Shareaza and GNU GPL under attack!...

[Blanchimont]

Some of you might know of the hostile takeover of shareaza.com by scammers last December, while the 'real' shareaza had to set up a new home at sourceforge.net
Now GNU GPL licence itself is under attack by these scammers;
After Hijacking Site, Scammers Move to Seize Shareaza Trademark | TorrentFreak

What's very worrying with this is, is if they actually get away with this, it will create a dangerous predecence for any other cases similar, not to mention the danger to the very foundation of the General Public Licence....
How would you feel if you've been using Open Office Suite because you didn't want to pay your pennies to Microsoft for their MS Office, and then a company, perhaps Microsoft themselves, just ran over the enthusiasts and GNU GPL and took over and registered it and made it propietary. I'd be...mad..to say the least.
That's EXACTLY what's happening in this case...

Quote from the 'real' Shareaza forum;

On January 10th 2008, lawyers representing the 'Discordia Ltd.' shell company filed for "SHAREAZA" trademark registration at the United States Patent Office.
As of March 3rd 2008, the trademark has not yet been granted - and still must urgently be contested. The core Shareaza Development Team has been aware of this from the beginning, but has not gone public with the information while seeking legal counsel. It is in this context that team members have been scurrilously threatened and the shareaza.com destination has flagrantly broken yet more laws.

Sincerely, Blanchimont

[prh99]

Yeah, it sucks, even though I don't use Shareaza, that what appears to be a shell company for the recording industry is allowed to do this.
The project's legit page can be found at shareaza.sourceforge.net

[vincent_10_27]

The conflict is actually the trademark registration. I do not think someone is attacking the GNU GPL itself. What might happen if Discordia LTD got the trademark, then the Shareaza project might be terminated or the current project team will have to pay legal fees for using registered trademark. Worst part is, even if the code is under GNU GPL, Discordia LTD may take over the whole project and refine the terms and license then make the project closed source.

As for the Microsoft anxiousness, I think no one is stupid enough to use their registered trademarks.

US laws that concern Intellectual Properties are a bit sketchy (always has been). It is actually great that we get to have the Free Software Foundation, but I think that at one point, FSF`s terms conflict with the US legal laws with regards IP ownership.