Response from Pitchfork Regarding Tumblr Subdomain(pitchfork.tumblr.com) |
Response from Pitchfork Regarding Tumblr Subdomain(pitchfork.tumblr.com) |
From March 14, 2009:
DON'T FOLLOW ME
I AM NOT A REAL TUMBLE BLOG, I AM USED AS A FILTER
SINCE TUMBLR TOOK AWAY MY REAL FILTER.
I Have Found The Tumblr Filter
This Filter is Obsolete
Personally, I think there is enough blame to go around:
* Meaghan is probably trying to cover her ass because she over-stepped herself in removing this blog without notification to the user because she though it was abandoned.
* Tumbldore is just using this to generate drama and publicity. It's also possible that Tumbldore is just a giant troll that had this whopper of a piece of bait dumped onto his lap, so now he's just going to milk it for all it's worth.
http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/393276231/this-is-in-respo...
Just because they can, does it mean they should have? It doesn't seem like a fair assumption that the account is abandoned if there are a few posts form the past year, especially when Tumblr didn't contact the user (assuming they did not).
It sucks, but you get what you pay for.
I can't say that the original owner has made the best case for himself. Throwing around terms like "libel" and "exercise my right" is off-putting and makes it hard to empathize with him.
This is a more interesting to me as a Pitchfork copyright/trademark issue: http://pitchforked.com/ (Context here: http://twitter.com/zachklein/status/9188476155 )
I hope the guy doesn't get the smackdown after just building the site, but who knows. (A lawyer knows.)
So do they have the rights to pitchfork.wordpress.com, pitchfork.heroku.com and pitchfork.github.com ? Of course not.
This is not about IP, this is about a company doing their friends a favor. I will now stay away from tumblr. If I cease posting for a few months they could take my domain away.
You can trademark the name of an everyday object. See 'Apple' computers vs 'Apple' the music label. Now they only have a trademark dispute is someone in their industry has the apple.com or apple.github.com or whatever (e.g. if Microsoft or Dell registered apple.wordpress.com, Apple might have a case to take it away from them do to brand confusion -- which was the original reason for trademarks).
Microsoft could register apple.wordpress.com and use it to blog about apples (the fruit).
Edit: Spelling
- Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_domains
- FeedBurner MyBrand: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand
ROUND I
Pitchfork: Within 10 minutes, a tumblr representative responded: “Hi, Megan. Those URLs are now free. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with. Thanks for using Tumblr!”
VS
Tumblr: "After you failed to respond for 72 hours, we released the domain."
VS
Tumbledore: "Tumblr stole my subdomain"
ROUND II
Tumblr: "There were not “several posts,” on that account, there were zero."
VS
Pitchfork: "...the last post that had been made was on November 18, 2009, and said, “This filter is obsolete.” [ includes screenshots of posts]
VS
Tumbledore: "I had several posts up and I followed 28 people with the account."
Someone is wrong on the internet!!!
The part about having 0 posts was explained by Meaghan all the way at the bottom of the page. The RSS feed shows deleted posts.
I found this comment thread amusing though. http://meaghano.com/post/393246405/tumbledore-ive-run-pitchf...
thats my opinion... taking it away under any circumstance is sketchy in my opinion.
Exactly.
hopefully tumblr will release some sort of official position on it like pitchfork did. and 3.5 months is not very long, but the its not like the posts were actually anything important accorindg to that screen shot. maybe tumblr should add a new feature that shows a message on login to let the user know that their domain may be reclaimed.
The screenshots that Pitchfork Media posted would have to be RSS screenshots because that is the only place that you can access the old posts right now, no? Pitchfork Media had no reason to screenshot the old pitchfork.tumblr.com before this whole drama-fest started.
I think that it's telling that Pitchfork Media also dealt with a 'Megan' (the same person?). To me, it's equally likely that this Meaghan was the person that deleted the account and turned it over to Pitchfork Media, and now she's trying to cover her ass by saying that the person was notified, and that the blog was completely empty. Has she really stated anything that could not be a lie on her part? This whole thing looks like it could just be a he-said-she-said deal.
[edit] The best I can come up with is this:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:HRNL2z4fQcwJ:pitchfork....
The Google cache for his last blog post was fetch on Nov 24.
Also, it appears that the person was actively using the account as a filter (following people and reading news), so the "inactive" part seems to be a contradiction as well.