Original Article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/canadian-miner-hive-blockchain-issues-cease-and-desist-to-steem-fork-hive
Who is Hive Blockchain? Until today, I had no idea who they were.
There are a few problems with their issuing of a Cease and Desist that I can think of right off the bat.
First, this community already used the word "Hive" before forking from Steem.
Second, Hive is a decentralized ecosystem with no corporation or entity that owns it, thus (I'm not a lawyer) I see no reasonable legal basis for this Cease and Desist to go anywhere. It's like the federation in star trek suing the Borg collective.
Third, Hive Blockchain is a mining company, and the Hive community is a global decentralized ecosystem. The only similarity that the Hive Blockchain company has with the Hive community is the connection to blockchain technology, which in and of itself is a ubiquitous term at this point.
In my opinion (again not a lawyer), the cease and desist is nothing more than a publicity stunt by Hive Blockchain company. If this company ran a social media platform, then I could see there being grounds for copyright and/or trademark infringements. Again though, since this community does not exist in any one place, Hive Blockchain company would need to spend a lot of money to legally proceed against the Hive Community, and in turn (just like Justin Sun and a few exchanges) receive massive public backlash against them for attacking decentralization.
There's not much more to say about it. Hive Blockchain company would be wasting their time and money in a legal battle, but now a few people know who they are, and this will certainly benefit them. Their claim of this Community using their name to benefit ourselves is preposterous and without evidence, given their lack of notoriety and reputation (to my knowledge). Is this a case of projection in the legal system, where an entity accuses others of the very thing they are doing themselves?
possibly.
A week from now no one will care about this. You can't fight a collective community that has no centralized base. There is no equivalent of Steemit Inc for them to legally go after. There is no centralized ownership.
however, before I finish this post this situation does raise an interesting point about copyright and brand ownership in a decentralized world. So long as there is no centralized control of a blockchain, you can call it anything you want and who could stop it? You could call a blockchain "coca-cola" and the only recourse for the soft-drink company would be to either buy up all the tokens, create their own competing chain, ignore it all, or spend billions of dollars trying to pin down a ghost.
Interesting times we live in for sure.
Thanks for dropping by. Stay safe and healthy everyone.