Banning of Rickenbacker on basschat uk

[johngh]

[/quote]
Welcome to the RRF John!
[/quote]


Thanks

[Lefty4001]

Well, yes so am I, if you checked the post on basschat you'd see what I posted, and the spellings correct

spelling's

sorry, but if you were to ever meet kira, you'd probably relax a bit.

and welcome to the forum, John. cool avatar. there are a variety of non-RIC related topics, so have a look around. there are plenty of people here who are perpetual students and it sounds like you have alot to offer. plus, you love your 4003!

this topic is a sticky one and it's hard to sift through the fanboys and haters on both sides to get to the heart of it. i can feel the frustration that basschat uk is having with this issue. what i haven't yet seen is a creative solution, just a complete ban. no implementation of any other program to try and help curb this issue, just lock 'em out and talk smack about it. like i said, it seems littered with background noise. hopefully, some more thinking from you and your moderators will move the discussion towards a compromise.

[johnhall]

Unfortunately, the Bass Chat owner/moderator that we dealt with (by the name of Colin) has not been entirely honest with the membership.

Specifically, we asked that one and only one POST- one that offered a counterfeit bass for sale- be removed as a TRADEMARK infringement. In the first response, he played dumb (or is), since his response was that they didn't understand why we felt this THREAD "infringed your copyright".

We wrote back referring to photos of goods for sale that were attached to a specific dated post. He of course couldn't find them, which necessitated another email with URLs to the photos, reiterating the specific POST and said "Delete those photos and we likely won't bother you further."

Now comes an email from him saying "Thanks for the links to the pictures. According to the documentation you provided to us on a previous occasion, these photographs do not infringe your copyright, as only the headstock design and Rickenbacker logo thereon are registered designs. The pictures you refer to do not show these. I am not aware that you have copyrighted any other aspects of the design in the UK. " Still oblivious to the fact that there are no COPYRIGHTS involved here.

Now that we realized that this obviously a dilatory tactic, I sent him certified copies of the TRADEMARKS, also advising that this need to be handled shortly otherwise I had no choice but to refer this to our lawyers in London.

His response "Thank you for the copy of the trademark document regarding the design of the bass body. This is the first time I have seen it, but I note it's dated 17 September 2012. If it had been provided sooner, there would have been no issue with the advert. We can only 'police' copyrighted designs that we are kept informed about." With TRADEMARKS in hand, he still thinks it's COPYRIGHTS! But beyond that he expects us to inform him every time there's a filing. The point of making the filing is to provide public notice but of course I DID inform him by contacting him in the first place!

We've never asked Bass Chat moderators to decide whether or not something is no-go; that isn't their job any more than it is ours to inform them of every filing we make. What we DO expect is timely compliance when we do notify them of a problem just as eBay, Amazon, PreLoved, Gumtree, IOffer and a host of others do every day of the week. We're not imposing any proactive burden on them, only a reactive response when they receive a complaint.

With regard to a ban, it matters not in the least to us as their active readership could not possibly represent more than something like 0.01% of the bassists in the U.K. and, of course, one typically only hears from the detractors anyway. Unfortunately, we're just the vanguard of what manufacturers are now required to do BY LAW in order to protect their trademarks and if they ban every brand for which this type of complaint is submitted to them, they will soon have to rename their forum to just "Chat". (Fender is a perfect example of what complacency regarding trademark infringement will cause, now that the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision, and Jazz instrument shapes are public domain.)

There has never been an attempt by us to in any way to limit discussion of any kind on their forum, in fact, we encourage it; our actions have always been only to have advertisements for infringing goods removed- as the law provides for.

The ire of those that take us to task is entirely misplaced; it should properly be directed at those that created the laws and associated precedents in the first place that REQUIRE us to take action when infringements are noted. We certainly have better things to do.

[watton_earth]

I read bothforums everyweek....These threads on both forums have been the most interesting enjoyable (and annoying) thing I've read for a long time. It's fantastic that the CEO of a company who's products I have an intrest in actually bothers to engage and inform...

I voted to ban, but I'd rather basschat police the forums and remove naughty posts from the marketplace thread...I hope this is still an option.

There are only two things I like to use the Internet for, rickenbacker guitars and looking at pictures which my mum always told me would cause my hands to grow hairy and my eyesight to fade....for the sake of my eyesight Hopefully basschat and rickenbacker can reach an acceptable agreement.

[henry5]

Unfortunately, the Bass Chat owner/moderator that we dealt with (by the name of Colin) has not been entirely honest with the membership.

Specifically, we asked that one and only one POST- one that offered a counterfeit bass for sale- be removed as a TRADEMARK infringement. In the first response, he played dumb (or is), since his response was that they didn't understand why we felt this THREAD "infringed your copyright".

We wrote back referring to photos of goods for sale that were attached to a specific dated post. He of course couldn't find them, which necessitated another email with URLs to the photos, reiterating the specific POST and said "Delete those photos and we likely won't bother you further."

Now comes an email from him saying "Thanks for the links to the pictures. According to the documentation you provided to us on a previous occasion, these photographs do not infringe your copyright, as only the headstock design and Rickenbacker logo thereon are registered designs. The pictures you refer to do not show these. I am not aware that you have copyrighted any other aspects of the design in the UK. " Still oblivious to the fact that there are no COPYRIGHTS involved here.

Now that we realized that this obviously a dilatory tactic, I sent him certified copies of the TRADEMARKS, also advising that this need to be handled shortly otherwise I had no choice but to refer this to our lawyers in London.

His response "Thank you for the copy of the trademark document regarding the design of the bass body. This is the first time I have seen it, but I note it's dated 17 September 2012. If it had been provided sooner, there would have been no issue with the advert. We can only 'police' copyrighted designs that we are kept informed about." With TRADEMARKS in hand, he still thinks it's COPYRIGHTS! But beyond that he expects us to inform him every time there's a filing. The point of making the filing is to provide public notice but of course I DID inform him by contacting him in the first place!

We've never asked Bass Chat moderators to decide whether or not something is no-go; that isn't their job any more than it is ours to inform them of every filing we make. What we DO expect is timely compliance when we do notify them of a problem just as eBay, Amazon, PreLoved, Gumtree, IOffer and a host of others do every day of the week. We're not imposing any proactive burden on them, only a reactive response when they receive a complaint.

With regard to a ban, it matters not in the least to us as their active readership could not possibly represent more than something like 0.01% of the bassists in the U.K. and, of course, one typically only hears from the detractors anyway. Unfortunately, we're just the vanguard of what manufacturers are now required to do BY LAW in order to protect their trademarks and if they ban every brand for which this type of complaint is submitted to them, they will soon have to rename their forum to just "Chat". (Fender is a perfect example of what complacency regarding trademark infringement will cause, now that the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision, and Jazz instrument shapes are public domain.)

There has never been an attempt by us to in any way to limit discussion of any kind on their forum, in fact, we encourage it; our actions have always been only to have advertisements for infringing goods removed- as the law provides for.

The ire of those that take us to task is entirely misplaced; it should properly be directed at those that created the laws and associated precedents in the first place that REQUIRE us to take action when infringements are noted. We certainly have better things to do.

I would've said that posting a version of this on Basschat may have helped clear things up, but I suspect that that would be a rather naive suggestion.

[jdogric12]

for the sake of my eyesight

good one

[Colonel Sanders]

for the sake of my eyesight Hopefully basschat and rickenbacker can reach an acceptable agreement.

good one

I guess it may be a bit hard to reach an agreement with Forum administrators that are interpreting a request to remove a "Rickenfacker for sale post, or else..." as a request to prevent any such post to ever occur on their web site.

[Deep Release]

[johngh]

@henry5

not really. it was picked up on straight away. all we want to do is run the forum without the threat of legal action every 5 minutes.

we can respond to Mr Halls requests. but it takes us longer than the other organizations that are mentioned in his post as we have no full time staff. That's it!

[johnhall]

I would've said that posting a version of this on Basschat may have helped clear things up, but I suspect that that would be a rather naive suggestion.

If we had an account and if we trusted the moderators to leave it as posted then that would have been an option. Unfortunately neither of these is true for us and in the case of the latter, the posting of previous out of context excerpts from my emails to the management has fairly well precluded my participation there.

not really. it was picked up on straight away. all we want to do is run the forum without the threat of legal action every 5 minutes.

we can respond to Mr Halls requests. but it takes us longer than the other organizations that are mentioned in his post as we have no full time staff. That's it!

Not to put too fine a point on it but this is a bit contradictory . . . picked up straight away on the one hand, but it takes longer because there's no staff.

The "threats" have come only when complaints have not been acted on and dilatory, inane e-mails are being presented. All of the other parties mentioned remove the items within 24-48 hours of request without questions; at that point the seller of the perceived infringing item is welcome to request clarification (or more correctly an education) so that everyone understands the problem. In many cases, a re-posting with appropriate language is made or other suggestions are offered.

BassChat management, as well as the membership, has instead chosen to make things much more difficult and antagonistic, the proposed ban being a case in point.

[dlloyd]

not really. it was picked up on straight away. all we want to do is run the forum without the threat of legal action every 5 minutes.

we can respond to Mr Halls requests. but it takes us longer than the other organizations that are mentioned in his post as we have no full time staff. That's it!

Not to put too fine a point on it but this is a bit contradictory . . . picked up straight away on the one hand, but it takes longer because there's no staff.

It was picked up straight away by an ordinary member (me) who happened to be reading the basschat forum at 6.00 am in the morning. I am not staff. Nor am I a moderator on basschat. The guys who do moderate basschat do it voluntarily, for (generally) altruistic reasons, and are not paid. There is no "staffing rota" or any guarantee that there will be a moderator present at any time.

When you send legal threats to these guys, you're throwing your weight at a bunch of enthusiasts, not a money-making corporation.

[johngh]

I would've said that posting a version of this on Basschat may have helped clear things up, but I suspect that that would be a rather naive suggestion.

If we had an account and if we trusted the moderators to leave it as posted then that would have been an option. Unfortunately neither of these is true for us and in the case of the latter, the posting of previous out of context excerpts from my emails to the management has fairly well precluded my participation there.

not really. it was picked up on straight away. all we want to do is run the forum without the threat of legal action every 5 minutes.

we can respond to Mr Halls requests. but it takes us longer than the other organizations that are mentioned in his post as we have no full time staff. That's it!

Not to put too fine a point on it but this is a bit contradictory . . . picked up straight away on the one hand, but it takes longer because there's no staff.

The "threats" have come only when complaints have not been acted on and dilatory, inane e-mails are being presented. All of the other parties mentioned remove the items within 24-48 hours of request without questions; at that point the seller of the perceived infringing item is welcome to request clarification (or more correctly an education) so that everyone understands the problem. In many cases, a re-posting with appropriate language is made or other suggestions are offered.

BassChat management, as well as the membership, has instead chosen to make things much more difficult and antagonistic, the proposed ban being a case in point.

If you had an account on Basschat Mr Hall you have my personal guarantee that no post you made would be edited by the mod team. I've been a mod on Basschat for over 5 years, and like to think I have a sound reputation, just read my feedback. All of the mods on Basschat as on most forums are volunteers, so the only point I'm making is that unlike Gumtree / ebay etc, we have no full time staff to pick up your kind of complaints and act on them instantly. As well as no full time people to pick up changes you may make to your trademarks.

As far as I'm aware, all complaints have been handled in what I would consider to be an acceptable timeframe given the type of forum we run. I myself have seen adds for Rick copies and edited out the offending photos as soon as I've seen them.

Like you mentioned, you are not expecting us to call go no go, but the main issue is that we also can't be expected to see and jump on all the adds that may offend Rickenbacker the minute they appear, some will slip through.
But we can deal with them once either yourself or one of your team highlight them to us.

I can also say that if complaints are copied into me going forward, I will personally make sure they are dealt with in a timely manner. I'm a Quality Engineer in Aerospace and deal with Rolls Royce / Airbus and Boeing on a daily basis on this sort of stuff, so I find it very easy.

Also, the reason I picked up on your comments straight away was because I checked in on the forum before heading off to work, and made the team aware. I personally have not taken any snippets of your post and put them on the public forum.

If your happy to take this to either PM or e mail I'm sure it can be brought to a swift conclusion. I really can't see what's so difficult.

Best
John

[iiipopes]

(I voted to "Not Ban.")

[dricard]

I agree 100%. No one benefits from this behaviour on either side. Forums like Basschat and RRF have positive and negative attributes, the main positive is free discussion. When this is curtailed it is a sad day for the bass playing community. The irony is, I have owned 3 Rickenbacker basses, the reason for this is Basschat, not RIC marketing......[/quote]


I bought a RIC because I saw MAurice Gibb playing one....save up 4 high school part time paychecks, blew it all on Oscar Juliet Seven Two Zero Zero, and the rest his history. No internets then, so, it took quite a search to find one. AFTER the fact, I found this forum in the late 1990,s the bass is still in the register.

[5t1nkf00t]

Just so everyone has a firm base for opinion, here is the untouched email chain between John Hall and Colin (Hamster) the Basschat Admin. Steve in the first message is Kiwi, Basschat owner, Colin replied on his behalf. The annotations are by Colin.

----------------------------------------------------------

This was the first e-mail received from John Hall:

John Hall <jhall@rickenbacker.com>
20 May


Steve,
Will you deal with this or do I need to get our people involved?

i://basschat.co.uk/topic/206224-back-on-sale-gorgeous-bluebacker-great-looks-great-tone-snap-a-bargain/

Thanks,
John C. Hall
Chief Executive Officer
Rickenbacker International Corp.
3895 S. Main St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
Tel: 714-545-5574
Fax: 714-754-0135
Web: http://www.rickenbacker.com
--------------------------------------------------------------
I had a look at the topic which had pictures of a bluebacker, but the pictures were carefully cropped with no detail of the headstock.
So I replied:
--------------------------------------------------------------

bass chat <basschat.admin@gmail.com>
20 May


to jhall


Hi John
I don't understand why you feel this has infringed your copyright? There are no pictures of your copyright design, nor is there any reference to purport or suggest that the item is a Rickenbacker, nor is any comparison implied or inferred by the seller.
I'm more than willing to cooperate with you and respect your right to assert your copyright ownership, but it does not seem that this advert infringes.
If you feel it does, please can you explain why?
Many thanks
Colin
Basschat Administrator

--------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, I used the term copyright design where perhaps I should have said trademark - but I think we were both talking about the same post.
--------------------------------------------------------------

John Hall
20 May


to me


The attached photos on the 1 May 2013 posting reside on your site say it
all. Delete those photos and we likely won't bother you further.
John C. Hall
Chief Executive Officer
Rickenbacker International Corp.
3895 S. Main St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
Tel: 714-545-5574
Fax: 714-754-0135
Web: http://www.rickenbacker.com

--------------------------------------------------------------
Well no they didn't say it all - hence my last reply, there were no new attached photos to the email, and so I asked:
--------------------------------------------------------------

bass chat <basschat.admin@gmail.com>
20 May


to jhall


Hi again
I can't see any attachments to this mail. Can you provide the link to where the photos are on my website please?
Many thanks
Colin
Basschat Administrator

--------------------------------------------------------------

John Hall
20 May


to me


http://basschat.co.u...04700-136742207
0.jpg
http://basschat.co.u...06400-136742209
2.jpg
Odd that you can't see them.

John C. Hall
Chief Executive Officer
Rickenbacker International Corp.
3895 S. Main St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
Tel: 714-545-5574
Fax: 714-754-0135
Web: http://www.rickenbacker.com

--------------------------------------------------------------
And so I replied:
--------------------------------------------------------------

bass chat <basschat.admin@gmail.com>
20 May


to jhall


Hi again
Thanks for the links to the pictures. According to the documentation you provided to us on a previous occasion, these photographs do not infringe your copyright, as only the headstock design and Rickenbacker logo thereon are registered designs. The pictures you refer to do not show these. I am not aware that you have copyrighted any other aspects of the design in the UK. If you have, please let me know and I will take appropriate action.
Regards
Colin
Basschat Administrator

--------------------------------------------------------------
John Hall
20 May


to me


Sorry, but this is going to be my last email on the topic. If it's not gone
when I come in to work tomorrow, I'm simply going to hand it over to UK
counsel.
John C. Hall
Chief Executive Officer
Rickenbacker International Corp.
3895 S. Main St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
Tel: 714-545-5574
Fax: 714-754-0135
Web: http://www.rickenbacker.com
From: bass chat [mailto:basschat.admin@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 3:22 PM

Trademark-EC Bass Body.pdf
1122K View Download

--------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first time anyone at Basschat had seen this, so I replied:
--------------------------------------------------------------

bass chat <basschat.admin@gmail.com>
21 May


to jhall


Thank you for the copy of the trademark document regarding the design of the bass body. This is the first time I have seen it, but I note it's dated 17 September 2012.
If it had been provided sooner, there would have been no issue with the advert. We can only 'police' copyrighted designs that we are kept informed about.
Regards
Colin
Basschat Administration


--------------------------------------------------------------
And John Halls' reply:
--------------------------------------------------------------

John Hall
21 May


to me


It's not our job to inform you of trademarks we hold; that's what the
various world registries are for.
It is our job - in fact, it's required by law- for us to inform you of an
infringement, which we did.
Ebay, IOffer, Gumtree, Pre-Loved and similar sites understand the law,
remove infringing items when they are notified, and have NEVER, EVER asked
to see trademark registrations.

Regards,

John C. Hall
Chief Executive Officer
Rickenbacker International Corp.
3895 S. Main St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
Tel: 714-545-5574
Fax: 714-754-0135
Web: http://www.rickenbacker.com

--------------------------------------------------------------
And I replied:
--------------------------------------------------------------

bass chat <basschat.admin@gmail.com>
21 May


to jhall


Hi John
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate that very large companies like eBay, gumtree etc have neither the time or inclination to look at matters you raise with them - they just pull the plug on the advert. We however are a small community of bass players and the 'staff' of the website are all unpaid volunteers. We do not wish to place restrictions upon our community making private sales and trades with each other - but we will do where we are satisfied that a copyright infringement has been made. I do not think that it is unreasonable to ask a copyright holder to provide us with a simple copy of the registered design or trademark.

Let me assure you that all of our 'staff' here have now been informed of your copyrighted design of the bass guitar bodies and we will actively protect your designs and remove any offending adverts as soon as we spot them. I have removed the advert your brought to my attention - and several others that you 'missed.'

All it takes is communication and may I suggest that it may be better to let us know if you copyright any other of your designs instead of drip-feeding us the information. That way we can work with you (and for you), instead of you feeling the need to check the content of our bass sales section.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

Regards
Colin
Basschat Administrator.

--------------------------------------------------------------

That's it - word for word.
Colin (Hamster)