Instead of … ? With a simple stroke of the pen and a click of the Send button, Arai Helmet can shake their customer base. The recent legal action is, unfortunately, not unique in the world of business, especially given our litigious society. Several other companies have committed similar errors of judgement. Some of them learn. Some do not. One comment I heard referred to an action by Harley Davidson. Someone who was giving away motorcycles, Harley Davidson motorcycles, but were using bar and shield without permission. Another mentioned an action by BMW against dealers and clubs using the BMW roundel without explicit permission. I don’t know if these really happened or what the facts surrounding the issues may have been. However, I also don’t doubt the possibility that they might have. There are a couple of main reasons why I wrote about this action and not others. The first is about timing. The second is about the internet. Each reason has relatives to lend support. As for timing, I am new to the world of motorcyles and did not know first hand of the other actions. Maybe I would have been equally incensed if I had been around when the news of them was first heard. But, maybe not. I was around for this one. As mentioned in the previous article, Arai Gone Awry?, there was also a book involved, The Cluetrain Manifesto. More precisely, it was the idea of communication the book discussed. I had just finished reading it, within the hour in fact. And, this action seemed so counter productive that the clash between the two could not be ignored, at least by me anyway. That leads us to the second main reason for my response, the internet. Global communication between individuals is possible like never before. Email, mailing lists and newsgroups allow for so many people to communicate so easily and to so many others at once, that the foundation of traditional marketing is being shaken. Marketing used to be a top down exercise in authority with company PR feeding everything to the consumer. Now, consumers themselves are affecting the intended results, adding their own slants and viewpoints to the corporate message. An action by a company is no longer hidden, visible only to the few directly affected. The click of the Send button that can start an action can now also start a reaction. The internet, the vast web that it is, is made up of links from one site to another, one page to another. In fact, that is how you came to be reading this article now. Yet, running against the grain, this action by Arai Helmet claims linking to be unacceptable and even illegal. A link that takes you to the site in question is a good thing, a credit to the internet web it helps to create. Some companies, like Amazon.com for example, have specific programs where they encourage you to be a part of their organization, to link to areas within their site from yours. As with most things, there are some real infringements. Some of these may come with deep linking, which may bypass some required validation controls. More commonly, there may be the use of content generated by another site, but appearing on an unrelated page. An example of this may be the use of stock market information or map generation without the appropriate credit or permission being given. In the example given in the prior article, this does not seem to be the case here. Legal action to protect a trademark is something I believe should be done. Without appropriate effort, the trademark may lose its value, becoming another phrase commonly used by many. It might even end up as a dictionary entry. However, it is all too easy to become overzealous in that protection. “Just in case we can win” is an insufficient reason to try. The internet is a new territory. It does not fit exactly into the mold of the prior era. While the differences may not be readily apparant to all, they do exist. Many companies need to change their approach to the new markets, learn how their consumers are now communicating. Those that can respond may find that it is not so bad after all. It might even give them an edge. (IANAL, “I am not a lawyer.” Any positions taken in this article are based on opinion and do not stem from a legal background or familiarity with the applicable laws. If you have specific legal questions, please consult with your attorney.) (All trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.)

Or, How to Generate Bad PR It’s ironic, really. I had just finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto and wanted to check my email before going to bed. About halfway through, I came across a thread which struck a chord with me and, apparantly, with a great many others as well. What was this chord that got struck? It seems that Arai Helmet, using the law firm of Beattie Padavano ESQS of Saddle River, NJ, has found some very disturbing information on the web sites of a great many people. So disturbing in fact that a “cease and desist” letter was sent to those responsible. To quote a portion of that letter,

This is the part of my software development career I like best. The work is fun to do and, more imporantly, the result is much more visible than the applications used internally by a single department of some company. Those too are important. I just prefer having a broader audience to my work. Until I read Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing, I used to think I knew quite a bit about developing web sites. This book has given me new insight into what makes a web site effective, contrary to the advise given in some of the previous books I have read. To get an idea on how much I have enjoyed this book, consider that there are very few technical books I have read cover to cover. Of them, this is the only one I have read twice. If you are at all interested in doing web development, read this book. For a hardcopy, order from Amazon.com What do I want to do with the web? I like the idea Philip espoused in his book, that web sites can be reliable, have good performance and still be relatively inexpensive to develop. This runs contrary to my corporate experience which typically allowed less than desired performance and less than desired reliability. Perhaps this is due to the platform being used. My corporate experience used the Microsoft Windows NT operating system intead of Unix/Linux. Another possible problem is having to relearn the problems inherent in the combinations of each new software release. For example, using Microsoft Site Server with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 will have a different set of problems than using Site Server with SQL Server 6.5. It is true that there will always be some teething problems caused by combining different packages, especially when they come from different vendors. Having these problems between products from the same vendor is an embarrassment. To learn about different solutions, I experiment on my home system, which is running RedHat Linux 6.2. Some of the technologies and tools being expermented with are: Apache 1.3.12 is the web server running behind the Java application server. According to the Netcraft survey, Apache is the most popular web server being used. Jakarta Tomcat 3.1 Part of the Apache Jarkarta project, Tomcat is the reference implementation for the Java Servlet 2.2 and JavaServer Pages 1.1 Specifications. AOLserver - This is America Online’s open source web server. Before AOL bought the NaviSoft company, it went by the name NaviServer. The Netcraft survey recognizes this server by a combined name like “NaviServer/2.0 AOLserver/2.3.2”. Given the name, it should come as no surprise that this is the web server software running behind all of the AOL member sites. It is also running behind the Digital City web sites. One of my favorite features of this web server is the direct connection it has to the database, providing the capability for enhanced data access performance. Built in scripting using Tcl allows for a dynamic web site. Having it packaged as open source is an added bonus. Oracle - This is the database used by the ArsDigita Community System. At my employer, Geneer, we have used both the Solaris and Windows NT versions. The version I am installing at home is 8.1.5, otherwise known as Oracle 8i. ArsDigita Community System - ArsDigita, the company Philip Greenspun founded, has developed this free toolkit to ease web site development. Built on AOLserver and combined with a robust database and a stable operating system platform, it makes for an effecient combination of packages, one which has proven itself to work reliably.