2004.01.14 23:22 "Re: [Tiff] http://www.libtiff.org/", by Bob Friesenhahn

By private email. All I was saying is that it might not be a good idea if those who own the domain now can read everything someone here may be planning to do. I'm offering to translate between German and English and I could send a message to that trademark / copyright newsgroup.

In case anyone is confused, the reason why I mentioned trademarks is that there is a standard formalized complaint mechanism for the .com, .org, .gov, .net, .biz, etc. domains to get a domain taken away from its holder due to conflict with an existing trademark.

If there is copyright infringement, then a complaint could be made to the ISP that hosts the site, and the site will be taken down if the ISP agrees that the copyright has been infringed. The fact that libtiff has a very liberal copyright clause may weaken the case somewhat, but if these web pages are not distributed with libtiff, then there is a good case for copyright infringement since I don't see any statement on the page which says it may be copied.

The last (remote) possiblity is that since the site appears to be supporting libtiff via PayPal donations, that it may be committing fraud since the site is not supporting libtiff. If so, the FBI or FTC may be interested.

Bob

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Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen