tip4commit is one of a number of services which, without asking for permission or notifying you, opt your projects into a BitCoin-based crowdfunding system. Even if your project doesn't want it, even if your project has its own donation/support system you'd like to send people to.
Historically they spammed committers of force-opted-in repositories with an email on every commit to tell them what their new BTC donation balance was after the commit. And they insist that once a repository has been added to their system, they do not have the ability to remove it.
This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of, and the best they'll offer is to stop sending you an email every time you make a commit.
We (meaning the Django project) went a few rounds with them a while back and ultimately had to resort to threatening spam complaints against their ISP just to get the damn emails turned off. We still have been unable to get removed from the list of projects they "helpfully" collect donations for:
The link in this thread is another major developer also attempting to get his repositories removed from their "service", and being stonewalled just as we were.
> This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of
To make matters worse, they have no idea about or no will to learn about foreign laws.
If they listed any of my projects on their website, I, personally would be considered to be participating in illegal activities in my home country. Regardless of whether I would have ever received any money, asking for donations requires a permit ahead of time here. The police could come knocking on my door demanding for an explanation (they'd probably send a letter, though).
It would be extremely unlikely that I would ever get convicted, but I'd have to spend a lot of effort proving my innocence in something I played no part in.
Besides, looking at this project and the number of similar projects (all using cryptocurrencies), it seems like there are no noble intentions behind this. A lot of the funds donated might never get claimed, which means that the intermediate party could usurp the money because no transparency is involved.
playing devil's advocate: may be tip4commit is not your problem, but rather your country's laws are if these allow to so easily mock anyone and risk of being convicted?
My country has several stupid laws but there's very little I can do to change them (apart from voting).
That doesn't make it OK for someone to run a dodgy "donations/tip/contribution" service, asking for money on my behalf. This could potentially cause problems for lots of people around the world (seems like UK has similar laws too).
Stupid foreign laws don't go away by ignoring them. Running an international service requires you to understand the legislations you operate in.
Your stupid analogy aside, you can't expect to avoid consequences because you were operating without a knowledge of the law. Stand in front of a judge and ask him if you should have guessed that X was illegal and see how far that gets you.
Alright, lets remove tip4commit server from picture. So to put you in jail I just need to find any project you work on, find your name and ask for donations on your behalf? Doesn't this sounds wrong to you?
also, people who downvoting here - make sure to read HN rules about what downvotes are for. They are not to downvote different ideas, but to remove useless posts.
If you set up something to collect donations for exDM69 they might have to explain to the police what was going on.
That takes time, and costs money.
exDM69 can avoid spending that time and money by asking you to stop collecting money for them.
And so now you have a choice: offer to give timy amounts of money to someone who will never accept it; or you could respect that person's wishes by not accepting donations for them. (And that's the honest thing to do for the people giving you the money! If Bob tells you he's never going to accept the money it's dishonest to keep accepting donations for Bob).
> So to put you in jail I just need to find any project you work on, find your name and ask for donations on your behalf?
No, you would not be able to put me in jail. At worst, the penalty would be a fine. But that would not happen in practice.
What would happen is that I receive a letter from the local authorities, demanding me to explain why there are donations being asked for under my name. Responding might need me to get legal advice and perhaps contacting the hosting behind the service to find out who is asking for donations and why.
In other words, that would mean a lengthy paperwork process and perhaps some fees for legal advice. That would be a nuisance.
In other words, it is possible to make life miserable, not jailed. And the only way to be protected against it is to not be know. Security by obscurity. This sounds like an incorrect approach, especially from member of "hacker" community.
> also, people who downvoting here - make sure to read HN rules about what downvotes are for. They are not to downvote different ideas, but to remove useless posts.
Can you show me where it says that in the rules or guidelines or FAQ?
> rather your country's laws are if these allow to so easily mock anyone and risk of being convicted?
Does it really matter, it is a problem for the project owners. This third party claim to have an altruistic purpose yet they end up being a problem. And now you are suggesting to sovle the problem it is somehow more rational for the project owner to either 1) pack up and move to another countr or 2) start lobbying their local legislature to change laws to accomodate whatever this third party (tip4commit) thinks is a more rational approach.
I wonder if you could threaten them with a cease & desist over a trademark violation? (Is there an argument to be made that they are illegally using your trademark to market their service by association?)
Would be interested to hear from someone with a legal background about this.
Best I can tell as a non-attorney acting on advice from others, the way in which they advertise their services could be easily confused as implying a financial relationship with organizations or individuals with whom they do not have a (consenting) financial relationship. Where to go from there is an open question.
The bigger question, as always with such things, is whether they cause enough annoyance to be worth lawyering them, and whether playing whack-a-mole -- since they're not the only "service" which does this -- would be a prudent way to spend time and money.
Sounds plausible. IANAL, but I know there are similar protections for somebody's likeness. As in, you're not allowed to use somebody's likeness to endorse a product without their consent. I can't see why the same wouldn't go for using somebody's trademark to endorse a product without the trademark owner's consent.
This reminds me of a site (the name of which I apparently have washed from my memory, but not manta) that creates a profile for you from your public LinkedIn profile. It showed up in a google search when I was looking for a job, and contained older entries. I had to opt-in, sign up, and edit my information in order for it to be removed. The point everyone here is missing, is that this is the free-market risk of publishing things to the open web.
Deal with the issue some other way. There are unethical people out there who want to make money in crafty ways.
Maybe try reporting every email they send to spamcop? That should give their hosting provider a pretty good incentive to block their email sending privileges.
