p2pnet - rss feed: STOP IT OR WE’LL SUE YOU!
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Pretty soon, it won’t be possible to do anything online —- or maybe even off —- without someone trying to sue you for something or other.
The latest effort comes from outfit called Inventor-link described by Greg Beck on the Consumer Law & Policy blog as Censorship_for_dummies.
Britain’s Inventor-link promises to help inventors get their inventions to the marketplace, says Beck, going on the company’s home page has a link to its Privacy and User Agreement, which states:
By using this site you agree and understand that the HTML code, look, feel, content, company name, logo, text, and any likeness or derivative of such content is the sole property of Inventor-Link LLC and may not be used in any manner without the expressed written permission of Inventor-Link LLC. Furthermore, we strictly prohibit any links and or other unauthorized references to our web site without our permission.
Not another one!
Canadian businessman Wayne Crookes figures there’s such a crime as defamatory linking and Associated Press is after Verisign’s news aggregation site, Moreover, because of alleged unlicensed use [read ‘linking’] of AP news stories.
In the Inventor-link farce, “Although the enforceability of these terms is extremely dubious, the company is nevertheless invoking them in an attempt to stop criticism of the company that appears on InventorEd.org, a website that provides information about invention promotion businesses and scams,” says Beck, going on:
Inventor-link is represented by Dozier Internet Law which, “apparently believes in the enforceability of this kind of agreement, because the firm’s own website includes similar terms’.
Its user agreement, “prohibits linking to its website, using the firm’s name ‘in any manner’ without permission (the license specifically provides that even clients cannot say they are represented by the firm without asking), or making ‘any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us’,” says the Consumer Law & Policy blog, continuing:
These terms would appear to prevent even criticizing the terms themselves, as this post does, by linking to and quoting from them. And, very strangely, the terms prohibit even looking at the website’s HTML code.
Says Dozier, “We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so.”
What? Do they mean this, do you think?
<p cass=”bodyB”>Dozier Internet Law, P.C. has a lot of intellectual property on our site ……
Inventor-link’s and Dozier’s are “browse-wrap” agreements derived from “shrinkwrap” licensing terms that appear inside packaged software, says Beck, adding:
The theory behind these agreements is that, just by reading a website, a consumer becomes bound by the company’s contractual terms. These contracts often include forum-selection or arbitration clauses that visitors to the site have never read.
Depending on the circumstances of the case, browse-wrap agreements may or may not be enforceable. Where a company has included a provision prohibiting fair use for purposes of criticism, however, it is hard to see how any court would enforce the agreement. Readers of a site have little opportunity to review and agree to such terms, and a reasonable consumer who had reviewed the terms would be unlikely to agree to them.
“Consumers who receive threats of litigation over purportedly binding contractual terms are often more likely to shut up than to bear the expense of retaining an attorney and defending their rights,” he concludes.
BTW, when you visit p2pnet, or any site carrying its content with or without its permission, you agree to pay for any lawsuits which may directly or indirectly result from p2pnet stories, posts, or anything else which can be in any way be construed to be inaccurate, and/or which may be said to defame anybody or anything in any manner whatsoever.
You further undertake to pay p2pnet $1 every time you read a p2pnet story, or even casually glance at it.
OK?
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Consumer Law & Policy - All Criticism of This Website Is Hereby Forbidden, October 17, 2007
defamatory linking - Google sued for online defamation, June 29, 2007
read ‘linking’ - AP lawsuit threatens the Net, October 15, 2007
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Oh no. I viewed your source and copied and pasted it to a google webpage! AHHHHH. Sue me bitches.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
An open letter to Dozier(sent via email to site webmaster and registered WHOIS contact):
—————————–begin quote—————————–
By reading this email, you agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions:
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: These license terms are a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and the writer of this email for the email in which this text is printed, which includes the English language sentence above and may include associated numbers, punctuation, and legalese (”Email”). YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT BY READING, SEEING, COPYING, REMEMBERING, HEARING, HEARING OF, TRANSLATING, OR OTHERWISE UNDERSTANDING OR INTERPRETING THE EMAIL. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO READ, SEE, COPY, REMEMBER, HEAR, HEAR OF, TRANSLATE, INTERPRET, OR UNDERSTAND THE EMAIL. You immediately and irrevocably release all Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and other intellectual property of which you are the whole or partial owner or rights holder into the public domain. You agree to indemnify the writer of the email in any and all legal proceedings arising from and/or irrellevant to any legal action taken by you, your designates, or your wholly or partially owned or controlled business and non-business entities. You agree to enact policies, practices, and guidelines in any jurisdiction you hold, whether public, private, or interpersonal, to prevent the further decline and abuse of digital law, as defined and interpreted by the writer of the email. You promise to be a better person, fight for world peace and the end of evil and tyranny, and to call your estranged mother to make things right. This agreement (including any addendum or amendment to this agreement which is included with the email) are the entire agreement between you and the writer of the email relating to the email and they supersede all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals and representations with respect to the email or any other subject matter covered by this agreement. To the extent the terms of any other agreement conflict with the terms of this agreement, the terms of this agreement shall control.
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
a.k.a. emansipater
October 19th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Simple solution that will assure NO ONE is able to link to, copy from, look at, or quote
either Inventor-link or Dozier Internet Law: TAKE DOWN *YOUR* WEB SITE!
If you IP is THAT valuable, then keep it to yourselves.
Solution for others, don’t visit or use either web of the sites or businesses!
October 19th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
that would work
October 19th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Search engine crawler such as google will visit the site and link to it unless unstructed no to do so on the robot.txt file.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
A lot of potential BS patents.
If the patent office do his job right it should reject most of them because most of them have orior art and most of the rest is trivial.
Few examples:
CIGARETTE PACKET WITH LIGHTER
A CAT LADDER
BEACH SUITCASES
SKI GLOVES WITH POCKETS
TOOTHBRUSH WITH FORCE SENSOR
A GOLF CLUB HOLDER
PORTABLE STACKABLE CONTAINERS
ANIMAL TOY WITH FLASHING LIGHTS
COMPACT ADHESIVE TAPE CUTTER
HEEL PROTECTOR
A BAG LIGHT
TRAVEL CLOTHES RACK
PORTABLE INTRUDER ALARM
ILLUMINATED JEWELLERY
October 19th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Inventions? Most of those sound like knock off’s of cheap imaitation products….
October 19th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
OK, you guys, WHERE’S THE MONEY YOU-ALL OWE ME?
HUH? HUH?
Where’s the dollar each? AND DON’T PRETEND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT !!!
October 19th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Well, you mention “guys”, so that obviously does not apply to me.
But, the cheque’s in the mail anyways.
October 19th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
What next?
A EULA before I am “allowed” to visit a web site?
Instant answer: NO
*NO* matter how pertinent it may seem at the time!
(P.S., Kiss my Grits!)
October 21st, 2007 at 11:45 am
slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/2123233
October 21st, 2007 at 11:12 pm
If no one is supposed to talk about it or link to it then how the hell do they get customers??
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
So, what if your browser caches their website? You then have their content on your hard drive? if they own copyright to their source code then just visiting it would break that copyright as you download it onto your hard drive to view in the browser.
I agree with a comment above about them taking their website offline. Simply sounds ridiculous.