So you think you own your Twitter name?

Disclaimer: I'm going to assume this really happened, even though it's coming from a slightly suspicious looking Blogspot address, the description itself looks believable.<p>The surprising thing here is not the obvious injustice or the callousness of the Twitter team. Rather, it's that people think they somehow have a right to use Twitter's services and accounts like they were their property. The same goes for people who build businesses on Facebook and every other monolithic site. I think users need to understand that they are on someone else's turf, and they are subject to whatever the company decides to do. There is no reasonable expectation of fairness, or of free speech for that matter.<p>That's why building a business on Twitter is foolish. I hear it's done successfully all the time, yet people have to understand this is a very shaky foundation. We're not even Twitter's customers. Advertisers are Twitter's customers. Nobody should be surprised about this, in fact it's a miracle "outrageous" stories don't happen more often.

I'm @philjackson (my name being Phil Jackson, obviously) and there's a Phil Jackson who's prominent in the world of basketball. I've often wondered, if basketball Phil Jackson went to Twitter and said "I want @philjackson", would they give it to him?

Just because it is within the rights of Twitter to be a dick doesn't mean that it _should_ be a dick, and from where I am standing, Twitter is currently acting like a dick.

We need a way to own our online persona's. We have one, it's called an email address at a domain that you registered.<p>Unfortunately, we don't have an analogous mechanism for instant message traffic. Actually we do, it's called a jabber server on a domain that you registered.<p>But we don't have a way to publish our short, trivial thoughts to the world, and still maintain ownership of our identity. But, really, we do. It's called RSS.<p>People should publish their "tweets" via RSS feeds from their registered domain name. You could "follow" people by subscribing to their RSS, and you could "tweet" with a front end on your phone/computer that looks exactly like your current twitter client, but is linked to your RSS feed.<p>An open source library that made all this easy could be written, for the geeks, and for the non-geeks, there would be services that popped up that would host for you, but since the domain name is still in your name, you can move to another hosting provider at will.<p>Now, how to get everybody to switch?

It certainly appears that as far as these companies are concerned, users are owed nothing and developers are owed nothing. We're just stepping stones on the way to an IPO or exit.<p>Plenty of micro business owners have found this out the hard way on sites like Etsy or eBay, for instance - they might think that the shop is theirs, and put the URL on their business cards, promote it at craft shows, on their cars, in expensive promotional graphics. All it takes is one idiot admin to close your account, and it's gone (Etsy in particular has notoriously poor practices regarding closing customers accounts, going back for years. There are plenty of of customer service horror stories there. eBay has a long history of NARUing sellers also). I've heard stories about flickr recently, too, deleting accounts - people lose photos, messages, contacts going back years and the company responsible simply doesn't care.<p>The only thing to do is to have your own domain, own website, use open source software, and know what you're doing technically or be close to someone who does. The only people who can take that away from you is courts or the government. This is also why we need networks that work like Diaspora vs. ones that work like Facebook.

I found the statement made by the other side insightful: <a href="http://www.girl-geeks.co.uk/statement/Girl%20Geeks%20Statement.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.girl-geeks.co.uk/statement/Girl%20Geeks%20Stateme...</a> [pdf]<p>"<i>Just for the record, I have personally sacrificed personal savings and a full time salary for the last few years for this cause Girl Geeks. I certainly did not do any of this for self-promotion or gain and believe in supporting those who need it 100%.</i>"<p>She done a pretty good job of promoting herself in the response.

Seems like this is a violation of Twitter's obligations under the ECPA to ensure that someone's private communications are not delivered to a third party.

No, why on earth would you ever think that? I don't own my street address, SSN, Prison ID, don't even <i>own</i> my given name.

One thing the comments here haven't addressed is how Twitter's behaviour in this case compares with how such things have traditionally been dealt with on the Internet. I think there's a reasonable expectation that big Web companies act in a way compatible with the rest of the Net even if they are for-profit.<p>Consider the Nissan Computer Corporation website: <a href="http://www.nissan.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nissan.com/</a><p>Or read about when a company called GAIL tried to take gail.com off a woman named Gail: <a href="http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-0655.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006...</a><p>Now obviously girl-geeks is not a personal nickname, nor apparently was it previously the name of any sort of registered company or other entity, more of an ad-hoc sort of thing. Given that someone later formed a company with this name and trademarked it, should they get the rights to that Twitter name? Would they be able to take girl-geeks.com off a previous owner who was using it in good faith?<p>My suspicion is that they wouldn't, and Twitter's behaviour is bad netiquette.

So, the same applies to the "free" web services like gmail and MSN/hotmail? They just can take your username and give it to someone else?

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

If I had the money I would trademark unprotected twitter accounts just to have them (temporarily) assigned to me and make more noise about this outrage.

An interesting example related to the ongoing online identity wars. Facebook, Google &#38; Twitter are fighting to get our time investment in their free platforms without giving us the assurance that our investment will be rewarded.<p>If only the decentralized Twitter proposed a few years ago would have been built, we (users) would have more control about our identity, probably it is a little bit late now.

Anyone notice that Druge Report got on Twitter, announced the link and their account was @DRUDGE_? Then a day or two later, it was @DRUDGE.

So, this way or another, path leads to decentralized social networks, where your identity is protected with your knowledge of private key.

From the posting: "Last night an organsation called @GIRLGEEKS contacted Twitter to say they had registered trademark for Girl Geeks and wanted the @girlgeeks account for themselves."<p>The original owner could have pursued similar protection and avoided the problem.

sometimes it feels like we are in illusion about "free" stuffs in internet. Google, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or whatever.. everything they claim to be free.. they cost your time, they change your mindset, they change the overall you. Nothing is free here, its hardly convincing - yet we just embrace so called free stuffs even without a single thought. More pathetic thing is - these free services don't care who you are - they are just doing their business.<p>what would have been your decision in such situation if you were Twitter Inc, i am just curious ?

I've identified the namespace "problem" on twitter for a few years now. This is exactly what you get when you put all your eggs into a single service provider's basket.

I think owning the .com should be the new criteria for owning a trademark.