Daniel-
Erik wrote:
Of course I should be allowed to start Erik's Garden Olympics or to call my open source game "Mega Olympics".
Strawman. That's different Erik; you clearly are disambiguating the name from /the/ Olympics.
Where's the guy who keeps correcting people when they use the term "straw man"? ;-) So let's call my Garden Olympics "the Olympics". It doesn't matter for the sake of this example.
Even your use examples might still be suspect, however.
I agree that they would be legally suspect. I was talking about the morality of trademark law. If I advertise my Olympics to make money with them, then I agree that it is moral to stop me from doing that. But if there is no profit motive, trademark law should not be applicable.
I'm using this example to clarify what moral positions I think Wikimedia should and should not take. We should never legally act against someone who is using the name "Wikipedia" without a profit motive. I believe that this is a misuse of trademark law, and allows things like the use of trademarks to threaten open source projects, or anti-corporate websites like StopEsso.com, to happen. Lest we become hypocrites, we should be very careful about which instruments of the law we do and do not use.
I am strongly morally opposed to using the UDRP process to hijack domain names registered by others.
And what about the initial hijacking of our trademark to begin with?
They did not hijack any registered trademark, and unregistered trademarks seem to be a US-specific thing.
Sigh. It has already been stated /several/ times to you that we /do/ have a very clear trademark on the Wikipedia name. Registration is a secondary issue (as with copyrights).
Unless you show evidence that this is the case outside the US I will assume that it is not. And that makes the argument very weak, legally speaking.
I'm not saying we should do nothing. I am saying we
I agree with this completely. However if they want an unreasonable price (IMO over 3 times what they paid to register the domain) then IMO we advance to the next level.
Which is ignoring them.
We should also eventually register all Wikimedia trademarks starting with Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
I am sympathetic to registering trademarks and using them to stop simple cybersquatting (that is, a no-content domain). Anything beyond that should be discussed. In any case, all actions need to be approved by Jimbo.
Regards,
Erik