Carson started another thread at the same time as this post and that other thread was with the same content. That other one has been flagged as spam and removed.
Iâd rather pay the $150K to attorneys to seize it under TM protections. Well, Iâd rather see it go to a couple extra developers. 
Sounds like someone received the lawyerâs letter
Just in case it wasnât obvious, please do not bid on this domain. Weâll see if the team can acquire it for a reasonable number
Just curious:
Is there data available on the popularity of the old domain name compared to the domain name donated by Digikey?
Or is that âstrategically sensitiveâ data at this moment?
Bid on a poisoned well?
$2.00 tops.
Absolutely no more!!!
I believe you didnât mean $2 would actually be realistic.
I wonder how much would be good for both KiCad and larger internet community.
First, itâs possible that we have already been exceptionally quick and effective at hiding the hijacked domain. Whatever they would use it for, other than selling it, they depend on people going there, and people generally donât go there from here or from search engine results or other respectable sources. There are links still âhere and thereâ but not significantly, and many of the remaining will be cleaned over time (sites with software lists, linux package descriptions etc.).
People who donât know the domain name wonât write âkicad-pcbâ by guessing or by accident. Thatâs the good side of having used the non obvious domain name in the past and now governing the obvious one. The old one didnât have any benefits over the new one.
Second, offering so much money that they will earn more than they have spent just feeds the unhealthy phenomenon.
At the moment it seems to me that the domain name isnât really worth much. Their chances of actually doing something with it which would hurt KiCad are pretty low. Infiltrating dangerous modified downloadable KiCad binaries is much much less probable than just adding suspicious advertisement links to the old web site. The former is very rare, at least as far as I know, while I have actually seen the latter on other sites. Modifying KiCad would require much work from them with little payback. Users are exposed to malicious ad sites anyway and should protect themselves against them by some generic means; we canât protect them from all possible attacks which might use the name of KiCad.
For these reasons I think the domain name isnât really worth much, neither for them nor for us.
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Meanwhile, the bidding is up to 155 pounds
Anyway, we (or rather the authors of kicad.org contents) can use Copyright to prevent the scammers from using contents copied directly from kicad.org
Then, both domain registrar and hosting provider could be notified on copyright violation and requested to take the offending content down.
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How would copyright stop scammers when they are already prepared to break laws?
Criminals by definition break laws
Becaue the criminals rely on legit businesses (like Hosting provider, domain registrar).
These are the ones to address the request, not the anonymous individuals.
you are missing my point⌠âcan use Copyright to preventâ ⌠no they cannot because scammers are already breaking the law, do you really think they care about ripping a site?
Hosting sites are already obliged to act on scamming sites already, âcopyrightâ literally is the last thing on scammers minds
but yes, us little people canât do anything, flag it and let the process deal with it
Actually thatâs not necessarily true. If all they do is add advertising links to the text (not even modifying the text seen in the screen), copyright law may be the only law which makes it illegal. If the same party modifies software to include viruses etc. and distribute it, thatâs completely different matter. Spreading malicious software is usually illegal in itself.
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No we canât. The open source license we use means they can do literally anything with both a copy of the website source and the kicad source as long as the licenses are respected and displayed.
Well, if we need to split hairsâŚ
Creative Commons:
Attribution â You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
GPL:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.
If they modify any links or add links but donât tell about it anywhere they are violating both licenses.
cough those with malice intent do not careâŚ
Oh noes a licence is violated, oh noes copyright laws are violated, oh noes IP is violated
CRIMINALS by definition do not care if they have malice intent
Sure many of these can be used to bring them down but they donât care and such soft limits do not stop them but if something is live even for 1day and 100 victims fall for it, itâs a win
And this is why, like in the real world, relying on mechanism to punish does not prevent and thus the reporting, the cleaning sites, the positive PR, proactive work is the right thing todo
Of course they donât, but it gives a legal reason for someone else to bring the site down.
EDIT:
We canât help those 100 victims or get back anything, but it helps everybody else and is enough for the project.
Iâm planning on spending some time to manually crawl the Internet and send mails to any website that still links to the old domain name with a request to update their website.
I do not like spreading a personal e-mail address around though, and therefore want to have an e-mail address solely for KiCad related stuff.
I can make something on my own, but it may look more âprofessionalâ if I have an e-mail address from the KiCad . org domain.
Can this be arranged?
Would this be a useful appropriation of my time?
Someone posted above a âlist of linksâ https://forum.kicad.info/uploads/short-url/qml0lRP4uVfooUdeaUysBWt0iZ.csv
But there are 20k entries. I think it would only make sense if we split the work among 20 people and each one slowly takes care of 1000. (I can volunteer)