing what is right rather than what is easy he lists those people to whom all who freecycle owe a very significant debt.

If you look at what makes us all exciting about freecycling it is the usual saving items from landfill, sharing community, and for most of us the initial “getting something for free”, never mind exotic concepts such as decluttering.  But these people are different.

These people have risen to the higher call of shaping the future of freecycling.  They have given up hours and days at a time, writing manuals, building community, testing ideas – and most of all doing it right.

Doing it right is a question of deciding whether what you are doing is legal, whether it is true to your values, whether it is true to those you serve.

And that last point is where their biggest challenge came.  For me, as an owner and moderator of freecycling groups I serve my group members.  That is who I serve, and I serve no-one else.

This is where The Freecycle Network has gone very badly wrong.  If you look at almost 100% of the press releases of TFN what do you find?  Praise and adulation for one person, one almost…  god.  One person who holds himself above normal moral standards.  He has used, and continues to use significant  public money on a personal vendetta against Tim Oey, wrapped up in a failed SLAPP suit.  He does not justify this, he does not have to justify his actions.  The TFN organisation always has been wholly controlled by him.  Despite non-profit rules in the USA he has held control in himself.

If all these are true then how does he continue?  The answer is with persuasive charm.

But at some point you can find that persuasive charm are shallow when not backed by substance.  What these people saw was that lack of substance.  The lack of substance was embodied in abusing organisational power to backstab people.  I myself have been attacked in this way, so I know from personal experience – and have the evidence to support it.

The result is that the originators of the freecycling world left in their droves.  Each of them has their own evidence of corruption that forced their departure from a world with which they no longer wished to be associated.

Out of context

One thing that defines the genericism of the word freecycle is its use wholly outside TFN groups.  That could be people who wish to spread the good word, or it could mean people who wish to reuse it in their own context.  Take some atari stuff which is on offer.  Is this anything to do with a TFN group.  Or indeed is it anything to do with a non-TFN group?

I think not.  What it is is someone who is just using an online forum which is not even on Yahoo Groups or anything related to TFN to advertise an item.  This person uses the word freecycle intentionally since they know that in their own mind, and the mind of readers the concept of giving for reuse of this item is perfectly understandable.

You cannot be serious!

Rule no one, if you are going to try to fool people with money come up with a project title with words that mean nothing and a project that requires no work, oh and then put a big pricetag on it.  Take for instance (you knew this was coming) Freecycle Cellular Osmosis on NetSquared.

In a nutshell the project is about enabling someone to look at a map and their freecycling exchanges on a mobile phone. The main question why this deserves a project at all.  Why is this?  Because you can do this today.  The functionality already exists.

Already many people can access their freecycle advert information by going to their email client on their phone, whether that is stored in webmail or as “desktop” client. I surf the web daily on my Nokia 6120 and check my email in a snip.   For me that is my Gmail account, and my phone has a shortcut to go straight there.  So that deals with bringing up the advert.

What about mapping?  Oh, let me see, oh yes GoogleMaps on a mobile phone is available today and as a very mature product has been around for a couple of years.   It is one that I use, and nearly everyone I know uses.  Further than that not only does Google have its mapping tool, but also Yahoo has its own solution, though I have not yet used that.

So, am I missing something?  I will leave you, dear reader to decide what freecycling has to do with chemistry and osmosis. I will however just ask you to see if you can spot the gambit that owes more to moving NetSquared money from the gullible rich into someone’s backpocket.

In the meantime, if someone has a truly innovative project to suggest to Mr Beal and Mr Wallman, you may post them here and I will do my best to pass them on.

Goodbyee, goodbyee, wipe a tear from your eye, dont you cryee

It is with great pleasure I have the most important announcement to make to this freecycling globe.

Following this post on fcnext, a certain company, hmm let’s see what was there name again… Oh yes that’s right. Yahoo. Oh, and what is that that is worth knowing… Oh, yes, that’s right.

YAHOO WILL NO LONGER DELETE YAHOO GROUPS BASED ON SPURIOUS TRADEMARK CLAIMS BY TFN.

What does this mean for The Freecycle Network (TFN)?

So mister DB, is’t it time to tell your trademark team they are REDUNDANT. They now have no nasty jobs of sending out C&D emails to hard working group owners whose only goal in life was removing items from landfill the good ol’ freecyclin’ way.

Oops, they do have one last job.  To write an official TFN news article apologising wholeheartedy for any hurt so caused.  And don’t get me wrong, you caused some very serious hurt.  Actually Mr Deron Beal, surely that should come from you.

The trademark team can rewrite the TFN manual and remove all trademark claims forthwith.

What does this mean for TFN group owners?

So TFN groups across the word isn’t it time to take that spurious and embarrassing (TM) epithet out of your group home pages. It never was appropriate for all ages and showed you up to be an embarrassment to society. Join the real world – now.  Don’t wait for the laggardly TFN powers that be to shamefacedly do the “right thing”.  Take action now.

What does this mean for non-TFN group owners?

This means anyone receiving a Cease and Desist letter should bin it instantly. Isn’t it time to change your group’s name to freecycle?

What does this mean for people writing blog entries?

Drop the (TM) before you get sued. Drop the capitalisation before you get sued. Sorry, only joking, no one would be so small and petty minded. Those days are gone. Hallel… Oops I’m not religious.

Yahoo Group Recommendations

I have to empathize with Kathleen Gayton, a TFN moderator who is concerned about the new Yahoo Group cross-promotion feature where groups with similar memberships are listed in emails so that people can join related groups easily. You can read all about the feature on the official Yahoo Groups blog. Kathleen’s comment is here.

When is a trademark not a trademark

When DB says it is.  TFN has lost its trademark infringement claim against FreecycleSunnyvale.  This news is hot off the press.  See this post on fcnext for more info.

Get this Deron Beal, your trademark claims were bad for this freecycling industry.  They were divisive and control freakery of the worst dimensions.  And you have spent corporate donations unwisely chasing a stupid dream. You have forced the closure of groups whose only goal was to remove items from landfill.  You have denigrated people who worked so hard for a dream that they initially thought they shared with you.

You have lost.  Time to be graceful in defeat.