Social Coop is a company that claims to have acquired three Mastodon servers???

Hmm, looks like a shell company in the Caymen Islands?

via http://www.russel.co.jp/releases_20221221.html (translated)

how did you find this omg and how is this the only public documentation of this thing

pawoo.net linked to Russell Co's site. Mask has a ton of entities, it looks like. Dimension seems to be a holding company for several related entities as well. And I found this interesting repo:

https://github.com/DimensionDev/SocialCollectiveTokens

Uggh. Mask Network is about encrypted text as an overlay. And yeah, I guess their company name is The Social Coop Limited. We should ask them to change their name....

Yea, I dunno if we have trademark or anything, but there's typically an obligation to address any possible infringements in order to maintain the legal protections of such a trademark.

Also just saw this too:

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/21/encrypted-messaging-protocol-mask-network-acquires-mastodon-server-pawoonet/

Suji Yan is not only Chairman of The Social Coop Limited, they are also founder of The Mask Network https://twitter.com/suji_yan

And according to a reply to Chris Trottier, aslo admin of Mastodon.cloud https://social.coop/@sub_o@mastodon.social/109552937135944360

Yea, also found this:

Via https://dimension.im/, which appears to be a holding company for Mask, among others. Like layers of some insane onion.

Yes, the multiple layers and linkages is typical of crypto stuff

Searching Sujitech LLC Illinois came up first with this

https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.sujitech_llc.f41ec74427e67396e586e7a14a08dde9.html#related-companies

We could find out more by paying Dun & Bradstreet

But there is also this

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_il/LLC_06031196

I can't tell yet whether these are the same firm - there's no LLC number on the Dun & Bradstreet entry

Maybe ICANN info on some of those web domains would turn up more info? I gotta run now but could take a look later.

Oh gosh, there is also this about Suji Yan https://www.todayonline.com/world/meet-chinas-fabulous-cross-dressing-computer-coders

Maybe we should file a trademark application. Are we formally incorporated or still just an opencollective instance?

We are not. We have a fiscal sponsor but are otherwise an unincorporated association. I believe we should register as a cooperative society with the FCA. Happy to help with the efforts on this, though possibly the details should be handled by the legal working group or something?

Regarding a trademark application: where do we file it? Unlike copyright, trademarks aren't universal, and it would get pretty expensive to protect the name everywhere.

I do agree with this in principle though.

dang foiled by the fact that there's no way I'm putting my credit card into this webzone to look up more info

I use throw away virtual one time card details for such things. I use Revolut app https://www.revolut.com/ , but there are other options out there too. Indeed, I think even Open Collective offer virtual cards for some collectives (I think at present just the collectives they host), powered by privacy.com last I read about it (but I think planning to connect with other providers too).

I think getting a trademark is a good idea, and I'd even suggest a trusted member could do it so sooner rather then later under their own name, then transfer it to a proper legal entity once we've cobbled one together.

To @Sven Shipton's point, I think it's probably wise to at least cover a couple jurisdictions where we have a sizable number of users, or hope to have users. The main risk, imo, is they stand-up a Mastodon server that is similar enough to social.coop that it confuses users who think they're joining our instance, whether that's intentional or not. If those users are in a location we have TM, it seems like it would lower that particular risk, but (obligatory) I am not a lawyer.

Sadly, I've known others in the FOSS community who've been forced to deal w/ TM issues. This is one resource I've found helpful in the past:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/likelihood-confusion-how-do-you-determine-trademark-infringing.html

I know the folks behind Social Coop and they have agreed to stop using the name. (Also in this thread is a record that I have discussed Social.coop with them in the past.)

well, awesome. thanks for handling that. and that is uh a... revealing? approach to moderation?

Also what the heck kind of coincidence is that, just like Google those words and it would be clear there is already a thing named that.

@Nathan Schneider How solid is that commitment to change the name? Will they actually change it, or just not use it in their promotion?

Yes, we need more than a text message confirmation.

Suggestion that has come up in conversation: we should probably say somewhere publicly that we are not affiliated with "Social Coop Limited". A fair number of folks are freaked out by corporate buyouts on Mastodon, so there's conversation flying about the whole thing.

I don't know who would craft an official statement, or where we would put it -- just passing on the suggestion, which makes sense to me. Even if the company does change their name, the news reports aren't likely to be updated to reflect that.

could it be as simple as "we are not affiliated with Social Coop Ltd, the company that owns pawoo and jp?"

Could be -- just not quite sure what the right way to go about it is.

Agreed. I would suggest a short post from the @SocialCoop@social.coop account, maybe something along these lines:

You may have read about an entity called "Social Coop Limited" acquiring a Japanese Mastodon instance. This entity has no relation whatsoever to social.coop. Due to the risk of confusion, we have reached out to them requesting a change of name.

social.coop is a co-operatively run Mastodon instance that was founded in 2017. Read more about us here: https://wiki.social.coop/home.html

Why overdoing Jonny's version? People don't come on Mastodon to be pointed to wiki pages. It makes sense for us because we socialize mainly on Loomio, AFAIU it Mastodon is both a co-owned personal microblog and coop advertising platform, and an excuse to put experience on our resumes and hang out here. But people want information to drop in their TLs, to be consumed effortlessly.

I'm fine with a short toot, but some context might be helpful, and I'm always in favor of pointing people to more information about who we are.

Who can actually post from the @SocialCoop@social.coop account though? @Nathan Schneider are you able to?

I'm on call right now and can do that if you'd like; anyone else have comments on what we should say before I send it out? The above sounds fine to me.

That would be great, thanks @Sam Whited and happy holidays :)

Done: https://social.coop/@SocialCoop/109568760275192558

A lot of places are getting this mixed up... Crunchbase is reporting that social.coop acquired pawoo...

And by the way, that page has a link directly to our wiki. I second the idea to put a temporary 'emergency banner' or some such directly on the wiki.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/social-coop

Oh yeah, that's quite bad...! I fired off an email to press@crunchbase.com to tell them... (only email address I could find on their site in <1 minute...).

I also just called Crunchbase out on Twitter with a link to our statement. Hopefully that does the trick.

Second the suggestion for putting an emergency banner on the wiki.

Update on this. I also contacted crunchbase and was told that all company listing are user-created and editable. So I made an account and edited our entry. So at least that is taken care of.

Thanks so much, Josh

I think we should make another toot from the admin account reporting that Suji Yan has agreed to change their name (because I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't). I have a very, very difficult time believing that this was just a coincidence, given that Nathan had already discussed our group with them. My guess is that the name "confusion" was done intentionally, specifically to hook progressive types. It's not exactly a new tactic. Given that this is a crypto "entrepreneur" we're dealing with, we should expect that nothing is being done in good faith, imnsho.

This thread is publicly accessible.

Um...not just for our members?

anyone who has the link, seems like @Richard Hull must have selected that option when starting the thread (I think they default to members only)

No. I didn't deliberately make it public at all. I have no idea how that happened, and I have not shared the link anywhere or with anyone.

My mistake! I just checked and our default privacy setting for all threads is public.

Phew! But that needs to be changed surely? I had believed it was private to members.

So, some of the subgroups are private to members, but any thread or poll by itself can be made open to "guests." We can change the main setting to "closed." I, too, had assumed that was the default setting...