Hacking for Christ

Protecting Germans III: Our Allies

This is the third in a series of blog posts (previous: 1, 2) on how Mozilla is using its trademarks to try and make sure everyone gets a genuine copy of our software, for free.

Mozilla has a form where people can report sites abusing our trademarks. And we are very grateful to people who do. Harvey Anderson, the Mozilla general counsel, has recently posted some statistics on what those sorts of reports have helped us achieve.

But we aren't the only people trying to deal with the problem of "subscription trap" sites. downloados.de is a private initiative in Germany educating internet users about the typical set-up of a subscription trap. It comes across like a typical trap site, but when the user makes the final click to send off their personal details and to obtain the software, the website then informs them that they were about to spend money on free software and that they should be more careful next time.

Protecting Germans II: The Steps

This is the second in a series of blog posts (previous) on how Mozilla is using its trademarks to try and make sure everyone gets a genuine copy of our software, for free. I will continue to use Germany as an example.

When we discover a wilful trademark infringement, we normally take the following steps, in increasing order of seriousness:

1. Contact search engines to ask for the site to be delisted.

We have a good relationship with the major search engines, and being delisted or having their advertising removed does a great deal to "cut off the air supply" of fraudulent sites.

2. Report the site to consumer protection agencies such as computerbetrug.de, antiabzockenet.blogspot.com and boocompany.com.
3. Send a cease and desist letter.

In most cases, sending a C&D sorts out the problem. If it doesn't, we:

4. File a DENIC domain dispute and request cancellation or transfer of any infringing domain names.

Where there is a domain name involved which infringes Mozilla’s trademarks, we can file a domain dispute alongside sending the C&D. For German domains, this is very quick and cost-efficient (national stereotypes at work :-). Upon cancellation of a .de domain by the infringer, DENIC automatically transfers the domain to Mozilla. (For other TLDs, it's not so automatic.)

We have already obtained numerous domain names this way. Examples include "mozilla.de", "mozilla-europe.de", "mozillamessaging.de" and "mozilla.fr", as well as dozens of typosquatted domains.

Unfortunately, for subscription traps, a C&D rarely has any effect. So we move on to:

5. Obtain a preliminary injunction (PI).

In Germany, PIs are also quick and cheap. Typically, it takes 1 or 2 days to obtain a PI. The proceedings are ex-parte (you only need one side in court), the other side is not even notified of the application for a PI and there is no discovery of evidence. You make your case, and the judge decides.

PIs become effective upon service. If they are not complied with, they can be enforced through penalty payment proceedings. However, a quicker way to take the site down is by approaching the provider. Under German law, internet providers are liable for infringing content once they are made aware of the infringement. Thus, a letter to a provider, accompanied by a copy of the PI, usually leads to the immediate shutdown of the site. (Remember, the site has already been warned of proceedings by the C&D; this is not coming out of the blue.)

So far, Mozilla has needed to file 6 7 (another one this week) PIs, and all of them were successful. In two cases, the other side appealed, but the PI was confirmed on appeal.

Community Size, and Bug Quality

I've just finished watching Diederik van Liere's fascinating presentation (Ogg video, 20 mins), linked to by Mark, about his work with bugzilla.mozilla.org data. Download the full slide deck - you'll need it to follow along with my comments, which should be of interest to the community-minded.

Slides 9 and 10, the community dynamics slides, are worrying. Diederik explains the decline in the size of the community as "increased product maturity", but I'm not sure that's true. If it were, we would expect to see the number of people entering the community decreasing. However, that number has stayed roughly constant, with peaks surrounding a release as we reach out to beta testers, and as new users report bugs. It's the number of people leaving which seems to be increasing. Fewer people are hanging around once they get here. And I don't know why.

Slide 11, about what the final resolutions ended up being of bugs filed in each year, is fascinating. It would be really interesting to see that graphed at a greater granularity.

We have made significant progress in reducing the percentage of duplicate bugs filed. People complain about Bugzilla's search, but the percentage was a flat 25% from 2002-2004, and it's now a flat 13% - basically half what it was. Also, from a low of 34% of bugs filed being FIXED, we are now up at 56%.

There are no doubt lots of factors involved in this effect, including the reduction in the size of the community mentioned in the earlier slides. I'm really interested in working out what we might have done which has improved the situation. I have an utterly open mind on this. here are some significant events I can think of which may be relevant:

• 2000-10: duplicates.cgi created
• 2002-10: Bugzilla Helper created
• 2003-09: Specific search created
• 2004-12: Hendrix created

Can anyone else think of other events or software deployments which may be relevant? I'm happy to do the research to find out when they happened.

MediaWikis Can Host Open Video: wiki.mozilla.org Enabled

The awesome Jeremy Orem has written a Mediawiki extension to allow the direct embedding of Open Video, and has turned this feature on on wiki.mozilla.org. Check out my demo page (you just type the normal HTML syntax into the wiki markup) and then feel free to use it to host Mozilla-relevant videos. (Note: wiki.mozilla.org has a 32MB file upload limit.)

Nav4All Loses Data Licence, Shuts Down

In a follow-up to my previous post, here's an example of what can happen if your build your business on non-free data or software from a single supplier:

Nav4All navigation shut down by Navteq

Letter to 27,625,631 Nav4All navigation customers

Dear Customers,

It is with the deepest regret that we hereby notify you that the global navigation of Nav4All and the Tracking & Tracing will go offline in 3 days. The reason for the same is that the data licence agreement with Navteq (a 100% Nokia subsidiary) was not extended, in a totally unexpected manner. ...

Nav4All worked on "hundreds of different mobile telephones of many makes such as Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Android, HTC, Nokia, LG, Iphone, Ipod etc." Navteq is now owned by Nokia. It's not hard to join the dots. I'm somewhat surprised Nav4All call this "totally unexpected", though. It's the obvious thing for Nokia to do. And they bought Navteq over two years ago. If I were a Nav4All shareholder, I'd be having strong words with the management right now...

iPad

Software freedom means never having to say "I'm very much hoping Apple continues to allow...".

And that's all you'll hear from me about the iPad :-)

Protecting Germans I: The Problem

Recently the German government, along with the governments of several other countries, recommended (link in German) moving away from IE to "an alternative browser", due to some well-publicized IE security flaws. Blog of Metrics has shown us the effect this recommendation has had on downloads of the German localized version of Firefox - 300,000 extra copies in one weekend.

Unfortunately, we strongly suspect not all Germans will be getting the real deal. Germany is a place where Mozilla has a particular problem with trademark infringement of various types. The most typical of these are:

• infringing domain name registrations (e.g. typo domains such as "morzilla.de", "firfox.de")
• misleading online content (people pretending to be the official Mozilla download site)
• offers of modified versions of Mozilla’s software, e.g. with a changed toolbar, or containing malware
• "subscription traps" - where something which seems free actually ends up costing you

I've written about subscription traps in the past. These are fraudulent websites which lead users to believe that they are obtaining a typical free download of Firefox or Thunderbird. Only the small print mentions that by registering for the download, the user undertakes a contractual obligation to pay up to £95 (€105; US$150) per year.

This sucks.

Over the next few days I'm going to be blogging about what Mozilla is actively doing to use our trademarks to protect Germans, and residents of other countries as well, from being ripped off in this way.

My thanks to Anthonia Zimmermann of Lovells for her help in preparing this series of blog posts.