Titan Note Continues Trying To Sell Its Questionable Device; Its Own Actions Keep Raising More Questions

from the sketchy dept

A few weeks back, I wrote about IndieGogo shutting down a crowdfunding project for a small notetaking/speaker device called Titan Note. As I pointed out at the time, there were a lot of alarm bells about the product, but I had still backed it just to see if it might actually work. IndieGogo shutting it down actually had me relieved because the more I thought about it, the less sure I was the project was legit. Making things even more bizarre -- and leading to my post about it -- was the news that the guy behind Titan Note had sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice to the Verge over its skeptical take on the product. The DMCA notice targeted the use of Titan Note's promotional images -- which are clearly fair use for news publications.

A few days after that all went down, I went to see if the guy behind Titan Note had anything to say about it. There was a post on Facebook claiming that it was all IndieGogo's fault and promising it would be on another "more trusted" platform soon:

As you have noticed, your orders on Indiegogo have been refunded. We got into a dispute with Indiegogo and we decided to use another platform instead. Indiegogo doesn't have your best interest in mind and we decided to find a better solution for both you and ourselves.

This seemed... sketchy for a variety of reasons. What kind of "dispute" could they have gotten into? A number of people asked in the comments, and the Titan Note guy (it's unclear if it's more than just one guy), just started pasting the same boilerplate response over and over again, insisting that there was a "dispute" over "payment and fees."

The dispute was regarding the payment and the fees. Moreover, Indiegogo has a history of not taking responsibility for the users on its platform. Many are dissatisfied with the Indiegogo platform. It was a wrong move from our side to take orders on the Indiegogo platform in the first place and we truly apologize about that. We promise that we will make it up to you when we relaunch Titan Note on a more trusted platform next week. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

More people began to question this, and then he started insisting he couldn't talk any more about it, because he was going to sue IndieGogo.

We are in the process of pursuing legal action against Indiegogo for their misconduct. Because of this, neither we or them can go into more specific details. We appreciate your understanding and we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.

Somewhere around this time, I decided to ask some questions on the Facebook page as well, noting that the boilerplate claims didn't make much sense. There's no reason to expect a dispute about "fees" since IndieGogo is pretty damn clear on the fee breakdown. I pointed out that there's simply no reason that he can't explain more of what the problem was, even if a lawsuit was in process -- and furthermore, suggested that it might make sense to delay a new crowdfunding campaign until after such a lawsuit was filed, so that backers could better understand the details. Separately, I asked about why they sent the DMCA notice.

A few hours later, I noticed that my question about the DMCA was deleted. I saw someone else asked a similar question -- and that was deleted. After a few more people asked, he finally posted another boilerplate answer, responding to a bunch of users:

About the DMCA: We sent the DMCA notice to the verge because they used our copyrighted images without our permission. No reputable publication would do that. They stole our property and we had to take action.

I responded to that, noting that this explanation made no sense at all. First of all, the images were promotional images, released for the press. Second, the Verge's use was clearly fair use. And, finally, I pointed out that this explanation was clearly not true, and the reason for the DMCA notice was obviously the skeptical nature of the Verge's article because none of the other news articles that were hyping up the Titan Note -- and which the company proudly linked to -- appeared to have DMCA notices over their use of the very same images.

And that's when I got blocked from commenting on the Titan Note Facebook page and all my remaining comments were deleted (he had already deleted my DMCA questions earlier).

So that confirmed just how sketchy this whole project was to me. The DMCA notice was bad. The nonsensical explanations were worse. And deleting some fairly straightforward questions about all of that (and then blocking me from commenting any more)? That's not a trustworthy project.

At almost the exact same time that I got blocked, Titan Note "relaunched" on a supposedly more trustworthy platform, an Australian site called Pozible. The project quickly got to nearly $100,000 in backing. I emailed Pozible to ask if they did any checking on projects, and pointed out that IndieGogo had taken the same project down. Almost immediately I got an email response from someone at Pozible, telling me that their own system had "flagged" the project and they were suspending the project until the creator provided more information.

I similarly reached out to IndieGogo to find out if the "fee dispute" claim was legit. Not so, the company told me. While they would not go into the full reasons for the project being suspended, they did say that "a lengthy investigation" by the trust and safety team determined that the company was violating IndieGogo's terms and services, and made it clear "this was not a dispute about fees, but a violation on their end." IndieGogo's terms involve lots of things, but one line that stands out:

Campaign Owners are not permitted to create a Campaign to raise funds for illegal activities, to cause harm to people or property, or to scam others. If the Campaign is claiming to do the impossible or it's just plain phony, don't post it.

Not surprisingly, after Pozible shut down the campaign after just a few hours, a bunch of people went back to Facebook to ask questions and note that this was now two crowdfunding platforms that had shut down the campaign entirely, and demanding answers. A few joked that "boilerplate" answers would be coming soon. It actually took a few days, but eventually...

To clarify, Neither of those platforms have seen our product. The outcome is not a reflection of Titan Note's quality and again, they have not seen our product. We have had competitors that have posted slanderous information to the platforms and we are in the process of bringing legal action against one of those platforms for their misconduct. We will not let a bump in the road stop our passion.

So... yeah. That doesn't actually answer the question. Nearly all crowdfunding projects don't involve the platforms seeing the projects, but it's very rare for projects to be canceled. It certainly suggests something else is up with this project and that's why they were canceled. Besides, the original story was that IndieGogo canceled over a "fee dispute." If that's the case, why would it matter that it hadn't seen the product?

And, of course, a few days after that -- earlier this week -- Titan Note launched its own website entirely (previously, one of the concerns was that the company didn't appear to have a website). And that website is allowing pre-orders. We won't link to it directly (no reason to give it free advertising), but astoundingly, the company is using the canceled IndieGogo project on its new website as proof of how cool it is:

Yes, the IndieGogo campaign had over 12,000 backers and had initially raised over $1.1 million dollars. But that was canceled and all the money was refunded. It seems very, very, very questionable to then go on and put up a website that suggests the project successfully raised that much money when that's not how things actually ended.

Distressingly, the project is also using the various positive press it got upon launching on the website, leaving out the Verge (obviously).

Not surprisingly, I am not the only person concerned about all of this. There are still some users in the Titan Note comments concerned about this (I have no idea how many others had their comments deleted, as mine were). There's also a Facebook group on crowdfunding scams that has taken a special interest in Titan Note with a few different discussions on it -- including concern about the current offering directly off the website.

Throughout all of this, I still would like the product to be legit, because it certainly would be an interesting product! However, with all of the red flags raised, and the questionable way that Titan Note has responded to these kinds of questions, it seems entirely reasonable to believe that the product is, at the very least, greatly exaggerated, and might possibly not exist at all. I did send Titan Note an email listing out a series of questions and letting them know I would be writing about this. So far, there has been no response. If one should come in, I will update this post.

Filed Under: copyright, crowdfunding, dmca, titan note
Companies: titan note

Now Canceled Crowdfunding Project Sent DMCA Notice Following Skeptical Review

from the you're-not-helping dept

A few months back, I saw some news about a crowdfunding project on IndieGogo, called Titan Note. It was a little a cylindrical device that acted as a microphone, and the guys behind the project insisted that it could transcribe notes with fairly incredible levels of accuracy. The device got some press coverage -- including a quite reasonably skeptical piece at The Verge, entitled "No way this transcription gizmo is as good as it claims to be." There was a lot more skepticism around the project in the comments to the project as well. On top of that, the project's marketing pitch seemed... wrong. That is, it positioned the device as a thing that you could use to "stop taking notes" in classes and meetings in order to pay better attention and learn more. But... that's just wrong. Because the process of taking notes yourself actually helps you commit things to memory. That is, taking notes helps you pay better attention, and thus if you actually used the device the way it was advertised, you might get less out of lectures and meetings.

All that said, here's a confession: I still backed it. I was already skeptical -- in part because of the mis-targeted marketing and because the video looked too good to be true, given the state of transcription products in the market, and I had read that Verge article. But, there was an early bird deal that made it pretty cheap, and I figured that even if it was just a so-so product, it could have some use, such as making it easier to transcribe videos and podcasts for posts here on Techdirt. Given the low price of the early bird, I figured maybe it was worth the risk that the product sucked... or didn't exist at all.

Eventually, the product raised over $1.1 million -- as it announced in a press release. But, late last night I got an email from IndieGogo saying that the project had been shut down and all funds refunded. IndieGogo told the Verge that the project had violated its terms of service -- which could mean lots of things. If anything, I'm more relieved than anything else. I had kind of regretted backing it in the first place, given the skepticism I had over the product.

But, that alone wouldn't make this much of a Techdirt story. Instead, what made this a Techdirt story is this, from the Verge:

When we covered the Titan Note in March, we suggested the company was perhaps exaggerating the capabilities of its product. After all, we said, if Apple or Amazon can’t produce transcription software as accurate and speedy as this, what chance does a company with no commercial history have? We later received a DMCA takedown notice for using of Titan Note’s product imagery to illustrate our story.

What a bunch of jerks. Sure, you can say that DMCA'ing the "images" rather than the actual story is marginally more defensible... but even that's not true. Those were marketing materials that the company released for the clear purpose of having the press promote the device. The only purpose behind a takedown notice was in anger over a skeptical report on the product. At the very least, that shows that Titan Note itself doesn't have much confidence in its own product. If I'd known it was a company that abused the DMCA to try to hit back at criticism I never would have backed it in the first place. Such companies are not trustworthy at all.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, crowdfunding, reviews, titan note
Companies: indiegogo

Sketchy Bogus Crowdfunding Campaigns To 'Buy' Congress's Private Web Browsing... Only Now Realize That's Impossible

from the well,-duh dept

Look, we warned everyone about this. Right after Congress stupidly stripped privacy protections so that ISPs could more actively sell your data (and make it harder for you to realize it or do anything about it), there were a few crowdfunding campaigns that popped up on GoFundMe, claiming that they were raising money to then buy the web browsing data of Congress. We pointed out at the time that this was dumb and dangerous because you can't just go buy someone's web surfing data. That's not how any of this works. But, you know, it was one of those stories that people just really, really wanted to believe, so apparently unaware of it being flat out impossible (more people should read Techdirt...), tons and tons of people donated tons and tons of money, without realizing there was absolutely no way these campaigns could do what they they claimed. The more well-known campaign, by a self-declared "privacy activist" named Adam McElhaney, ended up raising over $200k (despite others claiming that it looked like a pure scam). The slightly lesser well-known one, by actor Misha Collins, took in just under $90k. Between them, they raised about $300k... with promises of obtaining data that anyone with any knowledge of the situation would know they couldn't obtain.

So, uh, take a wild guess what has happened? If you guess they didn't get any data with that money, well give yourself a prize, because that's exactly 100% what happened.

And... some of the folks snookered into handing over the cash for something that was pretty clearly bogus are... not happy. Many have been requesting refunds. McElhaney is now claiming that he was never planning to buy the data from ISPs, but rather get it by FOIA, though he's now admitting in a GoFundMe update that it's not working either:

When I started, I said I wanted to get the internet histories of those who voted for this law.

That has not changed.

What I didn't mention was *WHERE* I planned on getting the data. If I told you that I was going to come after your web habits, your search history, you might - as I imagine many of you did - change what you look up on your home computers. This is what I wanted our legislators to think - their home internet connections where being targeted. When in fact I was coming for their office server data. That data is subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and very obtainable.

Even if they didn't change their habits the data stored in their work proxy servers would still be a trove of information. Maybe even more telling than home.

The reason I am telling this to you now is, I think the cat is out-of-the-bag. After the first forty paper requests went out, a few days later I was contacted by a friend who happens to work in the offices of a senators. She said that word is getting around that "the GoFundMe guy that has raised all that money for privacy is trying to get our work internet history."

Now after about 80 paper requests have gone out, I have received responses back from three. They simply stated they do not have the data I requested. Oddly enough they were all requests for the same person, Marsha Blackburn. But, it makes sense. I am in Tennessee and three of her offices are in Tennessee so the mail would have gotten to her offices faster. After that I have received no other responses.

He then notes that anyone who wants a refund should request it and GoFundMe would return the money -- but for those who didn't request a return, he'd hand the money over to EFF. Hopefully that is true -- EFF obviously does great work. But, still, this whole episode is an unfortunate one. There remain very real issues around the privacy rules being killed and the way in which ISPs handle our private info. But going nuts and exaggerating the situation helped no one (well, perhaps EFF will benefit in the end... but still not the best way to handle this). Keeping things in perspective and accurate is important. Flying off the handle and assuming you can just go buy everyone's internet browsing history without actually understanding the legal change that was happening was dumb -- and it was dumb that many in the press helped make the story go viral without any explanation that it was bullshit. If you want to donate to organizations for doing good work, donate to them directly -- not through some sketchy scheme like these.

Filed Under: congress, crowdfunding, fcc, privacy
Companies: gofundme

The Web Screws Artists Again... By Letting Them Have A Normal Life

from the only-those-who-master-the-dark-arts dept

For pretty much all of the history of Techdirt, we've been hearing from the legacy entertainment industries about how the internet has been destroying art and destroying culture. They were making things worse, and we'd have more starving artists and less content -- and whatever content we did have would definitely be terrible. That's the story we were told over and over and over again -- and there are still a few in the industry who pitch this story.

The problem is it's simply not true.

The New York Times has an article by Farhad Manjoo called, How The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It, in which Manjoo claims that a cultural shift has been happening, one that could have radical implications for creators:

In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are doing so at an accelerating pace, and on a dependable, recurring schedule, often through subscriptions. And they’re paying for everything.

Manjoo presents compelling stats to back up his argument:

Apple users spent $2.7 billion on subscriptions in the App Store in 2016, an increase of 74 percent over 2015. Last week, the music service Spotify announced that its subscriber base increased by two-thirds in the last year, to 50 million from 30 million. Apple Music has signed on 20 million subscribers in about a year and a half. In the final quarter of 2016, Netflix added seven million new subscribers -- a number that exceeded its expectations and broke a company record. It now has nearly 94 million subscribers.

So it seems low-priced subscription-based services are finally coming into their own. Netflix’s lowest subscription plan of $8/month offers access to thousands of hours of content. Compared to DirectTV’s $50/month plan, that’s a bargain. If you happen to also be an Amazon Prime subscriber, between merely those two plans, you can access a huge amount of content whenever and wherever you want... it’s no surprise cheap subscription models across the whole spectrum are finally thriving.

If you’re an creator, this is fantastic news. Patreon now leads the pack with plans for artists to offer their fans a recurring payment option and/or a pay-for-new-content model (and, of course, you can see Techdirt's Patreon page here). Patreon Founder Jack Conte agrees the wind has shifted recently in favor of fan-funded artists:

“I do think something has changed culturally,” Mr. Conte said. “This new generation is more concerned with social impact. There’s a desire to vote with your dollars and your time and attention.”

Despite all the disruption the web has wrought on incumbent cable companies and brick-and-mortar game stores, the web has also made it impossibly easy for niche artists to both deepen connections with their fans as well as give them reasons to buy:

Thanks to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, artists can now establish close relationships with their fans. They can sell merchandise and offer special fan-only promotions and content. And after finding an audience, they can use sites like Patreon to get a dependable paycheck from their most loyal followers.

The elephant in the room, of course, is whether artists can deliver on the promises the internet has laid before them; record labels traditionally took care of much of the publicity required to build the buzz that pushes new artists into the public stream but now that artists can take those reins, not all of them are capable or willing. Nevertheless, some artists are willing; Manjoo notes that Chance the Rapper, despite winning best new artist at last year’s Grammys, “proudly rejected every offer to sign with a record label and even to sell any of his music.” That marks a stark turning point for how all artists could soon come to view recording labels, i.e., as gatekeepers instead of enablers.

For those lucky few rising to the top, i.e., artists who have mastered the “dark arts” of social media marketing, they can take significant control of their lives and livelihood.

“I can have a normal life now,” said Peter Hollens, an a cappella singer who creates cover videos on YouTube. Mr. Hollens, who lives in Eugene, Ore., now makes about $20,000 a month from his Patreon page. The money has allowed him to hire production help and to increase his productivity, but it has also brought him something else: a feeling of security in being an artist.

“I don’t have to go out on the road and play in bars,” he said. “I can be a father and I can be a husband. This normalizes my career. It normalizes the career of being an artist, which has never been normalized."

If the trends continue as Manjoo predicts, that worn cliché of the starving artist will no longer ring true, and the blame rests solely at the feet of the global copying machine that we call the web.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, culture, intermediaries

China's Manufacturers Now Producing Copies Before Original Products Are Even Launched

from the taking-the-tachyonic-train-to-Shenzhen dept

Techdirt has written a number of articles tracking how China is moving beyond its traditional counterfeit imitation culture to one of collaborative innovation, as exemplified by "gongkai". An article on the Quartz site provides a useful update on this world, concentrating on developments in Shenzhen, generally regarded as China's hardware equivalent of Silicon Valley. Things have now progressed from simply copying top-selling products, to spotting future winners on the Web:

Thanks to the internet, factories and designers looking for the next hit product can easily turn to Kickstarter, Amazon, or Taobao to see what gadgets are hot.

The article describes how nimble Chinese operations even produce their own versions before the original is released. For example, Yekutiel Sherman, an Israeli entrepreneur, came up with a design for a smartphone case that unfolds into a selfie stick. After months of research and design, here's what happened:

one week after his product hit Kickstarter in December 2015, Sherman was shocked to see it for sale on AliExpress -- Alibaba's English-language wholesale site. Vendors across China were selling identical smartphone case selfie-sticks, using the same design Sherman came up with himself. Some of them were selling for as low as $10 a piece, well below Sherman's expected retail price of £39 ($47.41). Amazingly, some of these vendors stole the name of Sherman's product -- Stikbox

As the article goes on to describe, enforcing traditional monopolies like patents is so difficult as to be pointless, thanks to the highly-fragmented and fluid nature of Shenzhen's ecosystem. Instead:

Businesses are now forced to come to terms with this new reality. It’s not enough to create a product with a groundbreaking design or features, like a smartphone case that turns into a selfie stick. Companies dealing in the creation of physical goods now must make products that are impossible to copy exactly from the get go, by focusing on a special feature they can protect, or creating a coveted brand name consumers will pay more for.

In other words, the competitive environment in Shenzhen is driving the uptake of approaches that Techdirt has been advocating for years. That's good for customers, who enjoy a greater choice and more rapid innovation as a result, but this shift can be good for companies too, as the Quartz article notes:

Joffe, the venture capital investor, argues that some companies might even benefit from copycatting, as it can bring more awareness to the product itself. "If you have more customers buying the fake product then it creates more awareness for the real product, and it becomes an aspirational thing. At some point they might be able to afford the real thing."

It's well worth reading the whole article for its description of the Shenzhen scene, even if regular Techdirt readers will find the main ideas there extremely familiar.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: china, copying, crowdfunding, innovation, shenzen

Kickstarter-Funded Game Drops DRM-Free Version It Promised, Then Promises It Again After The Backlash

from the 360-degrees dept

Readers of this site should know by now that, as a general rule, DRM is equal parts dumb and ineffective. What in theory is a way for game publishers to stave off piracy typically instead amounts to a grand digital method for making sure legitimate customers can't play the games they buy. Now, not all DRM is created equally shitty, of course -- one of the more benign forms of DRM is Valve's Steam platform. Because games purchased on the platform check in with Steam servers for product keys and otherwise encrypts the individual files for the game each user downloads, it's a form of DRM.

And because DRM is almost always annoying even at its best, there are some gamers who will only buy DRM-free games. Many Kickstarter campaigns for video games, in fact, explicitly state that backers and non-backers will have a DRM-free option for the game available, either through platforms like GOG and HumbleBundle, or directly from the developer. Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler! was one such game, with developer Venture Moon Industries promising both a Steam release and a DRM-free release when it collected funds from backers. Then, suddenly, once the company got a publisher on board for the project, it announced that the game would only be available on Steam.

During the campaign, DRM-free copies of Duke Grabowski were promised to backers. Of course, most people expected this promise to be honored. As of yesterday, the publisher the developers have lined up told them this no longer is the case. The whole DRM-free thing has been thrown out the proverbial window and only Steam keys are being offered. Understandably, the comments section on Kickstarter is in an uproar.

The reaction has been almost universally negative, with nearly every commentor speaking out against the decision. Several backers are demanding a refund because they only backed it because DRM-free was promised. Instead of getting militant, a few backers have decided it best to petition the publisher to honor the original promises. One has even written up a template to send toDukeGrabowski@gmail.com.

Well, yes, the reaction from those who have paid for a product, even if it's a pre-payment in the form of a Kickstarter pledge, will tend to be negative when promised iterations of the game are suddenly yanked away without warning or recourse. Everyone seems to agree that publisher Alliance Digital Media was the one behind the decision, but to the end customer that makes little difference. If a developer promises a DRM-free version of its game to backers, then that developer had damned well better make sure the publisher they select is on board with that as well. Otherwise, it was a promise made without the commitment to keeping it.

As it turns out, this particular story has a happy ending, with the developer announcing on Kickstarter that the DRM-free version of the game has been promised again.

Good news! Alliance has told me that they are planning on releasing a DRM-free version of the game before the end of the year, and that more details will be coming soon. So thank you for your patience and understanding.

Which is, you know, fine, but with Kickstarter becoming a major vehicle for funding the creation of new gaming content, this kind of thing needs to get ironed out now. Because backers aren't going to keep backing without some level of trust that promises made to slurp their money from them will be kept, preferably without them having to light the torches and dig up their pitchforks.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, drm, duke grabowski, mighty swashbuckler, promises, steam, video games
Companies: kickstarter, valve, venture moon industries

Unpatent Launches Combination Crowdfunding/Crowdsourcing Platform To Invalidate Stupid Patents

from the make-it-so dept

I'm always super interested in new ideas for hacking the patent system to get around just how broken it is -- and the fact that Congress still seems to have no real desire to fix things -- mainly because some of the largest patent system exploiters are standing in the way of necessary reform. So it's always cool to hear of new ideas to try to fix things without having to bother with changing the law.

The latest interesting idea: Unpatent -- a combination crowdfunding/crowdsourcing platform with the goal of invalidating stupid patents. Each stupid patent gets its own crowdfunding campaign, in which Unpatent looks to raise at least $20,000. This money does two things: it is used to pay for a legal challenge (a so-called "ex parte" challenge) of the patent at the Patent Office and to pay out rewards to those who find the compelling prior art to invalidate the patent. As you've likely figured out by now, that's where the crowdsourcing comes in. Individuals can submit their own prior art examples, and if their examples are used in invalidating the patent, they can share in some of the money raised.

They're kicking it off by challenging a patent on customizing stuff on the internet. It's US Patent 8,738,435 on a "method and apparatus for presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services." If that sounds familiar, it's because it was EFF's "Stupid Patent of the Month" back in February. The company holding this patent, Phoenix Licensing, has filed a bunch of troll lawsuits in (of course) the Eastern District of Texas.

I have no idea how well this will work, but it's good to see experiments like this. It does remind me of two other projects. A few years back, StackExchange and Google teamed up to crowdsource prior art at AskPatents, which is still getting some use today, if not a tremendous amount. The other thing it reminds me of, is that way back in 2000, after Jeff Bezos faced a ton of criticism for Amazon's "one-click" patent, Bezos and Tim O'Reilly teamed up to form BountyQuest, a system in which they would pay people who found prior art to destroy bad patents -- with the one-click patent being the first one offered up. Unfortunately, basically nothing happened with BountyQuest, and just two years later it had basically faded away.

Luis Cuende, the founder of Unpatent, says that he thinks both the world has changed since Bezos and O'Reilly did BountyQuest, and that the overall setup of Unpatent may work better. It's definitely an interesting approach -- and they've got the support of Lee Cheng, Newegg's Chief Legal Officer, who has made destroying patent trolls something of a personal hobby (he's really, really, really good at it). Anyway, check out Unpatent, especially if you've got some good prior art on that customization patent...

Filed Under: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, patents, prior art
Companies: unpatent

How The Olympics Bullshit Ban On Tweeting About The Olympics Is Harming Olympic Athletes

from the all-about-the-profits-for-the-olympics dept

Every couple of years as the Olympics gears up again, we end up posting a series of stories about massive bullshit overclaims by the Olympics concerning trademark law. And none of it is actually about what trademark law allows. It's all about the Olympics' weird infatuation with making sure no company that doesn't give them a ton of money first can "associate" with the Olympics. Again, that's not how trademark law actually works, but few companies are willing to stand up to the International Olympic Committee or the US Olympic Committee. This year, the crackdown seems even more ridiculous than usual, with letters being sent to companies who are helping and sponsoring athletes stating that, unless they're official sponsors with the US Olympic Committee, they can't even tweet anything mentioning the Olympics. Companies that had sponsored athletes were being forced to blur out or delete social media posts about their own athletes because their racing bibs said "Olympics" on them.

In our comments, Emily White, the founder of a crowdfunding for athletes site, Dreamfuel, which many Olympians use to help fund their training or the abilities of their families to come see them at the Olympics, shared her story as well. That included being told that a company built specifically to help fund athletes can't congratulate their own athletes:

We're thrilled to be able to provide a new and viable revenue stream to all athletes, whether they are Olympic sports or not.

We have been contacted by the USOC about all of the above (our team was stunned that we cannot publicly congratulate Dreamfuel athletes who qualify for The Olympics). I want to add that we've also been told that we also cannot post the press we've been receiving on the funding we've been generating for Olympic athletes (we don't have a publicist; all press on our mission is organic by nature) because it uses the O word.

I've been speaking with Emily about all of this and apparently after pressure from the Olympics about their special campaigns to get funding for families to come to the Olympics, they were told to never mention the Olympics or "Olympians" at all. They can only say "athletes" who are going to "Brazil" (they were told they can't even say "Rio").

Last Wednesday, the rules got even stricter as "Rule 40" went into effect. This ratchets things up to ridiculous levels and basically says that if a company so much as tweets a congratulations to an Olympic athlete, that could cost the athlete their medals. Really. And, yes, that's totally fucked up. Ridiculously, the Olympics claim that they put in place Rule 40 to prevent commercialization of the games, that are perhaps the most commercialized sporting event ever -- it's just that all the money goes to the Olympics themselves, and not to the athletes.

At least one company went so far as to build an entire marketing campaign around attacking Rule 40:

During the U.S. Olympic track & field trials earlier this month, a flatbed billboard truck traveled around the University of Oregon campus, bearing slogans such as, “Not pictured here: an athlete living below the poverty line to bring glory to their country.” It was part of a campaign, called “Rule 40” in reference to the section of the Olympic charter which it disputes, that went live in early June and has mainly consisted of social media posts and covertly-distributed T-shirts and stickers.

The campaign takes issue with an International Olympic Committee rule preventing any participant in the Olympics—athletes, coaches, trainers and officials—from capitalizing on their own image for advertising purposes from nine days before the opening ceremony until three days after.

There's even a Rule40.com website protesting the ridiculousness of these rules, and it's getting lots of folks talking about how ridiculous these rules are. Going back to Dreamfuel, with Rule 40 going into effect, she tells me that at least some family members of the athletes using Dreamfuel were surprised and upset to see that a bunch of the images of their children had to come down from the funding campaigns, or the athletes might get disqualified altogether. Because the US Olympic Committee says that companies can't mention anything during the Rule 40 period -- but individuals can -- it leaves Dreamfuel in a weird position where it's announced it can't promote its own crowdfunding campaigns that help the families of athletes get to the Olympics, but Emily can tweet them out as an individual. This whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. And the fact that they're threatening Dreamfuel helps underline what a complete lie it is for the Olympics to claim that this is about stopping the overcommercialization of the Olympics. Just like Kickstarter helped make it easier for independent creators to create and innovate without having to get big corporate backing, Dreamfuel has done that for athletes and their families. As a platform, it's the antidote to overcommercialization... and yet the Olympics are silencing the company from even letting people know that they can help support Olympians and their families in Rio.

I'm hoping that someone, somewhere eventually challenges the Olympics with a declaratory judgment filing or something. The trademark claims here are ludicrous and are directly being used to silence speech.

Filed Under: athletes, crowdfunding, free speech, olympics, rio, rule 40, trademark
Companies: dreamfuel, usoc