Unbelievable. A webmaster who found his site mentioned on mine via a Google search is claiming 'infringement' because a single thread posted by one of our users on our forum (7+ million posts) has their product's name which they say is trademarked. The funny thing is, that the post on my site was by a user saying they liked that product and people should check it out. The next funny part is that they bothered to make this ridiculous complaint solely on the notion that they thought was no link to their site in the thread (but it's there in the first post - they just missed it). The 'other links' they claim to be on the page are in fact Google Adsense links. Now, my webhost whom I've been with for years has contacted us asking to remove the post. It doesn't bother me to remove the post - however - I'm just wondering the actual legalities surrounding all this. It's like me starting a review thread about Microsoft Vista on here and MS emailing Digitalpoint, Jelsoft and Digital Point's webhost that unless the the post is removed they'll take your site offline. Unreal. Original complaint email follows: and this is from my webhost:
First time Ive heard about this. Does that mean google news, yahoo news, AP, and all newspaper and news site should shut down as well? Id just delete the post and move on. Not worth worrying about.
Just do what he says, then tell him hes an idiot (with some optional expletives ) for eliminating tons of free advertising.
Agreed. I'm not really concerned about him - more troubled by my webhost actually looking at this as something worth bothering with.
They are 100% incorrect. I would personally start a "F*** widget guy" thread and link him to it immediately. I would also change hosts for being so damn retarded as to tell me I have to remove a post on my forum and I'd let them know exactly why. In fact, please PM me the product name and I will be sure to blast them on a few websites for fun. I welcome the C&D's. Cheers.
I don't think they can do anything legally due to the fair use provision in the law otherwise Google news etc would be shut down.
Swamper, your hosts are moronic and you should move immediately. First off, the complainant obviously has no clue about trademark law, and what it is all about. Granted, I have little clue myself, but I know it's got more to do with preventing other companies and individuals benefiting from the trademark owner's mark, and passing it off as their own, and nothing to do with censoring all mention of that trademark. Your host is obviously the sort to be easily intimidated by a strongly-worded but clueless lawyer's letter. Imagine what would happen if someone else were to accuse you of libel, or of copyright infringement, or of spamming? You could lose your websites, because your host looks likely to pull the plug at the slightest whiff of a legal issue.
It's not even fair use. You can talk about a product, service, or whatever you want within the law. How many "Wal Mart sucks" or "McDonalds is stupid" threads, posts, pages do you see? Trademark law is very strict and you have to aggressively go after people when they are infringing. If simply posting about a company was infringement every business with a trademark in America would be sending out letters and suing people all day every day until they went out of business. Edit: And yes the host should be drawn and quartered for not having a pair. What will they do when some malicious jackhole threatens them to turn over your private information?
That does bring up a fun project of making a script to automatically report every mention of a 3rd party site on any and every website hosted with them. Let's see how far they'll take the tail between the legs approach when they have 10,000 complaints a day coming in.
If the host's legal fine prints indeed indicate such, then you'd better remove that "offensive material" as soon as possible. You can then switch hosts if you want, but make sure to read their fine prints as well. They don't have to see it the way you do. But they do have to protect their behinds from liability. It sucks, but...that's life.