In this case the agent for service of process for Twitter was a human being (yay), not a company, and the very person who appears to be either associate general counsel or general counsel for Twitter. In other words, I had the name and address to whom I could address a letter. And this is a person who should understand that a letter from an attorney about a trademark issue should be answered. And even if he has a secretary and an undersecretary and a person who answers the mail, as general counsel AND agent for service of process, there’s a good chance someone sentient will open a letter.
You might say: Nina, why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call this guy? I would normally make a phone call, but while most attorneys have their phone number listed on the Bar Association’s attorney listings, the Twitter attorneys don’t (and I can understand why).
So I wrote a letter nicely asking Twitter to check into things. I told them about my problem and my little episode with the 4 emails late on Friday night, and ended with:
“I am disinclined to submit another form through your system since it appears to be … well let’s be honest, possessed.”
Hopefully my cheerful demeanor does not belie the fact that I have a serious and legitimate trademark issue on which I would like to have someone seriously act.
I sent my letter on July 12, 2012, by Federal Express to Mr. Alexander Macgillivray, and it was delivered by Federal Express on July 13, 2012.
It’s been another two weeks, and I’ve yet to hear anything back. But the @Instapundit account has been suspended, so I thought (naively I admit) that the case had been reopened and was being handled. I wrote back to trademark support to ask for an update and was again told: “your issue has been closed.”
So where do I go from here? Phone call? Fugettaboutit. Their automated phone system has two choices: Customer Support – which sends you back to their website; and Communications – which tells you to send an email to their PR firm.
Maybe I should go to court and get an Order to Show Cause why Twitter shouldn’t be required to have a human being talk to me? Well that would be the exact type of heavy-handed legal maneuver I dislike so much in other attorneys.
Do I hire the Grace L. Ferguson Airline (And Storm Door Co.) to skywrite “RESPOND TWITTER” over San Francisco? I would worry that anything to do with Judy Garland could cause a stampede in San Francisco. Besides, that’s just a little tacky, don’t you think?
So I’m writing this blog post, which I will tweet about, and hopefully I can communicate with Twitter, Inc., in the format which they created. Hopefully Twitter will take this attempt to talk to a human being about a real legal issue in the spirit in which it’s intended, which is simply: I’ve run out of more traditional ways to get your attention and I don’t want to ask a judge to order you to just send me an email from a human being.
And for what it’s worth, Twitter’s legal department, in fact the very same individual to whom I wrote more than 2 weeks ago, is apparently all in favor of attorneys using non-traditional approaches. Although I’m not sure he actually thought someone outside of his organization would do so.
Please re-tweet #RespondTwitter and link to this blog post. Please do NOT Direct Tweet to Twitter or Twitter support. I will contact @support and ask them to track this hashtag and to read this blogpost. I don’t want to abuse the system by having everyone direct messaging them. I just want a human to talk to me. If this doesn’t work, I may be back to ask for more help. For now please just re-tweet with the hashtag. I’ll let y’all know if it works.
I’m sorry, pet peeve, but it is impossible to be “somewhat unique.” You are either unique or you aren’t. There are no gradations.
You are right, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
I disagree. This turn of phrase is perfectly acceptable if used as a kind of understatement or sarcasm. Not all writing should be held to the standards of a legal document or scientific paper.
It could be that the situation is unique in some ways and not in others.
Just facebooked this (as well as tweeting) it
“We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re twitter.”
What’s frustrating is that bigger companies have ways to get through to their legal departments. It may take a while, but you can find an attorney who will talk with another attorney. Twitter and YouTube have been the most difficult companies to work with. And I’m really a pretty nice person as attorneys go.
Unfortunately this is par for the course for a lot of internet firms. I had a similar problem with blogger/google, a near unreachable entity despite the fact I live a mile from their campus. A couple of employees contacted my sports blog over the years, and one of them was able to forward my request for help to the right person.
Try sending a tweet to the company founder Jack Dorsey (@jack), or one of their employees that has a functioning blog. You would think for Instapundit they would go out of their way to make this happen.
Yeah, Nina, you’re not missing anything here. I also had this experience with a Twitter account, which based on some automated algorithm decided what I was doing was spammy, which is certainly wasn’t. I could not get through to a person. Unlike Glenn and his Instapundit trademark, it wasn’t worth it for me to follow through, but like you I R a whatever, and I’m not used to totally being blown off this way.
Well, no, actually I am. You mentioned YouTube… i.e., Google. The most arrogant legal department in creation. So I was, yeah, already kind of used to it.
I have some ideas, though, if you’re interested.
Occupy Twitter
Reading this reminded me Franz Kafka’s “The Castle”.
This may be related to the #twittergulag phenomenon. Their support dept. just closes cases at random, and nobody’s watching anything.
Yes, they NEVER help through their email, you have to raise hell on twitter with @twittersupport and the more people you get to help on twitter the better, just ask, people will help, especially @twitchyteam. While your at it if you would please, add me @123TAMjeanee to the get out of gulag list, HELP
We need to do it back to the left or figure out how to stop this crap!
#whocares
Are you deliberately trying to be a prick?
No, it comes naturally.
Clearly.
#whocaresaboutPaulABarge
(crickets)
I recommend you register an infringing domain name.
You will then hear from them directly.
Novaculus
Actually that gave me an idea. I researched Twitter’s trademark and found their outside trademark counsel and wrote to her. Maybe that will help.
Thanks
You could try insulting NBC and see if you get a response.
Nina, email me.
Get my email from Roger.
I may have someone who can help.
cfbleachers,
Thanks I’ll be in touch in a bit.
While you’re at it can you help me/@123TAMjeanee get out of twittergulag for the 4th time now PLEASE!! we really need a site to go to when the left ATTACKS like this…..HELP
Nina,
Feel free to email me too. Same situation happened with my twitter account, but I was able to get it fixed.
I feel your pain.
It staggers my imagination sometimes to see how hard it is to reach human beings sometimes.
I still remember working as a contract tech support for a major company and having an issue that required a phone call to another department within the same company. I navigated through the phone system to find the appropriate department and found myself in a loop: once I got to the right department and typed that number, I found myself back up three levels in the menu. Every time I got back to the right place and chose that option, I’d go back up three levels. The idiots who had programmed the phone system had managed to construct a loop. There was no way to reach the group you wanted and nothing you could do except hang up.
I’ve tried to contact websites to tell them that their registration procedure wasn’t working and there was no “contact me” link.
And so on. Someone in upper management of EVERY company out there should be examining how people can contact their company and ensuring that adequate paths exist. They should also TEST those methods regularly to make sure they are still working. For example, if you have a “contact us” link, try using it and making sure someone responds to it. If you have a phone number, make sure it is not disconnected. Etc. etc.
Sorry, I know this isn’t helping you solve your problem.
Let me suggest this: go to Twitter in person. I don’t mean that YOU should necessarily do it since you are presumably in a different city. Just get someone you know who lives in San Francisco to go to the Twitter offices and try to find someone there who can be notified that you’re trying to reach them. The receptionist at the front door SHOULD have an idea who to talk to and can be persuaded to take a message to them. Just pass your phone number and/or email address to the right person with a few words about the nature of the issue. Twitter might actually be grateful that someone is pointing out how hard it is to reach them….
And get me @IMAO while you’re at it. Only one tweet and back in 2007. That’s why I have to use @IMAO_.
Frank,
Twitter will only intercede when you have a registered trademark – which Glenn has. But if I get to talk to a human being I’ll mention IMAO
Hmm.
Just curious — any lefty bloggers have this happen to them?
Maybe you’ve thought of this already: but is it possible to mirror the RSS feed at the old URL? That would be a decent stopgap measure. Or would have been if they didn’t suspend the account…
@instapundit always showed as account suspended when I tried it.
Nina, you have run into one of the ugly facts about the internet: Many internet services (especially social media sites) are run by scum.
How terrible for Glenn to be denied his favorite username on Twitter. Heaven forbid that Glenn should have to make a different username with “Instapundit” in it. Guess celebrities get to demand special treatment!
When you are done with this campaign, would you mind helping me wrest control of my favorite username on Twitter also?
Who peed in your cereal? Or did you just have a big bowl of DUH for breakfast?
Sorry, you ate all the DUH this morning before I could get any. Looks like you shared some with the author of the original article, though!
Prick alert #2.
Serial trolls?
@purpAv, I can only assume either you didnt bother reading the article, or were confused by all the big words.
Angus of course, not Purpav. My apologies to the literate one. The statement holds for Angus.
Last year I served a U.S. Senator at a July 4th parade. I’d sent service to registered agent, his office in D.C. and was about to serve by publication when my wife came up with that idea. I’ve also had process served by wrapped gift. Works like a charm.
What’s that Angus? @Asshat?
If you want an actual response and resolution, you’ll need to start costing them M.O.N.E.Y. That means burning their lawyer’s time in front of a judge.
I know – but I really hate having to do that, if for no other reason than I have to go up to sue them in SF. I’d rather go park myself in their lobby (which I may do) if I’m going to make the trip. At least then I do have to get into “Go To Court” clothes, just go to SF clothes – which is scary enough.
I don’t think this is a “money” threat for them. They have more of it than you can impress them with in terms of litigation costs; moreover, there is no serious damages case here. But they do fear bad precedent. And that is something that, if the effort were sustained, may be a legitimate threat if properly cooked up.
(Why do you think you have to sue them in San Francisco, by the way?)
you might go to avc.com, Fred Wilson is on the board of Twitter and can direct you to the right place to go.
Twitter suspended an account of a journalist who was critical of the NBC coverage of the Olympic games.
Hmmm.
You’ve convinced me. I already deal with one too many non-responsive corporations. Twitter would clearly drive me over the edge. So, I hope Glen gets his Twitter name, but I will never see a tweet.
You should at least try the PR firm. Send them a link to this. Mention his traffic. They might help – you’d be surprised.
Virginia,
Good idea – I’ll do that
Have you tried contacting their outside counsel? If you are at the point where you may have to go to court to get them to respond their outside counsel would probably respond quite promptly to you (and then Twitter would probably contact you directly so they wouldn’t have to pay their outside counsel’s hourly fees).
Often times you can get a lot of info, even on non-public companies, from the SEC’s EDGAR system. In this case, their outside SEC counsel is identified in this No-Action request.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/11/9999999997-11-015681
Marc,
Actually as a result of an earlier comment I found their outside Trademark counsel who filed their TM application and emailed her this evening. I’m really hoping by tomorrow I’ll at least have a sentient human to talk with.
Good luck. If the trademark counsel doesn’t respond the SEC counsel (who likely handles a lot more than just SEC work) will probably start the ball rolling. The direct dial and direct email are at the link and since he’s a Fenwick partner, he’ll probably be checking his email at 3 am…
I once had a similar problem with a social media network that will remain nameless. Repeated attempts to contact them about major problems with their site always resulted in them sending the same form and telling me my account had been closed due to a lack of response… from ME!
Good luck. If you want this done, hire an agent to drive to the office and camp out on their door until they fix the problem.
Cut to the chase, simply sue them for damages of a penny for each missed link since the thing went dead. At about 1000 RSS hits a minute they are in for some serious liability. Should they not respond, well then they have a big default judgement on their hands. Problem solved. Ta’da.
Most Instapundit posts are so short, they’ll fit in the 140 character limit. There will be no reason to click through.
Heh.
I would say it was “in the works anyway” but when I emailed support with the help report number this morning I was told the help ticket was closed. BUT… SUCCESS. This evening a live human being with a name at twitter contacted me and Glenn Reynolds now has @Instapundit. His RSS feeds will be re-started soon. All of the followers were lost – so if you were following him, please re-follow him.
THANKS FOR EVERYONE’S SUPPORT!!!!
This is likely to be a continuing issue for cloud-based (free to consumer) services. Humans don’t scale, so if it doesn’t fit in within some automated workflow few (only the rich/powerful/celebs) will be able to resolve these types of issues. The challenge of carbon v. silicon (especially when revenues per use are in mille, if not micro, dollars – one phone call (seldom less than $100 when fully loaded with overhead) eats the profit from 10-100K users).
Alternative is to find a way to charge for services (but then there can’t be any free services left in competition).
Nina congrats on getting it done. Given that the old fashioned way of civility, reason and normal routes of communication were failing, the suggestion to criticize NBC most likely would have been your fastest route to success. My overall comment is “it shouldn’t be this hard” and the fact that it is should give us all some serious pause.
wait until you try to do this for google ads…impossible. tos says they can close you at any time for any reason and not have to tell you the reason.
suspect mine was due to some pro second amendment and gun sale stuff…
A wonderful accounting of lawyers at work and why nobody likes them though I do feel badly for Glenn Reynolds who seems an extraordinarily decent human being.
I’d really like to see you write up the whole story.
http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html
Looks like twitter is having a bad week. note btw that this gives the twitter address of their General Counsel.