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Apple Businesses

Amusing Anecdotes in the Apple domain battle. 79

Posted by CmdrTaco from the fun-doesn't-stop dept.
cswiii writes "In case you've not heard, Apple's been putting legal pressure on two teens who registered "appleimac.com". This latest story mentions Apple's most recent action to date -- registering a copycat domain, that is actually an old domain that one of the kids used to own. " Who knew that apple was less mature than a couple of 16 year olds? Thats just to funny. Update: 02/25 05:58 by CT : as with most of the best jokes, this was a hoax. Funniest thing I've seen all day.
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Amusing Anecdotes in the Apple domain battle. More

Amusing Anecdotes in the Apple domain battle.

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  • Intelligent Mac users.. hehe...

    :)

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • What are you talking about? I thought it was funny (and Rob mentioned that he did, too), and, if it had been true, it would have earned new respect for Apple from me. I think it's a much better way to deal with a domain dispute than calling in the lawyers. I don't see anything anti-{Apple,iMac,Macintosh} about it...

    That said, I think you Mac users would catch a lot less anti-Mac flak if you'd get over the persecution complex. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody cares enough about you to be out to get you. It's just that every time you start up with your "Wintel sucks and we're the best OS in the world and nothing can be any better because Steve Jobs is God and the fact that we're a failure in the market is because of (pull reason out of ass) and not because our OS is still stuck in the mid-80s" crap, we "Wintel"* users have to defend ourselves.

    There. There's some anti-Macintosh attitude to feed your complex. You happy now?

    * For the record, my "Wintel" machine is a Cyrix 6x86MX-233+ on a VIA VP3 motherboard running Linux 2.2.2. Not a speck of Windows or Intel in the thing, but Mac weenies** call it "Wintel" anyway. Go figure.

    ** As opposed to sensible Mac users, of which I know a few. They unfortunately seem to be in the minority, though. Or maybe it's just like any other advocacy, where the morons are always the most vocal.
  • Posted by sgupta:

    >sensible Mac users, of which I know a few. They
    >unfortunately seem to be in the minority, though

    So does this mean out of the 25 million Mac users, you've personally met over 12.5 million? That's amazing! How did you find the time?

    Look, a few Mac freaks doesn't mean that they're a majority. They just stand out to you, and you probably remember them best.

    All the people I've met in person who use Linux are kind of weird, "free software will save the world!" types. Does this mean that *all* Linux users are freaks? Of course not! This means that the I haven't met a wide enough assortment of Linux users.

    So, have the courtesy not to generalize.
  • Posted by sgupta:

    Good stunt by the way. I think you did a good job illustrating how "news" propagates across the world wide web. You've exposed a good example of really bad reporting, and CNET should be ashamed.

    It's good to see Apple came out of this well by not publically acknowledging the whole sordid mess.

  • ROFL (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    Thank you Apple, for the years of laughs. :)
  • If you purport to register a trademark that infringes on mine, you can bet that I will force you to disgorge it, immediately. You don't get to hang on to the filing until you misuse it.

    hawk, esq.
  • The person who wrote the article for news.com just called and said that the article has been retracted. It is no longer linked from news.com, but Rob has had it linked directly, bypassing news's front page. I will more than likely remove the page, change the page, or make a pointer to something else, but the page should soon stop appearing. Please lets give him a break.
  • The article is now about Lycos. He just posted over it! HEHE HAHA, ok Rob, the clock is ticking.......
  • It isn't obvious in the preferences section ..
  • whois says:

    Registrant:
    CKS Partners (THINKDIFFERENT-DOM)
    345 Spear Street
    Suite 500
    San Francisco, ca 94105
    US

    Domain Name: THINKDIFFERENT.COM

    Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Loncar, Mark (ML247) lucky@CKS.COM
    408) 366-5100
    Billing Contact:
    Loncar, Mark (ML247) lucky@CKS.COM
    408) 366-5100

    Record last updated on 29-Aug-97.
    Database last updated on 25-Feb-99 07:39:56 EST.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    NS.CKS.COM 209.116.205.253
    NS2.CKS.COM 209.116.205.254
  • What a bunch of garbage. The anti-Apple, anti-iMac, anti-Macintosh attitude of this site is getting really old. Apple and the Mac do have problems, but is posting false info really gonna change an intelligent Mac users opinion about them?
  • That definitely has a feel of "I know you are but what am I?" Still, it should be noted that this is a pretty straightforward case of cybersquatting - not at all like the pokey.org or veronica.org cases. From the article:

    "Cases like...'Appleimac.com' are clearly an attempt to use the trademark owner's registered mark," said Benjamin Kite, founder of the grassroots Domain Defense Advocate. "We are attempting to limit the scope of our defense to domains where ambiguity between a trademark and the domain in question exists," Kite said in an email message to CNET News.com.
  • It's too, not to. This isn't the first time, either.
  • If you simply type "appleimac" into Netscape 4.5, it sends you to the Apple Inc. site. In this way, Netscape is acting as a "meta nameserver" in WWW space, and is where the real battle has been won already. I predict a lot of this sort of name redirection will occur, with friends of Netscape and those with deep pockets always getting their say.
  • The C|net article was posted
    on: February 25, 1999, 11:35 a.m. PT

    The Slashdot article was posted on:
    Thursday February 25, @04:11PM (EST? central?)

    The race is on to see who can update sooner!
    Place yer bets!

    My personal prediction is that C|net deletes
    the story and never mentions it again, but
    not till after Rob updates this article with
    a "whoops".

    +=Lungo;
  • Looks more like Vector Development than Apple Computer to me, homez. News.Com just got bamboozled.
  • This is one of the funniest things I've seen in awhile.

    Thanks for reproving that dis-information travels at the speed of light+1. Also know as Douglas Adam's theory of Gossip.

    I hope you don't get in trouble for using Apple's name.
  • okay, for starters, i'm a member of the pro-Apple camp. i'll skip over the reasons why, because to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever been convinced one way or the other by that kind of discussion.

    now..

    i remember having gotten a chuckle or two out of some of the near-miss Microsoft domain names which have been registered over the past couple of years, so i think it's only fair to laugh along when people post stories, even erroneous ones, about Apple doing something dumb as regards a domain name. the hallmark of a good sense of humor is the ability to laugh when you're on the receiving end of the joke.

    OTOH, i also remember what *happened* to all those near-miss Microsoft domain names which have been registered over the past couple of years.. the shadow of the MS legal machine fell across them, and they were never again seen by the eyes of mortal man.

    i don't see any reason why Apple should have any less right to protect its trademarks.

    if the kid had somehow registered APPLEIMAC.COM *before* Apple announced the product to the public, i might have some sympathy for him. as it is, he's sitting on a name composed of two terms which were trademarked long before he got the bright idea to call dibs on the combination.

    the thing i find surprising about the whole issue is the idea that anyone thinks the kid is anything *but* an opportunist.. well-meaning or not. even more surprising is the prospect that anyone thinks there's any doubt about the outcome of this scenario. there's a saying which describes his chance of winning if he's silly enough to go to court over the matter.. it involves the words 'snowflake' and 'hell'.

    another old saying is, "never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel".. in this case, the kid's parents are going to get a valuable lesson in what happens when you support of precocious youngster who violates the intellectual property rights of a company with its own legal division. once they see the price tag attached to their son's creativity, i personally think his folks will find this whim of his a lot less endearing.

  • No, not the kids, not Apple, but the lusers at news.com who think that Apple actually registered traya.net. They should learn to read the whois. ::sigh::
  • It might be immature, but I think this is pretty neat.. If they're going to play a prank on you, then by all means, apple should have the right to play a prank on them. Just because they're a company doesnt mean they have to be a cold humourless institution. I think it would really have been funny if they'd registered the domains of one of the teen's names (www.bob_newhart.com), and then filled it with pranks, or better yet, porn :)

    -Laxitive
  • Why should this surprise you? Apple has this image of being the peoples computer company, but it's a sham. They are the most proprietary of anybody in the OS game. They are the only major computer company that requires you to buy their hardware if you want to run their OS. They are ten times worse than MS when it comes to the crap that they pull. The world woudl be a much worse place if Apple had the pull that MS has now.


  • We have a thing in this country called a trademark. It has been a part of everyday life for some time now. I can understand why Apple might be worried that someone can abuse this. And there is certainly no reason why these kids need this domain. This is not like veronica.(com,org,net), where the name veronica is a questionable trademark. There can be no doubt that when someone says AppleImac, they mean the computer company. What if the kids decide they want to provide a new appleboot disk that installs Linux on the unknowing users' machines, God forbid! ;P
  • Check out Traya.net aparently someone thought it would be funny to register traya.net under apple.
  • It's good to occasionally be reminded that you shouldn't always believe what you read ... especially on the web!
    Hopefully /. will revise the wording on this story soon ... ?
  • Have we all sent emails to the news.com journalist who reported that 'story'???
  • Maybe the reason that an update hasn't been posted yet is because Rob's not checking the replies every half hour, which i think is understandable. Though it would be interesting to see _how_long_ it takes before it's updated. Anyone been timing this?

    webslacker
  • www.news.com has posted a retraction, they goofed.
  • ...why did the Apple spokeswoman decline comment? If you have nothing to hide then why hide it?

    Another thing, wouldn't you agree that the "fact checking" should be done by CNet?!?!?! They have a responsibility for reporting the news accurately ; it is what establishes their credibility; which is why people pay attention to what CNet has to say -> which is how they make money. It's their business.

    Back off Taco man. You have no basis in reality if you expect /. to deploy their research team (like they have the $ for one, not) on every potential story.

    Mr2
  • I've got it mirrored at: http://www.traya.net/news.com.html [traya.net]

    And yes I am the guy that did this. However, I have no clue how CNet picked up the story.

  • FYI I DO NOT work for or have any affiliation to Apple.
  • People seem to keep asking so I'll post a top level so it's really easy to find.

    You can find the original CNet article and links to various other items at:
    http://www.traya.net
  • So let me get this straight.

    The two kids who run TrayaNet registered appleimac.com and thus are supposedly giving Apple a bad name (not just because their site has nothing to do with iMac's, but because Apple is threatening a lawsuit).

    Now some OTHER company - vecdev.com - has registered traya.net and SAYING that they are Apple Computer? Thus...giving Apple more of a bad name?

    This is nutty.
  • I really can't blame Apple for their aggressive protection of their corporate identity. Any company having a name that is on its way towards becoming a noun or an adjective must be aggressive. I know from experience (see our company url). I have to spend several days a month tracking down violators of our corporate identities. Patrick L. Reilly, General Manager, IsoQuantic Technologies
  • The following was up at www.traya.net at 5:15 Eastern Standard time:
    ------------------------------------------------ -----------------

    Earth to the world this was a joke.
    Apple does not own this domain nor did they have anything to do with registering it.

    When I heard about the appleimac.com issue with Apple I went to the web site and looked around. The individuals who had registered the domain were using the company "Tray Networks". In looking around I saw a list board and on that list board someone men tioned that they didn't own traya.net. So at this point in time I decided hey wouldn't it be funny to register the name and put Apple's name on it? So I did. At any rate it looks like someone has noticed my joke. I got a call this morning from Apple's lawyers asking me to change the registrant name on the domain. I'll add they asked very nicely.

    Can you believe that News.com published this?

    I received an email from the reporter that wrote the article a few minutes after the story was published. I thought you were supposed to check your facts before you published.

    Slashdot has apparently picked up the story, even though they also have it wrong. *sigh*.

  • This is what the WHOIS info for TRAYA.NET looks like:

    Registrant:
    Apple Computer, Inc. (TRAYA6-DOM)
    PO Box 1816
    Issaquah, WA 98027
    US

    Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Reser, Ben (BR987) breser@VECDEV.COM
    (785) 539-6106
    Billing Contact:
    Reser, Ben (BR987) breser@VECDEV.COM
    (785) 539-6106
     [snip]

    This is what the WHOIS info for any (and all) of Apple's various domain names look like:

    Registrant:
    Apple Computer, Inc. (APPLE-DOM)
    1 Infinite Loop
    Cupertino, CA 95014

    Administrative Contact:
    Zimmerman, David Paul (DPZ) dpz@APPLE.COM
    +1 (408) 974-2436 (FAX) +1 (408) 974-3103
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Eddings, Kenneth (KE557) eddingsk@APPLE.COM
    408 974-4286 (FAX) 408 974-3103
    Billing Contact:
    Zimmerman, David Paul (DPZ) dpz@APPLE.COM
    +1 (408) 974-2436 (FAX) +1 (408) 974-3103
     [snip]

    Sometimes the contact names change (see quicktime.com) but they are always @apple.com email addresses and the postal address never changes. Somebody else took TRAYA.NET and just stuck Apple's name in the box.

    -Chris


    \//
  • Not to be overly anal... but since when do you use third party companies to WHOIS a domain?

    INTERNIC.COM is another money grubbing "domain registration service" with nothing to do with the even more money grubbing NetSol who runs INTERNIC.NET.

    -Adam
  • I am the author of the CNET News.com story that touched off this entire thread. I apologize for the incorrect information the article contained. News.com pulled the story at 12:45 California time, and now has a correction posted.
  • Hello, I am Stan Berg, from Traya Net, does anyone have any question. I am here to help and answer your questions:-)
  • Apple is fully within their rights to reclaim the domain and protect other domains using 'apple' and 'imac', not only for themselves, then for their stockholders. If they don't protect their trademarks and someone uses a domain like appleimac for their own personal use, apple stockholders could possible place a lawsuit against apple. So better safe than sorry in this case.

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