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Comment by caissy | Hacker News Reader

Wait a minute, didn't it start out of a Reddit thread a couple of years ago?

It did. Now a company called 614a ltd claim they have the legal rights to the name and collect money from sponsors for it.

Umm...it's just a legal vehicle for my projects. I'm just a student. (fyi, it's the area code for [redacted]!)

Yep! Well, companies were going to exploit it anyways. I thought why not at least screen them before.

I'm just a college student in [redacted] and the site was coded & designed by a guy who just graduated high school in [redacted].

I'm not convinced that "screening them before" should quite extend to the level of "sponsorship fees" mentioned here: http://goo.gl/E1gKN

That was for a proposed advertising package for reddit.com. That definitely isn't coming to me.

Why doesn't anyone believe me? I live in my parent's house and I got a broken car. I love HN because it helped inspire me to do something. That's all. I'm almost crying here. :'(

Please call me at [redacted] if you don't believe me.

Remove sponsors from the site and you will be bathed in HN appreciation and support.

I'd imagine that you're suffering because the community in general is a bit skeptical about trademark enforcement issues, and the pump was primed with that Backupify snafu.

I just wanted to protect my visitors. Companies wouldn't listen to me when they found out I was student. I hope everyone understands that. I'm just a guy in [redacted] who wanted to do something for the community. The designer/coder is just a kid who graduated from highschool. I want people to think our their data. Not to be the center of things. :(

The reason is that people are mad at you is that you took something that was an impromptu community thing and trademarked it[1], then seemingly ask a lot of money for sponsorship. Given that the site exists for promotion only, people are going to think you've co-opted the ideas of others to make a lot of money for yourself.

The "right" way to have done this would be to form a non-profit and then be accountable for the money raised, however I don't really see the need for raising money where the only cost is a simple website. The commercialization is what leaves a bad taste.

[1] http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4001:dn...

I'm really sorry about everything, but I do want to say the virtually all of the work and promotion was done by me and my friend in the beginning three years ago. (I'm hesitant to bring my friend's name in this thread even though he is an awesome designer/dev who just graduated from highschool and deserves to be recognized. Email me if you like his stuff!)

I learned my lesson. I don't know too much about legal stuff so I'll look into making non-profit. I didn't want to ask for money from people and companies were asking for sponsor World Backup Day. I thought was a nice gesture. Last year, I had a link to bone marrow registry and even had tied the message of being a "backup for a human" to get people to sign up for the registry. I wanted to do something this year, but we ran out of time to settle & create graphics for another cause.

I just wanted it to be a happy and helpful event before April Fool's Day. That is all.

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