Tag Archive for: Bullying

ZEC reports Pachedu over bullying, hacking

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The Herald

Herald Reporter

IN a litmus test against cyber terrorists, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) yesterday reported an anti-Zimbabwe shadowy group Pachedu to the police on a litany of allegations ranging from hacktivism to cyberterrorism.

This comes as the group, that has alleged links to some United States citizens, has openly boasted its ability to hack and manipulate the websites of not only ZEC, but also other Government departments.

In the past few weeks, Pachedu has been burning the candle to discredit ZEC ahead of next year’s harmonised elections, in an attempt to influence the manner and handling of the much awaited polls.

The clandestine actions from Pachedu, which is linked to the CCC, include hacking of the electoral management authority’s ICT infrastructure.

This prompted ZEC yesterday to report the group to the police in a case that has been opened at Harare Central Police Station under IR111760.

ZEC spokesperson Commissioner Jasper Mangwana confirmed reporting the matter to the police.

“We have made a police report on hacktivism, impersonification, unauthorised data mining and cyberterrorism/bullying at Harare Central Police Station,” he said.

In the past, Pachedu has been red-flagged by ZEC for its covert cyberwar, especially as the group has a habit of publishing voters’ information, which is a breach of the country’s laws.

Any abuse of the security of the voters consequently attracts legal action, with ZEC charged with safeguarding the voters’ private information.

According to the Data Protection Act, any person who, “knowing or suspecting that he or she must obtain prior authority to access data, computer programme, computer data storage medium, or the whole or any part of a computer system in question; and intentionally, unlawfully and without such authority, secures access to such data, programme, medium or system; shall be guilty of hacking and liable in any of the aggravating circumstances . . . to a fine not exceeding level 14 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years or both such fine and such imprisonment..”

Using similar tactics, Pachedu in 2018 released a doctored voters roll as they tried to poke holes in…

Source…

Stone Brewing Is Very Upset That People Don’t Like Its Trademark Bullying

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It was just days ago that we were discussing Stone Brewing’s new campaign to jealously protect all uses of the word “stone” on alcohol branding. The one time advocate brewer claiming to stand up for craft brewing against “Big Beer” has since devolved into a corporate gorilla smashing up the USPTO to get trademarks cancelled and firing off cease and desist notices to small breweries. All this, mind you, as it also wages war on a second front with MillerCoors over Keystone’s rebranding as simply “Stone”. In that suit, MillerCoors complained that lots of breweries use the word “stone”, which appears to have set Stone Brewing off on its bout of aggression.

When Sawstone Brewing pushed back on a C&D and failed to work out an agreement with Stone Brewing, the latter initiated an attempt to cancel the former’s trademark. Sawstone complained publicly. And now Stone Brewing is busy complaining that the public is being mean to it as a result.

Stone Brewing published a lengthy statement on its website Monday night regarding its trademark dispute with Sawstone Brewing Co. in Morehead, Ky., saying that Stone has become the “subject of a vicious online harassment and smear campaign.”

In a newly published statement, Greg Koch, the CEO of Stone Brewing, acknowledged the company’s multiple trademark disputes, noting that “this kind of thing is just part of owning a brand name and a company identity,” but he claimed that Sawstone’s version of events is not how the situation unfolded.

We’ll get into that last bit in a second, but its worth pointing out that Koch’s claim that this is all somehow necessary due to owning a brand name is demonstrably false. MillerCoors itself argued against this, admittedly disingenuously. After all, while I think I’d argue that turning Keystone to Stone probably is too close to Stone Brewing so as to cause confusion, MillerCoors’ claim that lots of other breweries have used the word “stone” within their brands for a long, long time is absolutely true. And if Stone Brewing not only survived, but thrived, with all those other uses in existence, it negates completely the claim that Stone Brewing had no choice but to act as it has. Were that true, Stone Brewing wouldn’t be the behemoth it now is.

Now, on to Koch’s claim that Sawstone Brewing’s description of events wasn’t accurate… it’s all in the petty details. Essentially, Koch claims that this all started when Sawstone Brewing attempted to trademark its name and that Stone Brewing tried to amicably work out a settlement of the trademark issues over the course of a few months. In addition, Sawstone missed a couple of deadlines for which it had promised settlement proposals. And… that’s it.

All of which completely misses the point. Stone Brewing didn’t have to take this action at all. And while the reported claims of online stalking and threats sent to Stone Brewing are reprehensible if true, a public backlash to bullying behavior by a brewer that was supposed to be standing up to these types of corporate actions is perfectly valid. If Stone Brewing doesn’t like that version of the backlash, it can cease playing the bully. Unfortunately…

As for the trademark dispute, Koch said that Stone will not back down and that the decision will ultimately lie with the USPTO.

Well, then enjoy the continued backlash, you Arrogant Bastards.

Techdirt.

Chooseco Chooses An Adventure In Bullying Indie Game Devs Over Trademark

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Earlier this year, after Netflix released an iteration of its Black Mirror series entitled Bandersnatch, which allowed the viewer to choose their own story path through the narrative, the company behind the famed Choose Your Own Adventure books from our childhood sued. Chooseco, armed with a trademark registration for “Choose your own adventure”, claimed that Bandersnatch infringed on that trademark, first because the film has a nod of homage to the literary series within the script, and second simply because many in the public compared the film with the books of their youth. Meanwhile, thanks to the renewed attention that Netflix gave CYOA books — for FREE! — , Chooseco inked a deal with Amazon to create CYOA style narratives for the Alexa device.

That success hasn’t stopped Chooseco’s bullying ways, however. Recently, itch.io’s leadership has publicly warned indie game developers to stop describing their games as choose your own adventures on the site after Chooseco issued several takedowns of games that did so. In case you were concerned that the facts before the public didn’t perfectly convey how absurd this all is, never fear:

Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran told developers about the takedowns this afternoon. “Warning to any devs using the phrase ‘choose your own adventure’ to describe their games, Chooseco is issuing takedown notices,” he wrote on Twitter. Corcoran tells The Verge that the games include Purrfect Apawcalypse, an “apocalyptic dog dating choose your own adventure game”; a “choose your own dating sim text adventure” game called It’s a Date; an unofficial GameBoy game called Choose Your Own Adventure GB; and New Yorker writer Luke Burns’ A Series of Choose Your Own Adventure Stories Where No Matter What You Choose You Are Immediately Killed by a Werewolf, whose plot is self-explanatory.

Clearly, these indie games with mere descriptions in their summaries and/or game titles are a grave threat to the Chooseco empire. After all, what member of the public could possibly stave off confusion over a video game being accurately described as involving a choice in adventure without naturally assuming that this must be from the same company as the books of their childhood?

This is all stupid on many levels. Chooseco’s trademark is at least partially descriptive. I know that’s true, because some of the games that have been the victim’s of this bullying have only used the trademark in their games’…you know…descriptions. That feels about as open and shut an answer as these questions tend to have. Add to that the fact that literature and Amazon Alexa narratives aren’t the same as video games and I would question whether these are even in the same market as Chooseco products. Finally, I would also question whether there is a single iota of potential public confusion to consider here.

And, to be clear, the end result of this bullying thus far is part mockery by other publishers and part simply ignoring Chooseco entirely.

Mainstream publishers have found clever ways to get around the trademark. A Gravity Falls branching-choice book, for example, is billed as a “Select Your Own Choose-Venture” novel. And you can’t officially tag a game as “choose your own adventure” on Itch.io; it’s automatically converted to “interactive fiction.”

Even so, an Itch.io search for “choose your own adventure” still turns up a lot of results. (The common abbreviation “CYOA” also apparently hasn’t triggered any notices.) It’s a widely accepted informal genre name, and Itch.io is a platform that favors offbeat, often free-of-charge games from independent developers.

Your bullying has resulted in mere mockery and dismissive waves. Turn to page 26 if you’d like to go to your room and think about what you’ve done, or turn to page 77 if instead you want to continue to make the world hate you with your bullying.

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Aloha Poke Co. Rewarded For Trademark Bullying With Protests Outside Its Headquarters In Chicago

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On the matter of trademark bullying, we typically talk about these cases as matters of legal outcomes and courtroom repercussions. Less discussed is the power of the masses in the form of protest and public shaming in order to combat trademark bullies. And, yet, that appears to be part of the equation trying to solve the irritation that is Aloha Poke Co.’s trademark bullying of actual Hawaiian poke joints out of their own culture.

You will recall that we recently discussed Aloha Poke Co., the Chicago-based poke chain that doesn’t count any actual Hawaiians among its founders, firing off cease and desist letters to all manner of other joints that use some version of “Aloha” and “Poke” in their names. Most of these other entities are owned and operated by actual Hawaiians, from which both words and their cultural relevance stems. With so many entities out there using what are fairly generic terms in the realm of anything Hawaiian, the suggestion for public confusion made by Aloha Poke Co. seems spurious at best. Perhaps as importantly, if the company thought that the public wouldn’t get wind of its bullying, it appears that it was very, very wrong, as protests at its Chicago headquarters have been organized.

The first protest is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday in front of Aloha Poke Co.’s corporate headquarters at 303 W. Madison St. Another one is scheduled 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Aug. 15 in front of the company’s Lincoln Park location at 818 W. Fullerton Ave. A march in the Loop is also being planned for Monday, though details are still being confirmed.

Lanialoha Lee, who founded Aloha Center Chicago, is spearheading the Aug. 15 protest. She first became aware of the controversy after watching the video from Dr. Kalama O Ka Aina. “Everybody I know messaged me about it,” says Lee. “It was all over my Facebook. I was really stunned.” Lee hopes that the protests open “more eyes on the corporate level and at the restaurant level.”

Most of those involved in organizing the protests are setting their aim on educating the restaurant as to how important these words and dishes are to Hawaiian culture, not to mention how those terms have been shared without incident across many businesses and restaurants. While that is exactly the right tone to take, it seems likely that the press surrounding the Chicago company being protested by Hawaiians and those interested in protecting Hawaiian culture will play a role as well. That will be all the more the case given some of the incendiary language choices the restaurant has engaged in when responding to the first news reports on its bullying, such as calling it all “fake news.”

That kind of public exposure and shaming can have as profound and a far speedier impact than any legal proceedings. Aloha Poke is in the business of making money, after all, and this kind of exposure and coverage carries no positive public relations weight at all. If trademark bullies can be defeated in the court of public opinion rather than in actual courtrooms, all the better.

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