So you think you own your Twitter name?

http://ac31004.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-you-think-you-own-your-twitter-name.html

by collypops • 15 years ago

129 113 15 years ago

ac31004.blogspot.com

tnorthcutt• 15 years ago

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

devinj• 15 years ago

Of course it shouldn't. No facts should be surprising, but they are. So what do you do about it? You either fix peoples' expectations to match reality, or you fix reality to match peoples' expectations.

Considering that the expectations here seem pretty reasonable, I'd personally rather the latter.

jerf• 15 years ago

"Fixing reality" is mathematically impossible. Not all people and groups of people can be given their choice of a unique name in a single global namespace. You can define different conflict resolution schemes, but there will be conflicts and there will be losers and there will be people who think the losers should have won (not least of which, the losers themselves) regardless of what you do.

Udo8• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm going to assume this really happened, even though it's coming from a slightly suspicious looking Blogspot address, the description itself looks believable.

The surprising thing here is not the obvious injustice or the callousness of the Twitter team. Rather, it's that people think they somehow have a right to use Twitter's services and accounts like they were their property. The same goes for people who build businesses on Facebook and every other monolithic site. I think users need to understand that they are on someone else's turf, and they are subject to whatever the company decides to do. There is no reasonable expectation of fairness, or of free speech for that matter.

That's why building a business on Twitter is foolish. I hear it's done successfully all the time, yet people have to understand this is a very shaky foundation. We're not even Twitter's customers. Advertisers are Twitter's customers. Nobody should be surprised about this, in fact it's a miracle "outrageous" stories don't happen more often.

greyman• 15 years ago

Why there shouldn't be a reasonable expectation of fairness, i.e. that twitter (or any free service for that matter) will not hand your nickname to another entity? I believe there indeed is an unwritten rule on the Internet, that the nickname should belong to the first person who registered it... I mean, if he didn't violate the trademark at the time of registering the account. Of course, twitter has the right to do it, but still I don't find it normal.

tptacek• 15 years ago

There is absolutely no such rule.

Udo8• 15 years ago

Starting with the first BBSes continuing right through to this day, rule one of the net is: the admin has absolute power. There is a tradition that site owners should be benevolent dictators, an assumption I believe is reasonable as far as private servers are concerned, but which is simply preposterous when we're talking about a multi-million dollar business where users aren't even the ones paying the bills.

So, yes, the "nickname honor code" is an unwritten rule, well it's more of a guideline, a ...suggestion really. The only true rule is rule one, see above.

My larger point is that people think Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Gmail, etc... are basic infrastructure services, and that they are entitled to use them. They pay their ISP fee and believe that includes a Twitter account and the right to use it. I suspect many can't tell the philosophical and technical difference between generic email and Facebook anymore. This leads to a false sense of entitlement and an unreasonable expectation of being treated fairly.

edw• 15 years ago

I don't know how to say I don't agree with your first sentence, because I think that the reasonable thing to expect when dealing with issues like this is that unfortunate things are going to happen quite often.

Twitter has how many tens of millions of users? Twitter doesn't need to be an arrogant, corrupt gangster corporation to screw over people many times a day. With the number of complaints they get, I can only imagine the sort of pressure they feel to develop some sort of standardized process for dealing with these issues with an amount of perceived objectivity.

This seems very much like the iOS App Store situation: any system that is designed to make decisions at a sufficient rate (and at a sufficiently low cost) is going to perpetrate injustices. I am quick to flip the bozo bit on people who see dark conspiracies in these sorts of things.

alex_c• 15 years ago

You can expect fairness. You can be disappointed when you don't get it. You shouldn't be surprised when you don't get it.

saurik• 15 years ago

Why is that a reasonable definition of "fair"? I got their "first", so it's mine? That attitude just means that people go around squatting for names.

Seriously: you should have to earn the usage of your name. Before this stupid world where poorly thought-through websites allow people to, for the remainder of all time (or until the company dies), reserve a name, multiple people could use the same name as long as they didn't cause confusion to the populace (at which point it should be expected that the courts become involved, as that is a matter of fraud).

Regardless, if you want to take the definition of "first == fair", GIRLGEEKS had that name in 1999. Everyone is making it sound like "if you don't get a trademark on your name someone else can take it from you", but that totally ignores the fact that they'd have to get a reasonable trademark /before/ you established your name (and conflicts with your use class, which I believe this situation did, and causes confusion, which I can see this situation also doing).

In this case, the thing people should be bothered about is that GIRLGEEKS has a "DEAD" trademark that was cancelled for its use class: they don't have a trademark, and Twitter made a mistake in honoring it.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

> I believe there indeed is an unwritten rule on the Internet

key element in your sentence is unwritten.

yes, it's annoying. but no, you have no right when you're sharecropping. and no, and it's not really clear that the @girlgeeks girl has any more right to that name than the @GIRLGEEKS organization. The larger problem here, the elephant in the room perhaps, is the notion of someone "owning" a name or word, combined with the fact that two or more people can simulateously or independently decide they both want to use that name. One party might be the first to create a Twitter account with it. Another party might be the first to create a Facebook page. Another to create a domain name. Another to write song with that title. Another to write a book or story with that title. Another to release a code project with that name. And so on. Inevitably, there will be conflicts. It sucks, but until/unless we have some central globally-unique-and-authoritative Registry of Names For Anything Anywhere with clear written rules, then, this is just going to keep on happening and happening.

Me? Old news. Knew about this flaw prob at least 25 years ago.

[note to self: there's a startup idea and/or political initiative in here somewhere]

collypops7• 15 years ago

If you're not willing to state your reasons for assuming that the source is "slightly suspicious looking", then why bother writing it?

As for people somehow thinking they have the right to use Twitter's services like property - this is actively encouraged by Twitter themselves. They have an entire website dedicated to teaching its users how to develop their accounts as official representatives of their organizations/businesses/brands. You can check it out at http://business.twitter.com/.

The main issue here wasn't that the original owner of the @girlgeeks account assumed that they were entitled to ownership of the username. It was that the name was taken away from them without any opportunity to dispute Twitter's intentions, nor were they given any due notice, so that they may inform their followers and communicate alternative plans to keep in contact with them. They were simply cut off.

Those _are_ reasonable expectations.

Udo8• 15 years ago

I thought the reasons for having doubts about the source were obvious, so I didn't write them down. What matters is I came to the conclusion the story was valid, otherwise I would not have commented on it. And even if it had turned out to be fake, the essence of the story is still important and believable.

> As for people somehow thinking they have the right to use Twitter's services like property - this is actively encouraged by Twitter themselves

I know. But that's not reality, that's marketing.

> The main issue here wasn't that the original owner of the @girlgeeks account assumed that they were entitled to ownership of the username. It was that the name was taken away from them without any opportunity to dispute Twitter's intention [...]

In my view, one follows the other. Allow me to clarify: the outrage over Twitter's behavior comes from the (mistaken) perception that Twitter must provide a service to its users and that it has to do so in a fair and balanced fashion. This sense of entitlement, however, does not correspond to reality. In reality, they can do whatever they want.

I don't mean to defend their actions, personally I don't think this is a nice way to treat users, though there may be legal issues that leave them little choice which we know nothing about.

> Those _are_ reasonable expectations.

Companies certainly want you to believe they are in order to gain their users' trust, but that doesn't mean we should forget who is holding the strings.

janewilson902• 15 years ago

Its true. I follow both the blog poster and the person who had their username taken from them.

Udo8• 15 years ago

I came to the same conclusion, otherwise I wouldn't have written the post at all. However, it's a blog with a spammy looking address and very few articles in it. I didn't mean this to be an attack on the author, it's just a first impression that gave me pause.

lt• 15 years ago

The contact info in your profile is a gmail address. If google decides to wipe your account and give that username to someone else, do you think it's wrong? How's it different?

Udo8• 15 years ago

This is exactly my point. I don't have the expectation that Google is somehow bound to let me use their service. The moment I start using Gmail, I accept that they can close my account at will, spy on my messages, delete all my stuff. In this case, I don't believe that's going to happen, but if they did I would not be fundamentally surprised. I'm using their service because it's convenient. If they stop offering it, or if something happens that ticks me off, I'll move on.

random42• 15 years ago

If the email addresses infringes any law (trademark or otherwise), that require Google to take some action on it, I'd understand (and agree!)

PakG1• 15 years ago

I'm curious if there's actually stats on blogspot blogs being unreliable or spammy? How does it compare to wordpress blogs, etc? Because unless there's data to back this up, I find this an unreasonable prejudice. I do find some quality blogs out there running on blogspot time to time.

Udo8• 15 years ago

It's not about Blogspot. Come on, the adress is ac31004.blogspot.com for crying out loud and there is very little content actually on the site. Those properties ought to set off some flags in the seasoned web user's brain. In this case, these flags were false positives, and I acknowledged as much in my comments.

rmc2• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm going to assume this really happened, even though it's coming from a slightly suspicious looking Blogspot address, the description itself looks believable.

The google results for "girlgeeks twitter" are different from the twitter account. (e.g. Twitter lists no personal name, google does. Twitter has no lists, google does) This difference in information supports the idea that the twitter account has recently completely changed.

r00fus• 15 years ago

It's in Twitter's every right to do exactly what was done here.

However, it does make a twitter @name a whole lot less certain though.

It would be in Twitter's best interest to have a policy for disputes so there is no uncertainty.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

"Rather, it's that people think they somehow have a right to use Twitter's services and accounts like they were their property."

Users think that the site is granting them this right when they sign up and select a name. I don't see it as "entitled" thinking at all. It seems to be a reasonable assumption, more so for paid services than for Twitter or Facebook.

jarin• 15 years ago

"We're not even Twitter's customers. Advertisers are Twitter's customers."

There's a saying: "If you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product."

rtp• 15 years ago

Just because it is within the rights of Twitter to be a dick doesn't mean that it _should_ be a dick, and from where I am standing, Twitter is currently acting like a dick.

janewilson902• 15 years ago

Twitter and the person who stole the username. The original girlgeeks even helped them set up and knows them.

Vivtek4• 15 years ago

Ouch, that's a lot worse than somebody independently registering a trademark as an organization and then getting the name from Twitter.

dmoo• 15 years ago

exactly: legal != moral

svag• 15 years ago

So, the same applies to the "free" web services like gmail and MSN/hotmail? They just can take your username and give it to someone else?

brazzy2• 15 years ago

OF COURSE THEY CAN!

It boggles my mind that anyone would seriously need to ask that question.

Entitlement much?

Yes, it would not be nice of them to do it. Yes, it could be bad for their image and ultimately even their business to do it. No, they shouldn't do it.

But they can, and it's not illegal.

daleharvey• 15 years ago

It has nothing to do with entitlement, I am pretty sure a lot of people would be surprised to know that their gmail account could be given to someone else at random.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

> But they can, and it's not illegal.

If it's just shutting down an account, probably true. But if GMail started giving people's email accounts to other people, which would allow other people to start receiving their bank statements, business correspondence, password resets, etc., I don't think it would be an open/shut case. Courts would likely want to do something about it, and there are various legal theories that are broad enough to potentially be employed, e.g. detrimental reliance on representations, tortious interference, or contributory negligence.

Consider an extreme case: someone is using GMail for their business. Google cuts a deal with their competitor to intercept the business's email and send it to the competitor. Would this be legal? If Gmail accounts and the email in them are unrestricted Google property that it may dispose of as it wishes, then it would be; Google can of course sell its own internal email to anybody it wants. But my guess is that this scenario wouldn't be legal, despite the fact that the business is not paying Google for the email account, and Google owns the servers that are receiving the mail.

bricestacey• 15 years ago

IANAL, but I could see a case being made against giving your email address to someone else - seeing as it would result in that someone else receiving your previously private email in the future (e.g. they could easily compromise any accounts registered through the gmail address).

philjackson• 15 years ago

I'm @philjackson (my name being Phil Jackson, obviously) and there's a Phil Jackson who's prominent in the world of basketball. I've often wondered, if basketball Phil Jackson went to Twitter and said "I want @philjackson", would they give it to him?

antidaily• 15 years ago

That would be troubling. It's one thing to let a major brand take a name back from some schmoe using it for no reason, but that's your actual name. Jackson could easily go by CoachPhilJackson and be found.

bmrr• 15 years ago

It's very likely they would if he asked. Celebrities and business bring huge traffic to Twitter and it's in Twitter's best interest to have more of them sign up. Some might think it's also in their best interest not to screw their users, but sadly it appears Twitter is moving towards Bieberfest as opposed to meaningful conversation. How many Bieber fans care if your name is taken from you?

jokermatt999• 15 years ago

it appears Twitter is moving towards Bieberfest as opposed to meaningful conversation

Honestly though, the medium suits Bieberfest a lot better than it suits meaningful conversation. It's tough to have a good conversation in less than 140 characters. I'm not surprised they went with the angle that's better marketing/money, either.

kovar2• 15 years ago

From the posting: "Last night an organsation called @GIRLGEEKS contacted Twitter to say they had registered trademark for Girl Geeks and wanted the @girlgeeks account for themselves."

The original owner could have pursued similar protection and avoided the problem.

pbhjpbhj3• 15 years ago

>The original owner could have pursued similar protection and avoided the problem.

Trademarks cost money - international protection costs quite a lot of money.

Do Twitter accept any registered trademark, like if I've a registered trademark in Afghanistan (say) will they protect me against someone with the same mark registered in the US or in Europe?

It seems that Twitter aren't bound to give a RTM holder the name but the person using it could be sued if they're using it to trade and not making it clear that their goods&services do not originate with the RTM holder.

collypops7• 15 years ago

The dispute should have been settled between the two users. Twitter had no place in this, unless they were forced to do something as a result of court action resulting from a private dispute, which they weren't.

basseq• 15 years ago

In the U.S. at least, I could see reasonable legal action on the part of the original owner, as she seems to have a common law trademark that would supersede any legal trademark. Maybe Twitter would accept that argument, or maybe you'd have to go to the USPTO and contest the filing (costing more money).

Filing is expensive ($3-400), but it's a thought considering how many of us have online identities that are legally unprotected.

kovar2• 15 years ago

I'm curious - why does stating that pursuing what most businesses would consider normal legal steps to protect their property get downvoted?

Is there a better way to state this? Should I not state this at all?

metageek• 15 years ago

Seems like this is a violation of Twitter's obligations under the ECPA to ensure that someone's private communications are not delivered to a third party.

pbhjpbhj3• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Priva... is US law, does this apply to protect people in Scotland?

rmc2• 15 years ago

It may not apply to Scotland, however it /should/ apply to Twitter, which is based in the USA AFAIR

collypops7• 15 years ago

Only the username was taken over. The account itself is still owned by the original user (just with a new username). Nothing private would have been transferred.

stuhacking• 15 years ago

DMs and @mentions will now be redirected to the new account until the original user is able to send the change of username notification. There's now a chance, however slim, that a private message will arrive at the wrong person as a result of Twitter's actions.

I'm ignoring the question of whether Twitter should be a medium for private communications.

knowzie2• 15 years ago

I think owning the .com should be the new criteria for owning a trademark.

davidu3• 15 years ago

That's a terrible idea. Just think about it for more than one second.

knowzie2• 15 years ago

I guess it would make trademarks pretty expensive.

mckoss4• 15 years ago

One second is up. I stil don't understand your reasoning. Care to explain?

jgroome• 15 years ago

...And that's when domain squatters take over the world.

xd3• 15 years ago

I found the statement made by the other side insightful: http://www.girl-geeks.co.uk/statement/Girl%20Geeks%20Stateme... [pdf]

"Just for the record, I have personally sacrificed personal savings and a full time salary for the last few years for this cause Girl Geeks. I certainly did not do any of this for self-promotion or gain and believe in supporting those who need it 100%."

She done a pretty good job of promoting herself in the response.

davidu3• 15 years ago

Their DNS is broken. :-(

collypops7• 15 years ago

It is insightful, but still, she's only addressing a small part of the problem. The larger issue here is that Twitter facilitate this kind of activity. It should have been resolved between the two parties.

She should never have contacted Twitter to commandeer a @username. Saying you did it on "[advice] by legal councel" is _not_ an excuse. She can't hide behind that. Everybody makes sacrifices in life for their causes. That is not an excuse. Lots of people are passionate and genuine. That is not an excuse.

I'm glad she apologised. If she genuinely wishes to resolve this, I've got a suggestion. Return the username.

xd3• 15 years ago

Couldn't agree more, uved.

robryan• 15 years ago

Yeah I don't get the letter at all, if she genuinely believes everything she wrote then why approach Twitter to take the name in the first place.

kelnos4• 15 years ago

So? Making personal and financial sacrifices entitles you to appropriate someone else's online persona based on an after-the-fact trademark filing?

xd3• 15 years ago

I was going for a bit of satire ..

njharman• 15 years ago

No, why on earth would you ever think that? I don't own my street address, SSN, Prison ID, don't even own my given name.

dasil003• 15 years ago

Prison ID, that's a nice touch.

pavel_lishin2• 15 years ago

> I don't ... even own my given name.

Sure, but I bet you'd be pissed if N. J. Harman, LTD demanded that your change your name to avoid confusion, and could enforce their demands.

catshirt2• 15 years ago

are there no legal restrictions or implications surrounding naming your child after a registered trademark?

pdx• 15 years ago

We need a way to own our online persona's. We have one, it's called an email address at a domain that you registered.

Unfortunately, we don't have an analogous mechanism for instant message traffic. Actually we do, it's called a jabber server on a domain that you registered.

But we don't have a way to publish our short, trivial thoughts to the world, and still maintain ownership of our identity. But, really, we do. It's called RSS.

People should publish their "tweets" via RSS feeds from their registered domain name. You could "follow" people by subscribing to their RSS, and you could "tweet" with a front end on your phone/computer that looks exactly like your current twitter client, but is linked to your RSS feed.

An open source library that made all this easy could be written, for the geeks, and for the non-geeks, there would be services that popped up that would host for you, but since the domain name is still in your name, you can move to another hosting provider at will.

Now, how to get everybody to switch?

franksalim• 15 years ago

And x years down the line we'll see "so you think you own your domain name?" Actually, we've already seen articles like that. It's just more difficult (but not impossible) to lose your domain name for trademark reasons.

pavel_lishin2• 15 years ago

Or government intervention.

VladRussian3• 15 years ago

i personally like the nissan.com fight (10+ years).

riffic• 15 years ago

I've identified the namespace "problem" on twitter for a few years now. This is exactly what you get when you put all your eggs into a single service provider's basket.

e03179• 15 years ago

Anyone notice that Druge Report got on Twitter, announced the link and their account was @DRUDGE_? Then a day or two later, it was @DRUDGE.

betolive• 15 years ago

An interesting example related to the ongoing online identity wars. Facebook, Google & Twitter are fighting to get our time investment in their free platforms without giving us the assurance that our investment will be rewarded.

If only the decentralized Twitter proposed a few years ago would have been built, we (users) would have more control about our identity, probably it is a little bit late now.

drdaeman• 15 years ago

So, this way or another, path leads to decentralized social networks, where your identity is protected with your knowledge of private key.

br1• 15 years ago

If I had the money I would trademark unprotected twitter accounts just to have them (temporarily) assigned to me and make more noise about this outrage.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

It certainly appears that as far as these companies are concerned, users are owed nothing and developers are owed nothing. We're just stepping stones on the way to an IPO or exit.

Plenty of micro business owners have found this out the hard way on sites like Etsy or eBay, for instance - they might think that the shop is theirs, and put the URL on their business cards, promote it at craft shows, on their cars, in expensive promotional graphics. All it takes is one idiot admin to close your account, and it's gone (Etsy in particular has notoriously poor practices regarding closing customers accounts, going back for years. There are plenty of of customer service horror stories there. eBay has a long history of NARUing sellers also). I've heard stories about flickr recently, too, deleting accounts - people lose photos, messages, contacts going back years and the company responsible simply doesn't care.

The only thing to do is to have your own domain, own website, use open source software, and know what you're doing technically or be close to someone who does. The only people who can take that away from you is courts or the government. This is also why we need networks that work like Diaspora vs. ones that work like Facebook.

bo_Olean• 15 years ago

sometimes it feels like we are in illusion about "free" stuffs in internet. Google, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or whatever.. everything they claim to be free.. they cost your time, they change your mindset, they change the overall you. Nothing is free here, its hardly convincing - yet we just embrace so called free stuffs even without a single thought. More pathetic thing is - these free services don't care who you are - they are just doing their business.

what would have been your decision in such situation if you were Twitter Inc, i am just curious ?

rm4452• 15 years ago

One thing the comments here haven't addressed is how Twitter's behaviour in this case compares with how such things have traditionally been dealt with on the Internet. I think there's a reasonable expectation that big Web companies act in a way compatible with the rest of the Net even if they are for-profit.

Consider the Nissan Computer Corporation website: http://www.nissan.com/

Or read about when a company called GAIL tried to take gail.com off a woman named Gail: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006...

Now obviously girl-geeks is not a personal nickname, nor apparently was it previously the name of any sort of registered company or other entity, more of an ad-hoc sort of thing. Given that someone later formed a company with this name and trademarked it, should they get the rights to that Twitter name? Would they be able to take girl-geeks.com off a previous owner who was using it in good faith?

My suspicion is that they wouldn't, and Twitter's behaviour is bad netiquette.

VladRussian3• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

So you think you own your Twitter name?

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