Talk:Markmonitor

Who owns MarkMonitor?

The acquisition of MarkMonitor was announced on three different websites, but I don't see it here.

1. GlobeNewsWire announcement
2. OPS Security announcement
3. Clarivate anouncement

It seems to me that Clarivate sold MarkMonitor to OPS Security? Can we update this? I am new to editing.

Signed: GoranDuskic--GoranDuskic (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Look like garden variety spam registrar to me

Look at the domain names they are selling. Aren't they just a typical spammer registrar who has managed to get Wikipedia to advertise them as a real company? Certainly there seems to be a whole lot of "unsolicited bulk marketing" coming from those domains. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.111.132.30 (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

No, MarkMonitor works a lot with the media industry in protecting IP (especially since they acquired DtecNet). mpaa.org and motionpictures.org are both registered through them.
Here are some older articles discussing past activities that clearly differentiate them from a 'spammer registrar':

• https://torrentfreak.com/leading-anti-piracy-outfit-sold-to-us-fraud-and-brand-protection-firm-101214/
• https://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-defamation-110112/
• https://torrentfreak.com/isps-and-tracking-company-ready-to-start-six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-120928/

71.182.138.182 (talk) 17:20, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

A few clarifications/corrections

I would like to request the following corrections/clarifications. Mostly small things:

• In the Lead we have a list of areas where MarkMonitor conducts research (which includes counterfeiting) and a list of areas where MarkMonitor develops software (counterfeiting not included). It makes it sound like the company conducts research in areas it does not have products for. In practice the lists should both be identical (thus we should probably find a way to list the areas of interest only once and re-write it a bit to apply to its research and software).
• In the Infobox it says the Type is Private, but MarkMonitor itself is no longer private. Thomson Reuters is public, but I don't think it would be accurate to call MarkMonitor, which is a part of Thomson Reuters, itself public either. Maybe remove or find a different way to do it.
• The last sentence of the Research section makes it sound like Techdirt criticized MarkMonitor's research as a whole, but it was referring to a specific report from 2011, which found that counterfeit sites had 50 billion annual visitors.
• Under Corporate Structure it says MarkMonitor does Software Development out of Boise, Idaho, but what the source says is that they have a "domain development center" there.
• It says San Francisco is the "brand protection division" but this division does not exist from a corporate structure perspective. What the source says is that it "houses its brand protection solutions" (presumably meaning the brand protection software is developed there) and that this is in addition to other functions at the same location.

Let me know if there are any questions or ways I can help! Although I understand that editors with a COI often have a skewed perspective on "factual corrections," hopefully these are all appropriate. Cheers. CorporateM (Talk) 18:30, 31 May 2013 (UTC)  Done-- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:00, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

have las Vegas ,office, they track IP addresses via P2P uTorret script. look for copyrighted transfers, reports to cox communications for % restitution. search torrentfreak.com extratorrent.com for article.

tks for cleanup+format this(on mobiledevice~type blind) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.1.204 (talk) 06:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

External links

I just noticed the External links section does not have an official link to the company's main url: https://www.markmonitor.com/. Although it's somewhat redundant with the infobox, it seems to be the common format. I took a look at the guideline for adding official links into an External links section, but it does not seem to clearly establish whether an official link should be added or not. CorporateM (Talk) 03:44, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

My reading on WP:EL and MOS for infoboxes suggests that its OK for them to appear in both EL and the infobox, in fact, looking around WP its common practice. I'll add the link to EL.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:44, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Ooops, I added the official web page to EL but had to remove the other link to the MM reports as WP:EL says: "In the "External links" section, try to avoid separate links to multiple pages in the same website; instead, try to find an appropriate linking page within the site" -- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:53, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Meh, a decent portion of the article is on their research and a link to the sub-page that contains all the primary sources for this topic may be useful, even if sub-links are discouraged, but I don't think it's that important. The guide does say links to sub-pages are discouraged. CorporateM (Talk) 05:32, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The link to MM's self-reported research page is already included in the citation for the section of the article where the reports are discussed and WP:EL says that we shouldn't have links in the EL section for sources that are cited in the body of the article. So I think in this case it's clear, another link to the MM web site is not warranted in the EL section. Now... if another independent web site was to discuss or comment on or elaborate on MM's research, that would be a valid link to add, I think. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:39, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, good point - I didn't see citation #9 there, which is a much better place for it. CorporateM (Talk) 17:43, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Tags

I've asked Cantelope2 (user talk page) to specify what he/she feels needs to be fixed so we can discuss and address those issues and remove the tags.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 15:04, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I have summarized most of the quotes in the article and removed all the tags per WP:DRIVEBY as there has been no response from the editor who placed the tags and that editor has now been indef blocked from the project.[1]-- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:43, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Recent edit

@Mjb: I noticed you recently added a paragraph to the Products and services section that looks very neutral and well thought-out. However the sources appear to be almost exclusively primary sources. For example, this source says right on the front page that the report was commissioned by MarkMonitor's client and an advocacy organization, the Center for Copyright Information. This source appears to also be from an advocacy organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This source doesn't look great either, though I don't have much information about it. The only secondary source here does not appear to mention MarkMonitor at all.

Personally I have nothing against these organizations, their agenda, or even the practice of advocating for a cause, but I don't think they are reliable secondary sources and gives undue weight to a recent event. Disclosure: I have a COI/financial connection with MarkMonitor. CorporateM (Talk) 19:25, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

It sounds like you don't doubt the veracity of what I've added, and are just looking for some reasons to get rid of it? Or are you simply suggesting that better references would be preferred?

I'm not sure it's a problem. For example, the EFF source was used for a rather benign statement about what the Copyright Alert System (CAS) actually is, and the fact that MarkMonitor does the monitoring side of it. I don't think there's anything in that statement which is controversial, so it doesn't matter what source we use, as long as it has the relevant facts in it and doesn't overstate the certainty of whether infringement occurred and who did it (which does rule out some sources). I'm open to suggestions.

As for using a primary source for certain statements, this is quite acceptable as long as we are only paraphrasing and not synthesizing or drawing our own conclusions, and as long as the source is supporting a statement about what a primary source says. That is, we don't need to link to a reputable newspaper's account of what is in the publicly disclosed portions of the two reports, when those portions themselves are available to link to.

Anyway, I am trying to achieve two goals here. One is to mention MarkMonitor's major role in the CAS, because it doesn't make sense to have it in the CAS article but then have no mention of it in the MarkMonitor article. (And certainly, every MarkMonitor client isn't notable, but this one is, as it gets a fair amount of publicity, with MarkMonitor being named in some of it.) The other intent is to mention that MarkMonitor's internal processes and technology for implementing the CAS have been reviewed and that the reviews were what they were (in this case, favorable).

It would be suspicious if we only said MarkMonitor was favorably reviewed, when both reports noted room for improvement; we need to mention that as well, so I did, neutrally summarizing the primary sources as per the rationale above. Of course, due to the appearance of bias, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that one of the reviewers, which is also a partial source for the second review, was an RIAA lobbying firm. A citation is needed when making that RIAA connection to that firm. There's no need for that source to mention MarkMonitor.

The Center for Copyright Information (CCI) is indeed an advocacy organization, they're the coalition which hired MarkMonitor and created the CAS. Their own website is also the source which you said "doesn't look great either". They posted the Harbor Labs report's executive summary on their site (that's what we're linking to) and they notified TorrentFreak (pro-file-sharing news blog, an enemy they keep close) about it in August 2014. The CCI chose not to publicize the report by any other means, apparently. I don't know what better source could possibly be found, unless Harbor Labs posted it on their own site, but I don't think there's any reason to believe the CCI would post a false report. Well, now that I think about it, maybe they would, but only one that they doctored to make themselves—and MarkMonitor—look good, so I doubt you'd have a problem with that. :) —mjb (talk) 21:32, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Primary sources are not forbidden, but WP:WPNOTRS says secondary sources should be the primary basis of the article, whereas in this case an entire paragraph was added (about 20% of the entire page) on the basis of primary sources alone. I would appreciate it if in the future you did not make scoffing remarks whereby you are making assumptions about my editing agenda, such as you did by saying I would probably support a source "doctored" to make MarkMonitor look good. As stated in the original post, I do not contest the NPOV of the content, only the excessive use of primary sources to add excess weight to a recent event. CorporateM (Talk) 21:53, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

CorporateM asked me to comment here. Worth noting is that sometimes I agree with CorporateM, while sometimes I disagree with him quite forcefully. In this case, I agree. We should always strive to maximize our reliance on reliable, independent, secondary sources when building our content. That means that we should limit our reliance on primary sources to basic non-controversial facts. The date a company was founded, and the name of its current CEO, and the city where it is headquartered - those things come to mind. Advocacy groups of all types release "reports" and "studies" all the time. These become worthy of discussion in an encyclopedia when reliable, independent, secondary sources discuss them, and our job is to summarize what that type of sources say about those reports. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:16, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

@Cullen, I feel you're conflating the notability requirements—i.e., that a topic not be mentioned unless it is written about in a reliable secondary source—with the requirements that primary sources, when used, neither dominate an article (or section) nor be used in support of statements which analyze their content.

I'm fairly confident I can replace the EFF source in support of the statement describing the CAS & CCI and how they're related to MarkMonitor. As time permits, I'll work on that in the Copyright Alert System article and will replicate the changes here.

What remains, then, is your concern about the CCI being the publisher of both the Stroz Friedberg report and the followup document from Harbor Labs (that's the high-tech litigation consultancy; I wasn't sure it was necessary to mention them by name).

It seems you're not concerned that the authors of the documents are Stroz Friedberg and Harbor Labs, or that the CCI is who made the documents public, or the neutrality of how I've written about them.

Rather, if I understand correctly, you're concerned that the primary source can't be acknowledged at all because the source itself isn't notable, and perhaps also that I am the one who paraphrased the documents' content, rather than paraphrasing a reliable newspaper or scholarly journal's report paraphrasing that content. As for the source itself needing to be notable, I'm not sure that's always true. As I said, there is no better source to back up a quotation or neutral paraphrase about what a source says than the source itself, and that exact situation is why primary sources aren't entirely forbidden. In fact, we need primary sources for situations when third-party reports simply don't do a good job of summarizing neutrally. I see this a lot in articles about court cases and legislation...the actual legal documents are far more reliable as sources than third-party reports. It doesn't matter that the legal documents weren't mentioned by name or linked to in whatever third-party reports exist (if any); the primary sources were published, as in made public...they're a matter of public record. This situation is no different. In the Copyright Alert System article, I don't think there's any question about the notability of the role of MarkMonitor and the questions which were raised about Stroz Friedberg's review of MarkMonitor's system. Now, it's unfortunate that (apparently) the conclusion to that story, the Harbor Labs review, was only publicized on a biased news blog and its clones, but wouldn't it be irresponsible to use that as an excuse to omit all mention of it?

And as I was saying, follow a link from the Copyright Alert System article to this one, and you find there's no mention of the Copyright Alert System whatosever, nor of the reviews of MarkMonitor's system. I found that a little weird; I mean certainly there doesn't need to be as much detail about that stuff here, but...to have no mention at all? So I took care of it as minimally as possible; if people want to read more, they have links to the appropriate places, here and elsewhere.

@CorporateM, it sounds like the issue for you is not that primary sources are used where they are, but rather just that there's an unacceptable (to you) ratio of primary-source content to secondary/tertiary-sourced content, both within the paragraph and within the article as a whole.

For the article as a whole, of course it would be ideal to have, say, one simple sentence asserting a single fact rather than a paragraph consisting of two sentences containing roughly four facts/assertions, just so we could ensure that "most" of the article (I guess 80% isn't most) continues to rely on secondary sources. But above, I think I provided sufficient rationale for the volume of information, the content, and the appropriateness of using primary sources where they are used within the paragraph.

It isn't my fault that the rest of the article isn't very long, and thus is extraordinarily easy to throw "out of balance", both in terms of what types of sources are used and how much weight is given to a particular topic. This pair of sentences would barely be noticed in a longer corporate article like Apple Inc. (notwithstanding that article's many forks), so it seems the paragraph's size, on its own, isn't really the problem. It's also not my fault that MarkMonitor apparently tries to keep a low profile, thus making it difficult to expand the article with lots of notable, secondary-sourced content to "make room" for a proportionally small amount of primary-sourced content—not that I've gone looking for anything else yet.

I mean that's basically what you're saying, right? That is, if an article is not sufficiently lengthy and brimming with secondary-sourced content, then any primary-sourced content must be omitted entirely, no matter how reasonable it would otherwise be to include. So if we had, say, seven more paragraphs of corporate history, notable product/service info, and "old news" attributed to many secondary sources, then the newly added content would perhaps be acceptable...but since the article is only six paragraphs, there's just no room for it; those two sentences add too much weight to recent events, using too few secondary sources.

I just really don't think the intent of WP:PRIMARY is to prevent primary-sourced content from being added at all, or to enable low-profile corporations to keep the Wikipedia articles about themselves from containing "recent events". Presumably, the Copyright Alert System article is sufficiently long and secondary-sourced enough to support mentions of MarkMonitor and the primary-sourced reports in question, and I would argue that to be responsible, it must include such mentions. Yet it seems you are trying to use WP:PRIMARY to ward off a reciprocal mention here in the MarkMonitor article, based on a technicality that the MarkMonitor article hasn't been fleshed out enough to keep the source-type balance within Wikipedia's guidelines, although I'm not sure the amount of text added actually throws off the balance.

In your view, exactly how much more secondary/tertiary-sourced content the article needs before you'd say it has room enough for the paragraph in question? I'd be happy to research and add as much as needed, to the extent such content be found. So what's a good ratio? 90% secondary? 93.825%? —mjb (talk) 01:50, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I think you may have intended to ping myself and @Cullen328:? For future reference, this can be done using the code {{ping|username}}. The paragraph in question is currently 100% primary sources, so I agree that 90% secondary is a more appropriate ratio, though there is no firm rule. Infobox data can often be 100% primary and be appropriate. I disagree that this is not a good example of why primary sources are discouraged; preventing editors from assembling their own analysis is exactly why we insist on high quality secondary sources. Regarding the Copyright Alert System page, I noticed it also has a lot of content about MarkMonitor using primary sources, which is equally problematic. CorporateM (Talk) 03:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I do not care at all whether or not a source is notable in the sense of it being eligible for a Wikipedia article about the source itself. That is not my point. Instead, I care about whether the source is reliable and independent. And I care most of all, in this context, with whether or not the source is primary or secondary. We simply do not build articles based primarily on primary sources, but rather rely mainly on secondary sources. I am not saying that all primary sources must be excluded. Once notability has been established by significant coverage in reliable, independent, secondary sources, then a few basic noncontroversial facts can be cited to primary sources. But over-reliance on primary sources is a serious problem in an encyclopedia article, and an article of greatly reduced length is a more encyclopedic option, if secondary sources are sparse. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:06, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll be brief: really, what Cullen says. Encyclopedia. Secondary sourcing. Drmies (talk) 21:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

• I have removed the paragraph in question. Consensus here is clearly for doing so. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks @Crisco 1492:. BTW - there is also a lot of similar content on the Copyright Alert System page using the same sources. Doing a CNTRL-F for "MarkMonitor" makes it easy to find, if you have a minute to trim the primary sources there as well. Here Computerworld mentions that MarkMonitor is used by the Copyright Alert System, if anyone wants to mention it using a proper secondary source on both pages. CorporateM (Talk) 19:01, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

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