Black Twitter
blacktwitter.io
Remember when you first heard about Black twitter and thought it was actually a separate website? Was that just me?
  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
    111·
    2 years ago

    You probably don’t want to use “twitter” in your name/domain like that. You are probably infringing their trademark.

    • 0x1C3B00DA@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 years ago

      I could be wrong, but I think trademark only applies if you’re selling something. If they’re running a fedi instance as a free service, there’s no infringement. There are other sites with twitter in the domain, e.g. https://istwitterdown.com/

      EDIT: I said selling something, but what I should have said was providing a product in the same market. So the fact that’s its free might not be relevant and a free, instance of a decentralized social network could be considered in the same market as a commercial, centralized social network. I still don’t see twitter going after this single instance

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
        7·
        2 years ago

        I am not a lawyer. But…

        I don’t think selling matters at all. The problem is if someone could confuse it. “Is Twitter Down” is arguably very hard to confuse as it is clearly something about Twitter (telling if it is down), and it doesn’t seem to present itself as being made/run by Twitter. This is further supported by the “by ryan king” in the corner.

        However if people often talk about #BlackTwitter as some subset of content on Twitter it seems entirely possible that people could think that blacktwitter.io could think that it is run by Twitter. If it was called something like thenewblacktwitter or blacktwitteralternative it would be less likely to cause this confusion.

        Another angle that they may argue is that they have an official product called “Twitter Blue” and they could argue that people would believe that “Black Twitter” is also an official Twitter product.

        The most important think to remember about Trademark law is that it is very much about consumer protection. It doesn’t give you exclusive rights to use your trademark, it just prevents people from using your trademark to make something seem to be from you.

        On top of all of that being legally right isn’t the only thing that matters. If Twitter accuses you of Trademark infringement unless you want to hire a bunch of lawyers you are probably just going to do what they say.

        • kevincox@lemmy.ml
          5·
          2 years ago

          Regarding the edit:

          what I should have said was providing a product in the same market. So the fact that’s its free might not be relevant and a free, instance of a decentralized social network could be considered in the same market as a commercial, centralized social network.

          Again, I don’t think the exact product matters too much. Being in different markets can help, for example a Twitter Whistle would have a better argument than a Twitter Social Network. But for huge brands that are well known everywhere (like Twitter) the market difference tends to matter less.

          I still don’t see twitter going after this single instance

          Yes, it is unlikely. But definitely not impossible with things that Twitter has already done to try and push out Mastodon (like banning links). And if it does happen it will be devastating to the instance as changing domains is painful. So I’m just suggesting that it may be best to play it safe here to avoid possible problems down the road.