Linux Outfit Canonical Launches Campaign to Silence Privacy Critic

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/11/fixubuntu/

by mmpozulp • 13 years ago

29 22 13 years ago

codezero• 13 years ago

"But Lee isn’t taking the thing down"

Good for you.

Hosting a shell script with informative keywords seems like completely reasonable fair use, so if this goes to court, I doubt they will have a case.

The site fixubuntu.com doesn't appear to have any logos on it now, maybe it did before? So at the very least, it looks like he pulled that, if they were there in the first place. This article seems to imply the logo was there.

thejosh• 13 years ago

Seems they only like it when it has "good" connotations to the name, as sites like OMGUbuntu and other sites stay up, while sites that want to help users remove the Amazon go down.

oblique63• 13 years ago

legitimate question: how many of these 'anti-ubuntu/amazon' sites are there, and how many of them have actually been threatened to be taken down in the past?

Because right now this is looking like an isolated incident (albeit an inconvenient one for Canonical's PR), so it could be meaningless to try and read into it too much...

jcastro2• 13 years ago

This was just a misunderstanding, comments from Mark S:

https://plus.google.com/116812394236590806058/posts/5jdibY5i...

EDIT: and subsequent blogpost: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299

throwaway98482• 13 years ago

s/misunderstanding/shrewd recognition of a budding PR disaster/

Canonical has really gone astray. Hell, the takedown order would never have been necessary in the first place without this shopping lens stupidity.

jcastro2• 13 years ago

If you don't like the online lenses then you can turn them off.

u23282• 13 years ago

I agree with Mark that it's not worth beating up Canonical over a bureaucratic slip up. Latching on to simple mistakes that are the result of internal miscommunication and misinterpretations of policy is foolish. And ideologues (especially in the software world) love to do that blindly, but it's not intelligent discourse.

That being said, I don't think that absolves Canonical of the underlying criticism: your company is active pushing a product, despite its open-source-ness, that betrays the trust and privacy of your users unless they're informed enough about the situation to opt-out.

I know Canonical is a corporation and has to generate revenue. I won't sit and pretend like I know how to solve that problem for your company. It doesn't change the dilemma, however. I'd like to recommend a user-friendly Linux to my friends and family. I won't recommend Ubuntu until the privacy issue is opt-in instead of opt-out. In fact, if they're less-technical, I recommend iPads and Macs. At least Apple doesn't ship off desktop search results to a third party that we're aware of. I hold enough trust with Apple to believe that they are not. It's unfortunate that I can't say the same for Canonical.

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

"At least Apple doesn't ship off desktop search results to a third party that we're aware of"

Care to wager what Apple resells your desktop/iphone/iPad search results for? I'm guessing it's on the order of 100 million dollars/year. Certainly more than 10 million dollars.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

The real question is why they allow the new guy to send a cease-and-desist without any revision whatsoever, and why does (s)he think this is correct.

Just goes to diminish my (already very low) opinion of lawyers

JamesZaya• 13 years ago

I am glad there is a clarifcation from Mark - http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299.

Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site. Now, that was not a decision based on policy or guidance; as I said, Canonical’s trademark policy is unusually generous relative to corporate norms in explicitly allowing for this sort of usage. It was a mistake, and there is no question that the various people in the line of responsibility know and agree that it was a mistake.

But if the person who sent the template letter was new, then surely this becomes a training issue?

Trademark violations can soon become PR disasters just like this has become. So perhaps companies and start up's may wish to learn from Canonical's mistake as it can easily happen to them.

No one is perfect. Mistakes happen...

_bfhp• 13 years ago

Well obviously Canonical isn't going to bother OMG! Ubuntu!, it generally helps users to keep using Ubuntu and stay in the "Ubuntu community".

Edit: as another user just commented: https://plus.google.com/116812394236590806058/posts/5jdibY5i...

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

I don't see an Ubuntu/Canonical trademark on this website.

Certainly if: "http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/" doesn't get shut down, "fixubuntu.com" should be ok.

Edit: from: http://blog.canonical.com/2013/11/08/trademarks-community-an... "The site owner has already agreed to remove the Ubuntu logo and clarified that there is no connection; from our perspective the situation has been resolved, "

mig39• 13 years ago

Ubuntu, meet Streissand Effect.

drderidder• 13 years ago

Been a longtime Ubuntu fan but Canonical's newfound disrespect for users privacy and ham fisted response means I'm looking for another distro now. Nice try by Mark Shuttleworth to explain the whole thing away (plays the "blame it all on the new guy" card) but once you've turned to into a datapimp it's hard to regain trust.

Linux Outfit Canonical Launches Campaign to Silence Privacy Critic

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