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Jonty Wareing

Absolutely losing it after discovering what3words took control of the whatfreewords domain by arguing that "three" and "free" are indistinguishable when spoken.

wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search

A screenshot of a paragraph from the WIPO judgement. It reads:

"Complainant contends that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to Complainant’s distinctive WHATTHREEWORDS trademark as the disputed domain name is aurally and visually similar to the WHATTHREEWORDS mark. In that regard, Complainant further contends that the terms “three” and “free” are phonetically identical and indistinguishable when enunciated."
84 comments
Graham Spookyland🎃/Polynomial

@jonty oh no, all of the mess and none of the redeeming features!

Graham Spookyland🎃/Polynomial

@CatherineFlick @jonty I'm from the midlands and I don't say "free" for 3, and I don't know anyone else that does. seems to be a weird stereotype, like that we say "hospicle" (it's "hospi'ul", with a glottal stop, not a hard C sound)

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@gsuberland @CatherineFlick @jonty some people in London/Essex do pronounce three/free in a similar way, certainly enough to confuse systems like what3words...

Catherine Flick

@gsuberland @jonty my kid and all his friends do, maybe it’s a Leicester thing 😭😭😭😭

Colin Watson

@gsuberland @CatherineFlick @jonty I wouldn't generalize it to the whole Midlands, but my wife did most of her growing up in Shropshire and she genuinely cannot distinguish the sounds "f" and "th", either when speaking or when listening

Jonty Wareing

In case you're not aware, one of the primary issues with what3words is addresses containing words that are indistinguishable from others when spoken: w3w.me.ss

Andrew

@jonty wait why does this thing exist. What’s wrong with e911?

TerrorBite :veripawed3:

@cinebox e911 is specific to the US and Canada. Many other countries don't have this.

In Australia there's an app called Emergency Plus ( emergencyplus.com.au ) developed by emergency services and government, which assists with 000 calls by showing on screen your latitude and longitude, your nearest address, and – of course – the What3Words for your location. The app doesn't automatically send this data to authorities when you make a call, you're expected to read it out to them.

@jonty

Screenshot of a phone app:

Emergency Plus
If you are in an emergency call Triple Zero (000) by tapping the button below.

Stay focused, stay relevant, stay on line

[Three buttons, left to right: Button to call 000, Button to call the State Emergency Service, Button to call police national non-emergency number]

My Location
Tell the operator your location

[Address redacted] ACT Australia

Latitude: -35.[redacted]
Longitude: 149.[redacted]

what3words
///shark.[redacted]

[Google Maps image showing your location on a map, redacted]
TerrorBite :veripawed3:

@cinebox You might also note that all the cases highlighted in the link posted by @jonty are specific to the United Kingdom.

TerrorBite :veripawed3:

@cinebox Now of course, the real question is – if phones already have e911 capabilities built in, why don't other countries leverage this existing technology that's already on the phones of all their citizens?

@jonty

eastmad

@jonty That's impressively mindless. When I did a short post about w3w it was mainly as an improvement exercise. But I'm thinking of following up on actual problems because these guys think they can outdo the Post Office for crap. thenewstack.io/how-a-developer

that one JNL

@jonty Wowwww. I haven't given W3W another thought since playing with it in a cartography class a few years ago. It seems to have a kill count.

Leigh Garland

@jonty they're all over the life ring stations along the river near me. I can't think of anything worse than phoning up our local emergency services like:

Me: "Quick, someone's drowning"
999: "where are you sir?"
Me: "///agree.motoring.fixture"*
999: "I'm hanging up now, expect a fine for wasting our time"

* Yes, that's a real w3w address.

mtmail

@toychicken @jonty 999 wouldn’t hang up after you said somebody is drowning

Evelyn fra denne andre øya

@jonty@chaos.social wonder how far it'd have to get before they stopped thinking this was a credible argument. what tree words?

Stephen Paulger

@jonty how far can this be pushed before they recognise the irony?

War tree worse
Worth throw herds
Warn through hearse

Workshopshed

@aimaz @jonty around us "What" is pronounced "Wit" so that gives a whole bunch of extra permutations

Shannon Skinner (she/her)

@jonty
Those "intellectual property lawyers" better hope that cases they try in the future don't hinge on the words "free" or "three." They've already kneecapped themselves. Way to self own, you dumbasses!

Steven Feldman

@jonty @derickr maybe the answer is to register the domain just2numbers.com ?

Matt Gray

@jonty hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Geoff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@mattgrayyes @jonty Don't get me wrong, WTW is a briliant idea, just like 6 figure grid references and the phonetic alphabet. I just wish they'd see sense and learn the obvious lessons from both. But yeah, hahahahahaha in that respect!
(And kudos to the original, old-skool sense domain trolling.)

Barry Rowlingson

@jonty removed from archive.org as well, it seems.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈

@jonty

Oh dear, classic "don't know whether to cry or laugh" situation 😬

FXBOY4EVA

@jonty Yeah I have an involuntary pushback reaction every time I see anyone (usually b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶d̶ sponsored) encouraging others to use that vile litigious shit.
I usually just send them links to articles covering the shitty behaviour of w3w.

fourkingmaps.co.uk/ is my preferred (open) alternative.

Cal Alaera

@FXBOY4EVA @jonty Today I learned tampon.piersmorgan.arseclown.goldenshower is just outside Chelsea Hospital.

FXBOY4EVA

@jonty Plenty of other alternatives such as :-

fixphrase.com/
or
wherewords.id/

are of course available for the less expletively inclined 😉

Marcus Jenkins

@jonty An acquaintance of mine designed and built a comparable system to W3W - what3fucks. It worked well and, as you might imagine, was built on a dictionary of profanity. The W3W sent their lawyers into no-sense-of-humour mode.

W3W is proprietary. Which is fine. What's *not* cool is when a government adopts that proprietary system for addressing and so it's locked up in so many ways.

Marcus Jenkins

@mtmail @jonty Yeah, postal codes, particularly the fine-grained ones like ZIP+4 in USA, UK postal codes, Saudi short address, Israel's 7-digit, etc, etc, etc, are often bound up with intellectual property rights. (At least in England, Scotland & Wales there's CodePoint Open, sorry NI, SoL.)

Re EIRCODES, I'll just leave it to this thread from the Other Place. Check the replies, too.

twitter.com/PDverse/status/128

Marcus Jenkins

@mtmail @jonty The key difference is that if the government pays to develop a fine-grained postal code system, albeit implemented by a privatised post office or, in the case of Ireland, by Capita, then there's usually some light at the end of the tunnel that the data might be made open on some way, medium term (cf. CodePoint Open). If you relinquish to W3W you are inextricably linked to a global-scale system run by a foreign company - until their patent runs out.

Marcus Jenkins

@mtmail @jonty Apparently, at least the following are in the W3W web:

Kiribati
Mongolia
Sint-Maarten
Côte d’Ivoire
Djibouti
Tonga
Nigeria
Solomon Islands

According to Wikipedia, W3W has been losing tens of millions every year.

Idea for philanthropist: buy them up, wind up the company and free the patent.

Colin Rowat

@jonty but, on the bright side, can we look forward to hotmale.com finally claiming its oft confused homophone site, hotmail.com?

David Bremner

@jonty It's like the old song, threedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose.

tessarakt

@jonty They are probably thousands of miles apart in three word addresses ...

coldclimate

@jonty BRB off to register whatpeewords.com

Kevin Marks

@jonty a company called Wart-free Worms that sells to fishermen complained that what3words was putting out was bait

Daniel

@jonty Just leaving this here

🫣🫣🫣

what3words.lol domain up for grabs
Doug Grinbergs

@jonty PSA: excellent video by Andrew Steele challenging the genius of #What3words youtu.be/SqK0ciE0rto

grtyvr

@jonty i mean, it's probably just sitting there in one of the bug reports or test failures... So why not use it?

Iwillyeah

@jonty give that their whole shtick is that different words are... different, and that that is useful, this seems a bold move.

SpaceLifeForm

@jonty

What Three Words

Can I turn that into an acronym?

Does WTF work?

Sita Capak

@jonty Had not heard of this - but trained in phonetics (and sometimes lip-reader) what THREE words is, to me, at least, Very different to What3words. What has happened since 2020?

Ed Wiebe

@jonty In what language are they indistinguishable?

Phil M0OFX

@jonty I'm not surprised they're doing this, but I am surprised they still exist.

DELETED

@jonty
And to AI, which is goig to have to decipher these domain names, the complaint is absolutetly valid.
In my opinion anyway.

Knud Jahnke

@jonty

Why does that thing even still exist?

Accept purpose.

@jonty they are the everflowing well for people who want examples of why intellectual property is an obscene concept.

aetios
@jonty i understand the judgement but also VERY TYPICAL. w3w is such a mess
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