One person who dislikes Canonical's search tool is Micah Lee, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who maintains the HTTPS Everywhere project and is CTO of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Lee set up a website called "Fix Ubuntu," which provides instructions for disabling the Internet search tool.
"If you're an Ubuntu user and you're using the default settings, each time you start typing in Dash (to open an application or search for a file on your computer), your search terms get sent to a variety of third parties, some of which advertise to you," the website says.
According to Lee, Canonical sent him an e-mail this morning asking him to stop using the Ubuntu logo and also to stop using the word "Ubuntu" in his domain name. Lee reprinted the entire e-mail in a blog post titled, "Canonical shouldn’t abuse trademark law to silence critics of its privacy decisions." To prove its point, the e-mail showed a screenshot of Lee's site with the Ubuntu logo:
The policy Canonical pointed to does say that permission from the company is required to use "any Trademark in a domain name or URL or for merchandising purposes." Lee argued that his use of the Ubuntu logo and the name in his domain is "nominative use" and thus not a trademark violation. "Although I’m perfectly within my rights to continue using both, I’ve decided to remove the Ubuntu logo from the website, but add a disclaimer—because it seems like a nice thing to do," he wrote. (The EFF, for what it's worth, has published this list of tips to help makers of parody sites avoid getting shut down.)
His website still has the same domain name that includes the word "Ubuntu." Canonical doesn't seem to have a problem with other websites using the word Ubuntu in their domain names, such as "OMG! Ubuntu!," a news site that writes enthusiastically about the operating system.
Canonical's registered trademark doesn't specifically mention domain names, but it claims broad rights over the word Ubuntu for use in "Telecommunication, communication, and broadcasting services provided online, via the Internet, or via other communications networks," and "transmission of information, data, text, images, graphics, sound and/or audio-visual material online, via the Internet or via other communications networks."
We've contacted Canonical about the e-mail sent to Lee, but haven't heard back yet.
While Ubuntu's code is open source and free to everyone, Canonical obviously hasn't given up its right to enforce its trademarks. Lee argued that the company's stance against his website "isn't very much in the spirit of open source," though. The code for Fixubuntu.com is also open source—Lee invited Canonical to "submit a patch" if it decides to help out "in a more productive way."
The EFF has already sent a response to Canonical, in a letter from EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. "While we appreciate the polite tone of your letter, we must inform you that your request is not supported by trademark law and interferes with protected speech," the letter says. "The website criticizes Canonical Limited for certain features of Ubuntu that Mr. Lee believes undermine user privacy and teaches users how to fix these problems. It is well-settled that the First Amendment fully protects the use of trademarked terms and logos in non-commercial websites that criticize and comment upon corporations and products. Mr. Lee's site is a clear example of such protected speech. Neither Mr. Lee, nor any other member of the public, must seek your permission before engaging in such constitutionally protected expression."
Source : Ars Technica
Image : Ars Technica
