In reply to Peter Knight (@peterrknight).

Peter, this is the crux of the WordPress argument; they need to be in control of their own destiny and (even if they acknowledge that they would benefit from such a thing) it isn't what they want. OK, we can all agree with that as an idea.

I'm not going to talk here about the opinions that the WP legal team and I have shared with each other, but suffice it to say that issues like that have be discussed. AS THEY HAVE BEEN HERE AND ELSEWHERE.

Speaking purely from a "what is my opinion" perspective, I believe that WP is at a point in their growth where they benefit from greater awareness. They can't possibly reach the 50% market share they claim they want without a huge public-awareness effort, and this is the reason they're putting such an emphasis on Jetpack, as Ma.TT acknowledges.

SO: if we can stipulate that they still need to be able to shut down the bad guys, we're down to a discussion about whether it's better to shut down EVERYONE they can because at a certain size it's too hard to flesh out the bad guys. And in that argument it doesn't matter that I'm a GOOD guy, right?

At that point this really does become about arcane stuff like trademarks. But trademarks are what they are; they provide protection, but they cut both ways. The "technicality" that some people have said I'm trying to take advantage of is the same technicality that WP is using to say "we don't want to have to work so hard to find the bad guys even if that's the right move right now, since good guys help us".

Final point: as with most things legal, this isn't about "right", it's about technicalities. So here's the big technicality: for the trademark holder, the downside of having one is that you are OBLIGATED to protect the trademark against ALL "infringers". Who wants to start listing all the domains that have "wordpress" in their TLDS? Now who wants to guess whether WP is aware of all, or most, or even some of those but hasn't gone after them?

And if you are demonstrated not to have done the job, you lose the trademark.

BTW, let's be clear: if the trademark I opposed gets approved and WP has full word-and-characters protection do you think they'll continue their policy that using the nine letters in or as a subdomain is allowed? For that matter, do you think they'll be able to make that decision if they want to keep that trademark?

Wait, you asked me yay or nay and I went off, so: yay, because right now they need the help.