The CyanogenMod team took to their blog and Facebook page a few minutes ago to explain some shocking news to the Android community. Back in the day, before CyanogenMod was the huge name that we know of it today, CyanogenMod.com was purchased and donated to the CM team since things were smaller back then. The same person has been in charge of the large domain for the past 3 years, but that person is now erasing Cyanogen’s website and shutting things down across the web as we speak.
In their blog post the team says that the owner of the domain name was caught impersonating Steve Kondik, the creator of CyanogenMod, and using that false name to do some shady referral deals. The team approached the owner to ask to take control of the domain and he declined, saying that he would like $10,000 for it. Something that the CM team neither had the money to do or wanted to do in the first place.
So the team switched over the accounts of the social networks that they could and they were emailed the following statement in response:
“Hi, so you think by removing all my access across the infrastructure was going to be a great idea? We had a chat yesterday, you’ve decided to end this bitter. How about I just change the DNS entries right now. CM will practically go down.”
Today, he has started to do that and the CM team explains that their web presence is “slowly expiring out of the Internet and being replaced by blank pages and non-existing sites.” They also mentioned that from now until further update, any @cyanogenmod.com emails should be considered discontinued.
The team is in the process of getting the control of their domain and presence back, but who knows how long that will take or if they will. We are unsure of how this will affect people from downloading some of their favorite ROMs as of yet, but CM said in their post that they will keep us posted. The final part of their post stressed that their goal with CyanogenMod is not a monetary gain and that they were “deeply hurt” by this whole situation.
It’s shocking to see something like this happen to CyanogenMod, one of the biggest players in the Android development game. We hope that this gets resolved quickly so that the developers for CyanogenMod can get back to doing what they love.
Update: According to the accused party’s Twitter account, they will be relinquishing the domain back to the CM team after all. “#Devpocalypse2012” has been averted.
Via: CyanogenMod Blog
Same thing happened to us at DroidMod (before we had that name). We suvived 🙂
ID fraud should be a death penalty. Lol.
Seems like its not really been fair to the alleged “extortionist”. Immature people all up in arms after listening to a possibly altered, one-sided story.
Read this:
https://plus.google.com/116028512018932696380/posts/4gDX3HygM3E
Good on him for the way he handled this. Guy deserves a lot of respect for being mature and handling the situation the way he ultimately did.
NOTIFY THE STATE POLICE AND THE CYBER POLICE. YOU DUN GOOFED
All the CM team has to do is get the name trademarked and then they would be able to get any infringing domains seized. I used to work for Go Daddy and there is a process in place for that. If someone can prove they own the rights to a name they can seize any domain that contains that name and the person they seize it from doesn’t even get a refund.
doesn’t work internationally bud.
Does too, if they have international rights.
This guy’s side of the story is already going to be obvious. He technically bought and owns the domain, and even though it wasn’t even worth the money he paid for it when he originally bought it, he probably went to the CM team and asked for some sort of deal where he got a financial benefit and they declined.
His position will be that he, rightfully, owns the domain. The counter is that he had nothing to do with the domain’s increase in value because that is 100% a result of the CM team. What his ownership of the domain thus equates to is nothing other than cybersquatting, which (at least in the U.S.) there are laws against. See link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
Owning a domain name does not entitle someone to any financial windfall due to the domain’s increase in value as a result of someone else’s work. The guy’s side of the story is going to be predictable, especially since that is the constant theme he has been reiterating on his twitter feed. (NOTE: I am an attorney, but a tech enthusiast and do not specialize in IP laws nor should this be considered legal advice).
This just proved what we always knew, the CM is run by a bunch of immature little kids, and this is why I want no part of that ROM. There are plenty of other good roms to choose from…
and most of them use CM as a source. /facepalm.
wow…:(,. Thanks God. 🙂
internets drama
sue his a$$.
Oh hey, seems like the guy is giving back cyanogenmod.com. Well.
UPDATE: The accused party has emailed the CyanogenMod team and agreed to relinquish control of the CyanogenMod.com domain. Although he had a much different story than what was initially posted by the CM team, he has decided not to voice his opinion, instead opting to “wash his hands and move on.”
http://phandroid.com/2012/11/14/cyanogenmod-extortion-attempt/
first aokps infected now this,just when 4.2 was released . any theories?
2012. O.O
His name seems to be Ahmet Deveci, from London.
Those guys look like they like to have a good ole time.
http://www.Privacy-Webz.tk
Honestly, Cyanogenmod should change their name which will make cyanogenmod.com 100% useless.
Domain names that add dashes or are .net .org or whatever will make users even more confused especially now that Cyanogenmod is SEO optimized for that name. He can still keep this site up and make fool people, so I highly recommend a total name change
String up the little Douchebag! Where is Anon when you need em?
There are assholes, and then there are ASSHOLES.
This guy falls squarely in the latter camp.
Looks like they found a new (temporary?) home: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/
Wow….watching this unfold just on Twitter, this is going to get U-G-L-Y.
Ridiculous. He couldn’t have waited until after 4.2 to pull this crap? Lol. I kid, I kid. I know there are probably two sides to the story but this guy sounds pretty shady. Once CM recovers, they will be better off by not dealing with this jerk.
you dont think cm makes thousands? come on, dont be naive.
From what? What exactly is their revenue stream?
lmao. what a moron.
I say good move sir….good move indeed u gave them a domain name for free cause they were to stupid to register it themselves who know how much in donations…or I like to call begging for money they have made def a good move pay up or move on cm sukas!!!!
If you read anything you might have a clue. This domain was registered over 3 years ago at a time when the CM team consisted on Cyanogen making a rom for 2 phones.
Can somebody please setup a workaround for this? The computer for CM is still the same. The DNS is just pointing it to the wrong computer. It still works for me. But I am using OpenDNS.
Scumbag
I’m sure Google is appreciative enough to donate a cm.google.com subdomain…right?
where anonymous when you need them
What a dick move !
How can this creep be completely anonymous?
He’s not: https://twitter.com/MrADeveci/status/268824137638744065
He’s not. His name & AKA are posted in here & everywhere else.
Can we get the guy’s email address or anything? Just for fun…
Not that Cyanogen should have let someone handle their domain, but this guy is going to have a hell of a time the next few weeks as hackers destroy this life heh.
https://twitter.com/MrADeveci/status/268824137638744065
Angering a community with a high concentration of proficient computer users …
Whether it’s justified or not, I don’t see this ending well.
Google…where are you?
Why don’t they contact Google and see if they will supply them with a domain?
Not sure if any of the cyanogen mod guys read this, but I just registered cyanogen-mod.com and would transfer this domain to them for free if they want. Let me know, dustin.beare@gmail.com
You may want to state your intentions somewhere on your site. That way if someone else tries to look up your domain with similar intentions they don’t try and register their own. That is awesome though.
Just did so. I’m not a web guy, I’m a network engineer. But I have enjoyed the CM guys since I bought my Droid X. If they don’t want it, that’s fine, but I’d much rather give it away to them if it would help out at all.
you are an awesome dude. a true bro.
They already moved everything to cyanogenmod.org, so they probably don’t really need this. But that’s cool though.
You’re a good man, Dustin.
People like you that make this world a better place, cheers!
Who is this dude? Mr. Burns ?
Sarcasm? If he donated it, what gives him the right to ask for money now? Nothing. He knew what could happen…unless he’s an idiot…which is kinda obvious now from his childish behavior
It would have been one thing to ask for compensation for donating the domain. Instead he used the CM and Steve Kondik’s name to make money for himself. Then when called on it he asked for $10k. Big difference.
Wait domains cost money hmmm….
So who’s the ass who owns the domain? I’m sure there are a few out there who could make him have a bad day so to speak.
I’m down for taking up a collection so they can have their 10k and keep their site, that jerk shouldn’t be making them look bad, they’re a great team.
you would seriously pay some idiot like that 10k? its blackmail
This is a bit ridiculous. . . but why would someone NOT even on the team be allowed to hold on to something so important? They should have broken off this deal or bought out the domain a while ago. I understand these aren’t “For Profit” gigs…but yearly domain re-ups is pretty damn affordable and could have been made with donations no problem. I hope they get things sorted out.
….And this folks is why you always write up a contract no matter the kind of project. I know people hate the idea of it but there would have been legal recourse had they had something on paper.
I hate to say it, but you never, never, never allow your domain name to be under anyone elses control, seen this crap way too many times while I was still in the hosting business. When CM started getting bigger they should have ensured the domain account controls stayed with them, passwords, etc. It’s sad, hope they recover.
Greedy bastard.
Sounds like another one of those pathetic idiots like GeoHot.
Gotta figure they’ll give his name to “Anonymous” and that prick will have a few issues.
Unless “Anonymous” use iOS 🙂
I thought quite a few of Anonymous were busted in the sting operation by the FBI, not to long after the whole megaupload debacle, something like 30 of them got busted and a few were at the top, I could be wrong. But these were some bad eggs who were stealing Identities and transferring 100’s of K’s of dollars around.
hahahah
All you gotta do is post the dicks name… we’ll handle the rest…
J/k….
I can figure that out myself…
I kid, I kid… that is pretty messed up to do to CM though.
You mean Ahmet Deveci from London?
I can’t believe SatanR1 did this! That’s messed up!
Hard to believe the world couldn’t trust a guy with “Satan” in his handle. Just stating the obvious.
It’s sad to see something like this happen to a group of people that only wants to help the masses. Good luck to you, Cyanogenmod Team
dislike
Interesting. Cyanogenmod.com already redirects to Cyanogenmod.org. And a Google search for Cyanogenmod shows the .org at the top of the list.
Friends at Google perhaps?
For ghit and siggles, I tried Bing and Yahoo. Same results.
Not for me it doesn’t, it brings up a domain parking page. I’m even using Google’s DNS servers lol
It might take some time if it was just active. It has to go threw and update tables all over the internet. Possible that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean someone else can’t.
Very interesting.
That stinks big time! Does that loser domain owner work for Apple by any chance? Hope the CM team resolved this soon!
http://cybersquatting.com/index.php?page=legal-actions
Greed kills all good things
Well atleast the updates seem fine. CM 10 and the newest nightly work fine on the Nexus 7. Now they can just integrate 4.2 (once it works).
F**k that guy
terrible, just terrible…
what a bitch move. seriously.
This was his original offer for the domain name
Nope! here it is!
Boo! Know one knows that one!
That dude probably has an iphoney…
Keep us Posted!
You may want to make a note about cyanogenmod.org being the permanent new home regardless of what happens to the other domains
Once again, childish behavior strikes in the Android ROM community.
It’s like being on xda forums
Damn you, ghost of Steve Jobs!!!
Sounds like a bunch of bickering 16 yr old kids. Time to grow up.
Honestly, it sounds like a 3y/o throwing a tantrum. I haven’t followed the social media post of CM, so may be they are acting childish, but if not, I don’t see how the actions of one person should reflect on the CM developers.
Such a sad story. A shame people resort to such despicable acts.
what a d!ck
That’s what she said!
If the impersonating accusations are true, can’t criminal charges be filed against him?
very much so, especially due to the fact he told them he would use his falsified identity and power to take them offline, he was trying to hold the domain random basically and thats very clear, while this is not illegal necessarily, like you said he was impersonating and steeling someones identity. what makes this even worse for him is this all took place over the internet, most people assume that what they have done in private on the internet is actually private, all it takes is a warrant from the poliece and all a persons web traffic, activity, ect can be used as court evidence. the web is a dangerous place for both the good guys and the bad.
Yeah ok, go file a lawsuit and see if you can get a “warrant” for a person’s web traffic and activity.
he made a public statement saying he was committing identity fraud… It wouldn’t be hard.