Mon, May 3rd 2021 10:47am
Mike Masnick
A couple years we wrote about What3Words, and noted that it was a clever system that created an easy way to allow people to better share exact locations in an easily communicated manner (every bit of the globe can be described with just 3 words so something like best.tech.blog is a tiny plot near Hanover, Ontario). While part of this just feels like fun, a key part of the company s marketing message is that the system is useful in emergency situations where someone needs to communicate a very exact location quickly and easily.
What3Words sent a legal threat to a security researcher for sharing an open-source alternative
But the company can t point to a single case of copyright infringement
A U.K. company behind digital addressing system What3Words has sent a legal threat to a security researcher for offering to share an open-source software project with other researchers, which What3Words claims violate its copyright.
Aaron Toponce, a systems administrator at XMission, received a letter on Thursday from London-based law firm JA Kemp representing What3Words, requesting that he delete tweets related to the open-source alternative, WhatFreeWords. The letter also demands that he disclose to the law firm the identity of the person or people with whom he had shared a copy of the software, agree that he would not make any further copies of the software and to delete any copies of the software he had in his possession.