Spambots - an apology

jamesd

If you see any mentioning Oracle as some of those did, it's a breach of Oracle's trademark policy. You might try forwarding them with a complaint to the address at the bottom of the trademark page. Oracle isn't known for being kind and friendly to firms that misuse its trademarks. They should be of the form "something for Oracle productname" rather than Oracle first that implies it's Oracle itself doing the spamming.

canterswest

It's MSE publishing the message. Do you mean complain to Oracle about MSE, or about the spammers, and who should complain?


I think there is a T&C on this site that claims MSE copyright on everything published on its website.


MSE published an entire press release and notes to editors yesterday on its forum. Just a link would have sufficed. It's this sort of no boundaries behaviour that might attract spammers who see it as an anything goes website.


Note - from T&Cs


6. Our content

6.1 All of the content on our Site is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by English and international copyright laws.
6.2 Our content includes any information or other material found on MoneySavingExpert.com, including tools, Forum, articles, databases, graphics, software and all other features of our Site. You are allowed to use our content for personal, non-commercial use only. You may make one copy of extracts from this Site on any single computer for personal, individual use only, provided that all copyright and proprietary notices are kept intact. Apart from that, none of our content may be republished, posted, transmitted, stored, sold, distributed or modified without our prior written consent.

MothballsWallet

I wonder if :money: was faced with legal papers from Oracle, would he get more done to deal with the spammers, especially with the T&Cs quoted by canterswest?

canterswest

I'll call Oracle later as they are in the US and ask. It is a software company so I will ask about Skimlinks if it converts the brand name Oracle on the forum into a monetised link as they will probably know about affiliate marketing.


Oracle Legal Department at +1.650.506.5200 or [EMAIL="trademar_us@oracle.com"]trademar_us@oracle.com[/EMAIL].

jamesd

canterswest wrote: »

It's MSE publishing the message. Do you mean complain to Oracle about MSE, or about the spammers, and who should complain?

Copy the spam including any URLs to the Oracle address. MSE isn't doing anything wrong, the spammers are. Anyone who wants to can do this, the more the merrier I suppose.

canterswest wrote: »

I think there is a T&C on this site that claims MSE copyright on everything published on its website.

For the main site MSE claims full copyright. For our posts here the claim is a compilation copyright. That is, we are still the copyright owners of our own posts but MSE has rights to the particular combination of them which appears here.

canterswest wrote: »

MSE published an entire press release and notes to editors yesterday on its forum.

The fundamental purpose of a press release is to get the widest possible distribution so it's really hard to infringe copyright of a press release. They are pretty much "copy all you want" types of thing.

MothballsWallet wrote: »

I wonder if :money: was faced with legal papers from Oracle, would he get more done to deal with the spammers, especially with the T&Cs quoted by canterswest?

Oracle would not send a legal notice to MSE about spam emails. The spammers themselves are a different matter and are fair game because they are breaking the licensing rules for Oracle's name and bringing it into disrepute by associating it with spamming.

jamesd

canterswest wrote: »

I'll call Oracle later as they are in the US and ask. It is a software company so I will ask about Skimlinks if it converts the brand name Oracle on the forum into a monetised link as they will probably know about affiliate marketing.

Just be sure to complain about specific spam emails, not the MSE forum. Best to wait until you have an actual spam post to copy to them because they will need to know which business the spam is promoting. Looks like some Indian training place. Just saying someone is using the Oracle name in spam doesn't give them anyone to act against.

Silk

I see they still keep coming ...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2417810


So what's happening ?

Former_MSE_Megan

Silk wrote: »

I see they still keep coming ...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2417810


So what's happening ?

We put some temporary measures in place which have worked really well so far, but the Tech team are working on a more long term solution. I can't say when this will be done though, they've got a lot on and to be totally honest, I'm not particularly techy so I don't know what it involves!

We're still getting a few spammers getting through the net but we're trying to keep on top of that. I always keep an eye on these threads when you guys post the links to their profiles, so thanks for that, it's really helpful!

fermi

This week on the student board.

redfox

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2419257

on Going Out Deals board