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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Downvoted because "wah wah wah branding guidelines wah wah wah". I thought this was hacker news, not crybaby news.

Seriously, though--it's awards for rankings, based on github. I think that the "github-awards" domain name is rather descriptive. What, you'd prefer some other nonsense like "rank.ly" or some other damn fool thing?

EDIT:

The fact that the parent post is the top comment on this thread is saddening. Not "Hey, cool app", not "Hey, so how'd you build it?", not even "Hey, does Github know about this?"

Instead, a "calling out" because of some fineprint. Laaaame.

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It's a legitimate concern, like having a spammy clickbait article.

The site infringes on Github's trademarks all over the place.

Can the site still get users' time and attention without stealing Github's branding?

When it's a tool that is explicitly built off of the Github platform, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they mention Github.

If Github cares, let them file a C&D or just talk with the author--it isn't our job to play trademark police. It's entirely too negative a behavior on our part.

>If Github cares, let them file a C&D or just talk with the author--it isn't our job to play trademark police. It's entirely too negative a behavior on our part. //

TMs are for consumers. It's entirely a consumers business to ensure that they are not being deceived as to the origin of goods and services they receive solicitations for. Yes GitHub should also be concerned but it's not their concern alone.

TMs benefit us in preventing financial incentive for scammers and frauds.

Expressing trademark concerns can be a positive thing, as here.

My initial view of the page had me assume that it came from the owners of Github™ as it used the name in the domain and used a [partial] GitHub [imitation] logo as a full viewport bg-image and mentions "on GitHub" in the most prominent page copy as if you're on GitHub.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't intent to use these elements to make the site appear to be "official".

If you assumed it came from Github, well, I can't help you.

I mean, there's a useful question there: if we are to support remixing and hacking and whatnot, do we also need to stop assuming that any work referencing a company is automatically endorsed or representing that company?

I'm honestly kind of surprised that anybody thought this came from Github--least of all, because they seem to just post things on their own domain. That being, you know, the point of having a domain.

It doesn't merely reference GitHub.

I followed a link from HN that said "Discover your ranking on GitHub" - on GitHub usually means on GitHub's site. Using GitHub in this way is using a trademark that is supposed to be reserved for indicating origin. On arriving at the site one sees the GitHub logo (or at least a facsimile portion) and references to GitHub usernames and use of the [non-distinctive] GitHub livery [many sites use that same scheme though]. Checking the domain name one sees use of GitHub's trademark again. This is better than most phishing sites I've seen - next step for me is usually to do a whois if I care to find if it's an official site.

Up to this point it's either a phishing site or from GitHub. Without further investigation then IMO it's normal to assume non-infringing trademark use.

Presumably you've never come across a company that uses different domain prefix/suffixes with a trademark like, oh I don't know, http://Googlemail.com ?

github-awards.com with copy saying "we use GitHub's API to gather info and present an unofficial award" then I can see that any infringement might be incidental. With "on GitHub", with the livery, the logo and the domain; it's passing off.

"see your ranking on Github" is similar to "see the number of friends you have on Facebook" or "look at your word usage on Hacker News". It's clearly being used to refer to the platform, not the site.

Besides, it has just a box for entering your username, which then scrapes data and presents it--hardly a phishing site.

Is any issue that you personally don't care about "crybaby news"?

Is the community better served by positive responses to creative works, or to nitpicking over trademark infringement by people who are not responsible for either claiming it or enforcing it?

How about both? A comment describing how the name of the product is a violation of GitHub's name and branding usage guidelines does not somehow cancel out other comments.

If everybody wrote the same comment, there would be no point to commenting.

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