If I were to create a startup incubator called "C Combinator," that would be as massive a ripoff as "cleantechnica.com" is.
Most people (myself included) don't know Latin. The number of people that know Latin probably outnumbers the number of people that have heard of Haskell Curry, but both cases are the same in a crucial respect: some guy sees an interesting name/domain, and creates a ripoff site that rides off of the trail blazed by the originator. The fact that they didn't translate "clean" into Latin makes this conclusion inescapable for me.
Here's the damage that the ripoff does: "Hmm - cleantechnica.com? That's probably a 'clean'-tech site made by the Arstechnica guys. I love Ars, so I'll go there and check it out." Suppose that cleantechnica.com puts up misinformation, which people attribute to Arstechnica, which causes people to reduce their visits to both sites - that's not good. True, not everyone will make that mistake. Arstechnica was there first, and the ripoff site should have to bear the costs of clearing up the confusion they've created.
Most people (myself included) don't know Latin. The number of people that know Latin probably outnumbers the number of people that have heard of Haskell Curry, but both cases are the same in a crucial respect: some guy sees an interesting name/domain, and creates a ripoff site that rides off of the trail blazed by the originator. The fact that they didn't translate "clean" into Latin makes this conclusion inescapable for me.
Here's the damage that the ripoff does: "Hmm - cleantechnica.com? That's probably a 'clean'-tech site made by the Arstechnica guys. I love Ars, so I'll go there and check it out." Suppose that cleantechnica.com puts up misinformation, which people attribute to Arstechnica, which causes people to reduce their visits to both sites - that's not good. True, not everyone will make that mistake. Arstechnica was there first, and the ripoff site should have to bear the costs of clearing up the confusion they've created.