The latest in the dust-up between Tom Raftery and O’Reilly is a group of trolls telling Marc Hedlund to can the puff pieces until Tim O’Reilly can return. Apparently O’Reilly needs to shut down it’s publishing program until Tim can earn the forgiveness of Raftery’s cronies.
My take: O’Reilly was unprepared for an influx of trolls and vitriol, and because of that Tom Raftery has completely escaped culpability for misreading a cease and desist letter, then misrepresenting a followup letter, then villifying Cory Doctorow in spite of the facts. Most important, he’s completely escaped blame for picking a name for his conference that was already taken.
The O’Reilly/CMP conference is called “Web 2.0 Conference.” IT@Cork’s conference is called “Web 2.0 Half-Day Conference.” It’s common sense and common courtesy: pick a different name.
CMP, on behalf of itself and O’Reilly, sent IT@Cork a cease-and-desist letter that has drawn a lot of fire for asking IT@Cork not to use a similar title as the established conference. Thus far, Raftery–and the debate–have focused on whether anyone can use the term “Web 2.0.” But they’re ignoring this key paragraph of the C&D:
“It has come to my attention that you have scheduled a conference entitled Web 2.0 for June 8 2006. Through this title you are misrepresenting and recipients are given the direct and false impression that you are providing them with CMP’s event.”
In other words, the reason he’s being contacted is because he’s running a conference called Web 2.0, not merely because he’s running a conference that contains the term Web 2.0. Tom would have more credibility if he were organizing a conference with an original name.
Did Raftery make an honestly misread the letter or is he posting intentionally inflamatory remarks in order to draw attention to himself? I thought honest mistake until I read his two followup posts.
First he writes of “O’Reilly’s mean-spirited response.” Mean-spirited? IT@Cork received a second letter offering to let the organization go on with its conference–name unchanged–but reserving CMP/O’Reilly’s rights to the term. He can disagree with their rights, but I have a hard seeing the meanness in the letter. The comments on O’Reilly’s Radar blog, including accusations that Tim’s a child molester, that certain employees are hemroids and need to be fired, that all O’Reilly books should be burned, those seem mean-spirited. The O’Reilly/CMP communications are professional and business-like. If O’Reilly is wrong on any points, Raftery’s accusations are preventing a thoughtful discussion of those points.
And while Raftery says in his post that it’s unlikely IT@Cork will sign the second letter from CMP/O’Reilly, he’s telling the New York Times that everything is fine and that he appreciates the response he got from O’Reilly:
“Because of Web 2.0 and blogging, I was able to put up a post and have this large multimedia organization apologize and turn around and say, ‘You can use our trademark terms.’ That’s only possible because of the power blogging confers.”
Next, Raftery calls Cory Doctorow an O’Reilly apologist who’s making biased comments without disclosing his relationship with O’Reilly. This despite Cory’s saying in his post that he thought O’Reilly should give up the claim, that John Batelle is a “pal and colleague” and that he (Cory) is a regular contributor to O’Reilly conferences.
Turns out Raftery is the troll. And a good one. He’s garnered a lot of attention. And thus far nobody has held him accountable for running a conference with a copycat name. Robert Scoble was dead on when he suggested changing the name to “IT@Corkâs Web 2.0 Workshop” and moving on.
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Don’t they know that all I ever publish is puff pieces? Oh, yeah, and trolls. ;)
The problem is ORA can’t win like this because their customers are hardcore geeks. Issues like Amazon’s One-Click patent or being prevented from using the term “Web 2.0″ in relation to any “trade shows, expositions, business conference and eductional conferences” are important to them. Issues like sending C&D’s to not-for-profits are important to them. It’s why they buy in to ORA.
If Tim O’Reilly was so concerned about it, why didn’t he mention it when he was invited to speak at the event? Scoble is way off to suggest that it could be called a Symposium or Workshop directly violates ORA/CMP’s exclusive rights to use Web 2.0 within the title of a trade show, exposition, business conference or workshop. Incidentally there’s no indication of which European trademark this actually breaches.
Ultimately though, it doesn’t really matter who’s ‘right’ and who’s ‘wrong’ – who’s the ‘troll’, who’s ‘mean spirited’. This talk is for children in the playground and doesn’t help fix a difficult situation. The truth is ORA have damaged their credibility in their largest market and now appear to have a perception problem. ORA are going to have to live with this for a long time.
Great troll Tony!
A quick couple of Fact Checks for you Tony -
Our conference is called the “IT@Cork Web 2.0 half-day Conference” – that’s pretty hard to confuse with the “Web 2.0 Conference”. Also our conference is on in Cork, Ireland and costs â¬50 to non-members and is free to IT@Cork members compared to the O’Reilly conference at over $3,000 and in California. Nobody was ever going to confuse these two events.
In the New York Times article Sara Ivry chose not to publish the bit where I also told her that the issue was far from resolved as far as I was concerned. Obviously I had no control over what she decided to put in her article (that’s part of the reason I have a blog).
Finally, if you read the C&D we received you’d know that the name “IT@Cork’s Web 2.0 Workshop” would have been equally objectionable to CMP/O’Reilly. They were objecting to use of the term “Web 2.0″ not “Web 2.0 Conference”
Did you know that CMP/O’Reilly had applied for a trademark? No. Did you suspect that calling your conference in Ireland a ‘Web 2.0 Conference’ might confuse someone? No, of course not. Does O’Reilly’s trademark application cover Ireland, despite the Madrid Protocol? Perhaps not.
I think IT@Cork did nothing wrong. I think applying for a trademark in a commonly used term (there are many, many other Web 2.0 conferences around – http://www.clearleft.com/dconstruct05/ and and http://upcoming.org/event/65428/ and you can find loads of others) and not letting anyone know until you slap a C&D on a small foreign non-profit over which the trademark probably doesn’t apply anyhow is nothing to do with good business. It’s mean-spirited and devious.
CMPs actions, and especially O’Reilly’s ham-fisted response, prompted many O’Reilly fans such as myself to share valid criticisms. There are many of these that appear alongside the nasty trolls.
Cory posted a well written piece, where he makes some good points, and tries very hard to walk a strait line… But not with all that Foo Camp Kool-Aid on-board! His fan-boy intoxication–and perhaps conflicts-of-interest–were really showing. I was very disappointed. Sounds like he just talked to John B or someone, heard it was “all settled” and incorrectly reported that, without checking. When he posted, most people following the story were aware that the issue had not been âresolved amicablyâ and permission had not yet been âgrantedâ as Cory incorrectly reported.
Itâs a shame OâReillyâs corporate culture isnât robust enough to guide them through a more reasonable course of action while Daddy’s gone. The C&D letter was an unfortunate and understandable mistake. However, OâReillyâs rude, clumsy, and ham-fisted response, shocked us all, as it seemed to contradict the basic principles of Web 2.0. This leaves many of us wondering if these people have any real clue about what it is they are hyping.
Itâs late Tuesday afternoon Eastern Time. Wasnât Daddy âsposed to be home by now to fix everything?
The funny thing about this whole thing is that four days after the controversy blew over, Tom posted on his site about how his conference was fourth on the Google results for Web 2.0 Conference. He really did a fantastic job of stirring up controversy to get publicity for his conference (and himself).