4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Startup Moot.It

http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-desist-letter-to-startup-moot-it/

by lovekandinsky • 14 years ago

45 62 14 years ago

It seems they have judged the potential for "free" marketing to be worth the risk of a backlash from the 4chan community.

Given they are in the business of allowing users to post content, the risk/reward looks to be heavily weighted towards having their service (in the best case!) being spammed with shocking content 24/7. They haven't thought this through.

Shank• 14 years ago

That's what I'm thinking will happen, in all honesty. 4chan have attacked en masse websites much larger than a startup in the past - and by using the name "Moot" and flat out denying that it has a relation to 4chan, they're putting a lot at stake.

I wonder if they've got any VC backing, because I don't see many investors trying that one on for size.

grecy• 14 years ago

If they load the site with CPI ads....

coderdude• 14 years ago

Their line of thinking may just be different.

If your service is meant to handle the communication for forums and comments then two of your biggest challenges will be dealing with spam and to a lesser extent, malicious users. How do you test systems to combat these issues? You would throw test data at them. From their site: "Our servers will handle whatever you throw at them, at no cost." For a person with the appropriate mindset, that's practically a dare.

While it's certainly a long shot that this is their actual intent, it would be one way for them to fine-tune their system.

msbarnett4• 14 years ago

> It seems they have judged the potential for "free" marketing to be worth the risk of a backlash from the 4chan community.

Moot is a verb. To moot something means "to raise it as a subject for discussion". They're selling discussion forum software with a domain name, moot.it, that essentially means "discuss it". It's a clever, relevant name and domain hack given what they do.

The overlap with Chris Poole's screen name is at least as likely entirely coincidental as it is some scheme to ride off the coattails of Poole.

Jabbles• 14 years ago

I wonder whether Moot's lawyer discussed this with him beforehand, or if it's just standard procedure that has attracted a lot of attention this time round.

Secondly, did Moot.it's lawyer threaten to sue Moot's lawyer? Can you do that? Can you sue the lawyers of your opponents? I imagine that could get very nasty.

petercooper• 14 years ago

With some minor exceptions, you can sue anyone for anything in the US. You just won't get very far unless you have a reasonable basis.

icelancer• 14 years ago

>With some minor exceptions

The federal government, for one.

waltermorgan3• 14 years ago

Yup, if someone threatens to sue you for bullshit, you can sue them, in your own jurisdiction, for declaratory judgement. That way you can save yourself from getting embroiled in a multi-year bullshit case in someone else's jurisdiction, and get a quicker ruling (declaratory judgement) that the threat is indeed bullshit.

waltermorgan3• 14 years ago

in this case, though, it's not immediately obvious it's bullshit... imho

duiker101• 14 years ago

I would like to express my opinion on a more general factor that can be seen also in this occasion. I find really interesting the use of screenshots from Google search and other sources from the internet like blogs, forums, twitter facebook etc... on paper to prove something. I get the feeling that this things, used as "Exhibits" or whatever else, are totally out of place, they are permanent ink to save something that is absolutely not permanent like the internet. The internet is not something static, it can change from one day to another, Moot today can be known as a nickname of a person, tomorrow it can totally be the name of a startup. I really feel this are two worlds colliding, we are trying to apply our old laws to a world that doesn't flow as the old one. I don't know why but I wanted to express this.

waltermorgan3• 14 years ago

Either side can produce the evidence, weigh each other's evidence, make their arguments before the court, and ultimately the court makes a decision.... or they decide they're both fucked in certain ways and settle. the way it works, either side can try to make their case... in principle makes sense, the only problem is it takes a lot of time.

ryanhuff3• 14 years ago

I noticed that Exhibit 1 shows a Google search of "Moot", apparently as support to the claim that the term "Moot" is commonly associated with Poole. However, this search was done from a browser logged in by Chris Poole's attorney. Given Google's attempt to provide more personalized results, I wonder how much influence the attorney's relationship has on the search results from Exhibit 1.

It may be a moot point in this case, but considering the changing search landscape, attorney's need to be more careful about how they use Google search results (and others) as evidence.

uvTwitch• 14 years ago

second result in DuckDuckGo

ryanhuff3• 14 years ago

Interestingly, the second result on DDG for me shows a Wikipedia article, with the following in the content snippet:

"He originally started 4chan anonymously, under the pseudonym moot (always written with lower case)."

Yet, the attorney in the letter uses "MOOT", and not "moot". Does letter case matter in this kind of dispute, especially if one convention is predominately used by the plaintiff?

geuis• 14 years ago

This is irrelevant. I just performed a search for the term 'moot' on Google and Bing. On both sites, I searched in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. I also performed the searches in anonymous and non-anonymous modes in all browsers.

In every case, the wikipedia page for Chris Poole showed up within the top 5 results. His Twitter page and links to 4chan show up in the top 10 results in one order or another in all results as well.

I'm not taking sides either way, but the attorney's logged in status doesn't have any relevance in this instance.

ryanhuff3• 14 years ago

It may not in this case (as I did mention). My point was in reference to the general practice of attorney's using internet data sources that may provide personalized results. In the case of Google, the attorney's relationships and search history (researching 4chan, etc) may influence evidence submitted if not careful.

dsl• 14 years ago

Poole is #3 for me, behind dictionary.reference.com and merriam-webster.com

olalonde• 14 years ago

> It may be a moot point in this case

I see what you did there.

samarudge• 14 years ago

moot - adjective 1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point. 2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic. 3. Chiefly Law . not actual; theoretical; hypothetical.

-Via Dictionary.com

Given the nature of the service (being commenting/discussion) I struggle to see how this would stand up in court, however I'm not a lawyer.

saurik• 14 years ago

> Without being an expert on the law, it didn’t seem right that an individual could try to strong arm me out of using a name that bears only a tangential relationship to his product and online persona.

I fail to see how "moot", the name of... well, moot's... online persona bears "only a tangential relationship" to said online persona.

> Although I wouldn’t necessarily call 4chan a “Goliath” of the internet, Poole has certainly taken the Goliath position on this.

...just because someone is large, doesn't mean they are de facto wrong or impervious to harm, and it certainly doesn't make it appropriate to try to win the audience with a silly David vs. Goliath analogy: you need a serious argument here, not cute soundbites.

Personally, I feel like moot has a good argument here: what he has been working on for a while now, both with 4chan and Canv.as, is "the future of online discussions"; if I see a company with his name and that same mission, I bet I would have been confused.

msbarnett4• 14 years ago

The problem here is that "his" name is also a common verb in the English language that means "to raise something for discussion".

I'm not sure he should get to prevent any discussion forum software from using that word, or the clever dns hack moot.it to advertise said software that lets you "discuss it", because he happened to choose a common-ish verb as a screen name, years ago.

DanBC• 14 years ago

> The problem here is that "his" name is also a common verb in the English language that means "to raise something for discussion"

Common? Please can you point to any online usage of the word in that way?

I know lots of people use it to mean "no longer relevant".

> 2. N. Amer. (orig. Law). Of a case, issue, etc.: having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic. Now the usual sense in North America.

thaumaturgy3• 14 years ago

"common" is a stretch -- maybe it's common as a regional dialect. Regardless, that's somewhat irrelevant: "moot" is far more commonly used to refer to Christopher Poole in the context of online discussions. (Even a quick glance at the search results of e.g. HN comments with the term "moot" confirms this.)

Keep in mind that UPS has successfully trademarked a color, as have many other companies; "Apple" is a trademark, "Time" is a trademark, "Shell" is a trademark, "Caterpillar" is a trademark ... and odds are, as you read each of those common words, you knew exactly which company holds the trademark.

Whether or not "moot" should be a trademark is largely philosophical and not a debate I feel like putting any energy into. However, that moot can be a trademark even if it's a "common" word seems obvious at this point.

loceng2• 14 years ago

Isn't it a moot point, since moot is a word?

dangrossman• 14 years ago

So are "apple", "time" and "caterpillar", yet they are all federally registered trademarks whose holders have successfully prosecuted others for their use. Being a common word is not an absolute barrier to trademark protection.

n9com• 14 years ago

but is 'moot' trademarked?

snogglethorpe• 14 years ago

But those are huge and well-established brands; using their names is likely in some cases to cause confusion amongst consumers. Preventing such confusion is, as far as I'm aware, the goal of trademark law.

Moot-the-person on the other hand is quite obscure; nobody knows who he is or associates the word "moot" with him other than a small handful of people in one online community. I.e. it's not a well-established brand, and using the word isn't likely to cause confusion or mis-association for the general public.

evan_• 14 years ago

So is "Apple"

grabeh3• 14 years ago

They have respectfully suggested a name change because they know they do not have a strong case. I find the letter a surprising move from someone so aligned with internet counter-culture.

I think it's fair to say that a large majority of internet users would have no idea of the founder of 4chan. Plus the term is being used in a descriptive allusive sense from what I can tell. A firm rebuttal is in order.

Firehed2• 14 years ago

As someone who's heard the name "moot", I would have (prior to reading this article, which shows otherwise) assumed that a service named "moot.it" offering discussion forums is associated with Moot/Chris Poole.

Preventing this kind of confusion is the entire point of Trademark law, and whether the company's name did this intentionally or not, I think Moot has a reasonable cause for concern and case.

trhtrsh• 14 years ago

moot doesn't have a trademark on "moot", and "moot" does not appear anywhere in the 4chan branding. It's a guy's nickname on a forum.

grabeh3• 14 years ago

Trade mark law seeks to balance the interests of people with distinctive brands to protect against the interests of the wider public in being able to use words in a descriptive sense to describe their product.

I personally think moot is very much descriptive of the 'discussion' in general. Moot, the 4chan creator would most probably argue the name has acquired distinctiveness through usage but this generally requires a high evidential threshold in terms of the reasonable person having familiarity with the term as a unique identifier. Whilst if 4chan had been called moot from the start he would have had a stronger case, I do not think the reasonable internet user would be aware of moot's name let alone identify it with online discussion.

aneth4• 14 years ago

They have "respectfully suggested" because there is no infringing use to sue over yet, and they likely prefer that the startup change it's name to a drawn out legal battle - it's better for both parties.

There is quite a strong case I think. Moot is the online brand of a person who runs one of the most popular forums on the internet. Starting a forum service with his name is quite clearly in a grey area if not outright infringement.

grabeh3• 14 years ago

Sending a letter without outlining your legal position is precisely the kind of approach which could lead to a drawn out legal battle. Outlining your legal position in terms of agreed law will help to remove ambiguity and opinion from the equation and help the other side to better assess the merits of the case. In my opinion this hasn't been done because case law is not on moot's side.

However the main reason why there will be not be a long drawn out battle is because there are likely to be no damages and moot.it are unlikely to have any real assets.

dromidas• 14 years ago

I think Moot.It should strongly consider the likelihood that they will be LOIC'd to death before they even are able to make enough customers to pay to get unDDoS'd to begin with.

There aren't really many groups I'd be worried about pissing off en masse as a startup except perhaps anonymous.

cyber• 14 years ago

I'll definitely be following this case! ;)

charonn0• 14 years ago

I predict a rule 34 campaign when/if moot.it opens for business. Just sayin'

gnarbarian3• 14 years ago

Firm legal standing or not, getting confused with 4chan probably isn't a good idea for any startup. IMO the largest worry for Moot.it is risking some sort of retaliation from 4chan's user base. They are excellent at shitting things up.

ChrisNorstrom• 14 years ago

I actually think 4chaners might react against Christopher/moot. Anon stands very specifically for complete and total freedom of speech. Saying "whatever the fuck you want" is more important to anon than protecting some imaginary trademark moot thinks he has.

arcatek• 14 years ago

That's wrong; "Anon" didn't liked at all when a company tried to trademark elements related to the Anonymous branding.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/31/anonymous_french_fir...

I don't know what has happened after these threats.

gnarbarian3• 14 years ago

Entirely possible, although Moot.it has far more to lose than moot himself. I get the impression that Moot.it is playing with fire in order to stir up some free publicity. I personally don't think it's worth the risk.

ProblemFactory• 14 years ago

It's difficult to say what Anonymous stands for, because it's not a single organisation or group. Anyone can take the label of Anonymous when advocating a cause, and "become part of it".

Before Anonymous got "good guy" publicity for supporting Wikileaks, people calling themselves anonymous were mostly known for trolling: finding emotionally sensitive people and communities, and harassing them both online and offline for their own amusement.

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

Well that's the first time one of my Hacker News comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726644) has been used as evidence in a legal document.

readme• 14 years ago

Moot is a dictionary word. Not trademarkable. C&D was a waste of money. He would have done better to just ask them nicely to stop.

Ultimately Moot could use his social clout to get them to switch names. IANAL but I'm pretty sure it's a legal name.

mylittlepony• 14 years ago

Good point. I've seen many of these cases. My guess is some lawyers don't even care, they will get paid anyway, they can only win.

mvkel2• 14 years ago

Isn't the bigger story that Moot.it competes directly with Chris Poole's new venture, Canv.as?

dkroy• 14 years ago

It would be if it did, but it doesn't. Both technologies are pretty neat, but if you go check out each of them you will notice that they are very different. Canvas is an image-centric social website, which also does a significant amount to replace desktop editing tools for desktop. While moot is Disqus with websockets.

Edit: Oh, and a forum component. Also, I think Moot.it are trying to sell a product, while Poole seems to be building another community.

mvkel2• 14 years ago

Maybe competes was the wrong word. I was speaking more about the trademark itself. Technically they'd both be in the same "class," so Poole has more ammo for first usage, Etc.

ArekDymalski• 14 years ago

Quite ridiculous. Actually yoomoot.com would be more entitled to send such a letter than Poole. Now everyone who was nicknamed 'Shorty' in college back in 82 will start suing everything what moves.

4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Startup Moot.It

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