I am sorry to completely disagree :
Fastfission wrote:
Is the "many people" really very many in a legal sense? I don't know about these things at all but I imagine the vast, vast majority of people even on the internet much less in the world much less in the United States have no idea what Wikimania is, even if they may possibly have heard of Wikipedia.
Well actually there are enough people who know about wikimania to try to register the .eu domain name.
Plus if they tried to register the .eu domain name, that also mean they begun registering the trademark somehow since this is a necessary step to get the .eu
So basically, people already use it for means that are contrary to our objectives and our image. Please don't answer me it's no big deal.
Because I am sorry, but it's very big deal.
At least it means that you really would have to re-think completely about our strategy...
when some book publisher will begin editing "wikimania books" or "wikimania tshirts" and will try to shut us down because of trademark law... what will you say ?
And since our next wikimania will be at Harvard Law School... what will you do when the WMF will have to explain it was not even able to secure the domain name of its main public event?
I don't want to say that it's not possible to keep the name wikimania... but pretending that it's no big deal is not realistic!
As an aside, wikimania.org vs. wikimania2006.org -- if someone is looking for our Wikimania, they will see that they have the wrong site, plop what they want into google, and immediately find the correct site. That's how I cope with typosquatting and things of that nature, and a lot of other sites work that way.
And please, explaining that you "cope" with typosquatting is nonsense. We're talking about a manifestation that will take place at Harvard Law School and that is likely to be our main event for the year to come. Many people will come to know us through this, and many more people are going to judge us through this.
So if you want to keep the wikimania name, do it but give me solutions for these people !
And explain me why not simply call it "wikiconf", "wikitruc", "wikimeeting" or "wikiwhatever". Then, we could make a proper registration on the tm and the domain names so that we will be able to secure and keep it safe so that the community can go on using it for years?
Because that's the thing : if we fuck up with this, it's the community we're building everyday that will get fucked up with someone who will own the trademark and the domain names of the work of this community.
It's our job to make sure that this name will stay available forever for the community and that no one will ever try to make it his own.
So come on... don't explain me that people will simply use google to find the good wikimania website ! Even local French Linux Groups are better organized than this !
Jean-Baptiste Soufron WMF Legal Officer