Tumblr Stole My [Subdomain] At The Behest of A Corporation

http://dontplayitcool.tumblr.com/post/393088179/tumblr-stole-my-domain-at-the-behest-of-a-corporation

by terrellm • 16 years ago

190 90 16 years ago

dontplayitcool.tumblr.com

pyre4• 16 years ago

I went to the RSS feed, but I didn't see his old posts.

nixme• 16 years ago

The title is a bit misleading. Tumblr took away a subdomain on their own domain.

zaidf2• 16 years ago

Only semantically misleading. We've come to expect that if we get a subdomain on a service like tumblr, it becomes ours...if not legally, at least by norm.

pyre4• 16 years ago

There is a difference between "come to expect" and "have a right to."

btipling• 16 years ago

That's also not the original post. It's a post that's been reblogged a bunch of times. I think this might be the original post:

http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-...

terrellm2• 16 years ago

Good point - I've updated the title to indicate subdomain.

hyperbovine• 16 years ago

You mean "on their own subdomain", right? Subdomains are domains and tumblr.com is a subdomain of com. And com is a subdomain of " " for that matter. RFC 1034. So why misleading?

llimllib• 16 years ago

shrug

jodrellblank• 16 years ago

"Sadly, I apparently no longer control this image or this information, nor can I exercise my right to remove it from the Internet."

Do you have a right to remove pictures of you, or pictures you took, from the internet?

sp332• 16 years ago

If you have the copyright, it would be illegal for them to distribute the image or text without your permission.

houseabsolute• 16 years ago

I'm sure by sending a DMCA takedown request he could get this done.

aresant• 16 years ago

I wonder how long he was inactive for - "several posts" in a year could mean he did the typical "blog" session - post in a flurry for a week, realize nobody is following you, give up.

If that's the case tumblr may well have terms about rights to a subdomain based on inactivity.

akkartik2• 16 years ago

Reblog of a reblog. The original is here: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393030100/tumblr-stole-my-...

Yet another exhibit showing that nobody can parse tumblr's stupid retweet implementation.

mattlanger• 16 years ago

It's not a "retweet implementation"--it's hypertext. If nobody can parse that then we've got bigger problems.

akkartik2• 16 years ago

That argument could defend any poor-usability site or mechanism.

alexandros• 16 years ago

he may have subscribed using google reader, which has an independent cache of the items in a feed.

xal2• 16 years ago

This happens on Shopify all the time now. Since we moved our servers to the United States we are being hit with DMCA related infringements almost weekly.

If we get normal trademark disputes they are usually easy to deal with: we simply put the two parties into direct contact and they can figure it out. However, if the requester uses the DMCA method everything changes: We get an ultimatum from our hosting company (Rackspace) to resolve the conflict within 7 days or they will unplug our servers, which would disconnect many thousands of e-commerce stores and millions of sales. Obviously we cannot allow this to happen. Rackspace does this because they need to stay a "safe harbor" under the DMCA and this is how they pass the buck to us.

Luckily there have been precedents where false DMCA claims have lead to hundreds of thousands of dollar in damages to the plaintiffs. Our only recurse is to point this out to the originator of the claim before forwarding it to the affected store. In most cases this leads to them dropping the complaint and/or pursuing the (correct) copyright/trademark avenue instead.

drusenko7• 16 years ago

To post up a counter-perspective here: From our perspective (Weebly) the DMCA is quite convenient for us. We turn away any DMCA complaint not related to copyright (like trademark infringement).

Other than invalid complaints (did not meet the requirements for a complaint, was not a copyright complaint, etc) we have never had an abusive DMCA notice -- 100% of our notices (and we usually get a couple per day) have been valid.

We don't have the issue with our host being able to unplug us that easily (we manage our own network) but we do have the issue of liability, which the DMCA solves for providers like us.

Also -- I'd definitely be interested in the cases you're referring to, where false DMCA claims have resulted in major damages.

l0stman• 16 years ago

Could you explain why have you decided to manage your own network. If I remember correctly, that wasn't the case in the early days of Weebly.

DanBlake• 16 years ago

Just because they do a DMCA request doesnt mean you have to hand it over. Allow the other participant to submit a counter notice if they choose, which puts it out of your hands.

ube2• 16 years ago

Can you elaborate on the type of documentation you use false DCMA claims?

adrianscott• 16 years ago

Time to find a new hosting solution, IMHO.

chaqke• 16 years ago

Pretty much all hosting solutions in the United States will fall under the "safe harbor" clause of the DMCA.

This law makes any noncompliant service a "publisher", liable for all content on the site - unless you follow the DMCA. Upon receiving a takedown notice, the service provider must take down content immediately, and issue a notice to the supposed actual content owner. Content owner has a short period in which he can file a counter claim and keep the content up for a little bit while the two sides argue.

Service provider becomes a publisher, liable for your potentially illegal content (trademark/copyright infringement, slander, libel, child pornography, etc) if they do not comply.

Rackspace is not the problem - the 105th Congress was the problem.

oneplusone• 16 years ago

Why did you guys move your servers to the US and do you think it was worth it with the additional cost of dealing with DMCA?

drusenko7• 16 years ago

I would assume the reduced latency for a predominantly US-customer base would be well worth it. The cost of dealing with the DMCA is minimal (and other countries have much less liability protection, anyway)

xal2• 16 years ago

It was worth it because Rackspace is a much better host. We used to run our own data center in toronto before this. The DMCA is a major annoyance but doesn't really factor into the bottom line.

Confusion• 16 years ago

There's not much to go on in this post. Has he even asked Tumblr for an explanation? Perhaps someone from Pitchfork Media asked for the password, claiming they had lost the original email account, hoping that the domain was abandoned? That would still call for an apology, but isn't half as bad as what it's made out to be.

Also, claiming that your subdomain was renamed and claiming that your original posts are still on the unrenamed domain is inconsistent at best.

cag_ii• 16 years ago

| Has he even asked Tumblr for an explanation?

Yes, apparently he has: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...

brazzy• 16 years ago

No, Tumblr did not "steal" anything from you, kid. You used a service of theirs (for free) and they decided to discontinue that.

Morale of the story: don't feel entitled to or become dependant on free services.

sophacles2• 16 years ago

You are 100% correct, yet upon reading this story my thought is not about that damn entitled kid. Instead I think "wow that is certainly an act of capriciousness that I would never wish to happen to me -- don't use tumblr".

bstrand3• 16 years ago

I think, yeah, if I overtly state the account is no longer in use in the single post made over the previous year, and I've never used it for its proper purpose, I probably shouldn't expect that Tumblr are going expend company resources just to be extra, extra nice instead of following the letter of the ToS, especially since if I know full well that it's a desirable domain.

pvg• 16 years ago

"Moral of the story"

mtarnovan• 16 years ago

Moral of the story: don't use tumblr.

I'm pretty sure blogspot (for example) wouldn't do that to a blog (call a blog inactive cause the last post is 2 month old), do-no-evil or not, free service or not.

vaksel• 16 years ago

I don't see why this would be the case with tumblr...I mean it's a blog, not a communication tool.

Why couldn't the company just get pitchforkblog.tumblr.com and then just forward the A record for blog.site.com to it?

sebastian• 16 years ago

Email techcrunch: tips@techcrunch.com

They might be able to help you out.

See:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/

wingo• 16 years ago

At some point the message that "web 2.0 is sharecropping" will sink in, one way or the other.

grinich• 16 years ago

From Ryan Schreiber, Founder/President of Pitchfork:

It is not our wish to kick people out of active accounts. For example, the user @pitchfork on Twitter had an active account before we signed up. That’s fair, and in that case we don’t feel any more entitled to a ‘pitchfork’ URL than anyone else. We’ll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes.

http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu...

greyman• 16 years ago

Hmm...anyway, they claim that the last post was made on November 18, 2009. I don't consider that to be an inactive account...

I don't like what tumblr did here. Now it means, that if I subscribe to them and don't post something for 3 months, they can just take the subdomain from me and give it to someone else.

They probably do have a legal right to that, but still, it's still impolite, if not nasty.

Timothee• 16 years ago

I think it was a combination of several things that made them consider it inactive:

"the last post that had been made was on November 18, 2009, and said, “This filter is obsolete.” The post before that was from March 21. There had been a total of five posts ever made to the account."

If this is true, this is in fact a good arguments for considering it inactive. Not enough to disable it like they did, but it's more in the gray area than the original post made it sound like.

nhebb• 16 years ago

After reading that, I don't think it's so bad. The internet needs a giant broom and dustpan. Tumblr has the right to keep their own house clean.

phreanix• 16 years ago

I think that was well handled: An explanation of what happened coupled by an offer to return the account if the previous owner so wished, so the ball's in his court.

kellishaver• 16 years ago

This was well within Tumblr's legal rights to do, though still poor form for them to have done it, because there seemed to be no legal motivation to "take" the subdomain. The word "pitchfork" is not something that can be trademarked and pitchfork media has no more right to the subdomain than you or I, no matter how badly they want it. So this doesn't seem like a decision Tumblr was forced into for copyright/legal reasons. They just thought it would be a good idea either for profit by selling it or to get on the company's good side (mind you, however, we are only hearing one side of the story, so that assumption may be entirely inaccurate). I don't blame the guy for being a bit upset. Even realizing you have no actual legal claim to something, if you've been using a url, username, twitter account, etc. for over a year and suddenly it's taken from you without so much as a warning, it would be annoying. So no, in reality, nothing was "stolen" from him, but the manner in which Tumblr revoked the URL they had assigned to him feels a bit unethical.

nandemo• 16 years ago

The word "pitchfork" is not something that can be trademarked

Actually, it is a trademark. Just like the words "Apple" and "Java".

I'm not sure if that's relevant to subdomains, though.

petercooper• 16 years ago

And Pitchfork responded explaining how it happened: http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu... - the account looked inactive, hadn't been posted to for ages, and Pitchfork asked Tumblr if there was a way to get the account.

It's key to note, though, that Pitchfork played this right - they say that "We'll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes."

mattdennewitz2• 16 years ago

hey guys, here's pitchfork's side of the story, from ryan schreiber [prez/founder]: http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/post/393233651/dear-tumblr-commu...

im not going to personally comment on this one, so here's the gist of ryan's letter: the site had very few, very infrequent posts, and tumblr readily handed it over when we asked about it. nothing dubious, no back-alley handshakes, nothing funky. the original poster is welcome to take it back, we never had any intentions of evicting active residents from their property.

give it a read.

full disclosure: i work @ pitchfork.

simonk• 16 years ago

I don't think anyone sees something wrong with Pitchfork here, just Tumblr.

bricestacey• 16 years ago

If Pitchfork is willing to relinquish the domain, they should do so immediately. What are you waiting for?

"We’ll be happy to surrender the URL and find a home elsewhere if the original register of the account wishes."

The OP has already made a huge fuss about it. What else must he do to express his wishes?

DougBTX• 16 years ago

He might enjoy making a fuss about it more than the tumblr account itself.

ube2• 16 years ago

I'm curious - even if you have a domain that points to tumblr via A records (as detailed http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_domains) then you are still at the mercy of tumblr...aren't you? I suppose that the upside of using your domain is that you can point it elsewhere if something like this happens (assuming that you backed up your content) and any users you have still use the same domain.

imajes• 16 years ago

Just to add a note here: I have worked for Pitchfork Media previously. As a client, they were always the most awesome people to work for: Ryan and his team completely get the web and how it works, and don't step on people's toes, rather just carving out their own niche and letting people come to them.

There's zero chance of malice here, just a bit of ruffled feathers.

tshtf• 16 years ago

This is how Tumblr followed up in email after being asked why the domain was taken:

http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...

Tumblr Stole My [Subdomain] At The Behest of A Corporation

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