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Rec.humor.funny Threatened by MasterCard
MotyaKatz writes: "The last article in the rec.humor.funny newsgroup comes from the editor (aka moderator), Brad Templeton
himself. Amazingly, after two years, MasterCard decided that this joke violates their "priceless" trademark and requested its immediate removal. The reply of Mr. Templeton shows the sense of humor only the RHF editor can have!"
Templeton's response was right on target. But I can't help taking a crack at it:
Getting the idea that you should protect your brands on the internet: free.
Hiring firms to search out and police such "violations": $millions.
Getting slammed with negative publicity because you're sending out cease-and-desist letters like a bunch of idiots, which makes your customers think of your stupidity whenever they see your commercial: $millions more.
Learning from your mistakes the first time you make them: priceless.
There are some experiences that money can't buy. For every other mistake you make multiple times, firing the executive responsible is fun too.
Pans: $20
Piss: $1.50
Not having a pot to piss in: Priceless!
300 rounds of ammo: $105
Four ski masks: $48
One black trench coat: $130
Seeing the confused expression on your classmates' faces right before you blow their heads off--priceless.
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's MasterCard.
Q. What's the difference between a black man and a wristwatch?
A. A wristwatch makes a ticking sound!
Q. What do you call a black man with a small bag of flour?
A. HEN-ry WHITE-man!
Q. How many black women does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Three!!
Q. What did the black guy say to the white guy?
A. Bring it on down, wide-boy!
Q. What did the white guy say to the black guy?
A. Yo what's up my homey!
Q. What is the difference between a black baby and a tree?
A. The tree isn't black (with minor exceptions due to geographic region and/or species of tree)
Read the letter to NetFunny.Com? There's a phone number at the bottom. Shouldn't we take the time to call up Mastercard's representative, and thank them for the extra dose of humor at the expense of his client? That threating letter had me rolling! (I'm surprised he didn't used terms like "similarly confusing" and such.)
Stop assuming with impunity.
Be sure to play, "Like a Suegeon", "Yoda", "Another One Rides the Bus", and "This song is Just Six Words Long", for him.
See? Simple legal precedent.
And since court costs, and time off work in the US are typically not recoverable, it doesn't matter if you are "right". You have already lost because the lawsuit itself is a form of punishment. So you will roll over and accept any "settlement" bone they throw at you which builds up case law and precedent for the megacorp to sue the next little guy. You help hurt the next little guy too in this vicious cycle. Or...
However, you could burst into MC headquarters with an Uzi and blow away 3 security guards, the front desk receptionist, the company president and half of the board members, and you win, bacuase even if you're killed or jailed, you killed many more of them. Thus, you win. An anti-individual legal system is encouraging this behaviour more and more as is evidenced by the rise of these types of shootings taking place.
As for Columbine, what schools do anything about bullying? The shooting is a result of such inaction.
Satire, discussion, educational uses, comedy, are all legitimate uses of anything copyrighted.
That's not right. The most widely-used test in court to figure out if some action falls under the "fair use defense" (you might notice I wrote defense, not right - though I think fair use should be a right) is whether or not it obviates somebody's need to buy a complete ligitimate copy of the work itself or a license to it. You can't legally quote an entire newspaper article from the New York Times as part of a satirical work. You can't legally copy entire chapters from textbooks and hand them out in class.
By the way, the problem is with a trademark, not a copyright. There is a fair use defense in trademark law as well, and I think these people have a strong one - mostly because they're not bootstrapping with Mastercard's trademark. (As in, they're not trying to start up a new company or product with a "confusingly similar" name or some other sort of nonsense.) However, the lawyers know that Mastercard has an interest in keeping a positive image around the Mastercard brand, so they send out nastygrams. It costs them nearly nothing, it's billable, and, if they ever went to court over it, they'd be well paid.
Unfortunately, that's how the system works.
All the rest are belong to MasterCard.
What about places like this, who have exactly the same content, to a far less tasteful degree (yup, less tasteful than columbine jokes) and far more of it. Don't they deserve threatening letters as well?
Case in point: When Al wrote his first Star Wars parody, "Yoda" (parody of The Kinks' "Lola"), he managed to get permission from Lucasfilm, but he asked the publishing company controlling the rights to "Lola" for permission first, and they turned him down. Some time later, Al ran into Ray Davies, and asked him why he'd been turned down. It turned out Davies hadn't even been asked. Naturally, being a nice guy himself, Davies helped Al get the rights issue straightened out, and "Yoda" was finally released on Al's Dare To Be Stupid album. Since then, Al has always tried to go to the original songwriters to ask permission, even, in one well-known instance, contacting Kurt Cobain on the set of Saturday Night Live (through his friend Victoria Jackson) for permission to do "Smells Like Nirvana." (Cobain agreed, then asked, "Wait a minute...is this going to be about food?" Al assured him it wasn't.)
As for the "Amish Paradise" incident...Coolio isn't on the firmest moral ground himself, as he isn't really the original artist either; he borrowed the riffs and chorus of "Gangsta's Paradise" from Stevie Wonder's song "Pastime Paradise" (from the classic album Songs in the Key of Life). Still, yes, Al does feel bad about the whole incident, but there's no denying that "Amish Paradise" is a pretty damn funny song.
Al is not only a nice guy, but he's one of the more highly underrated comedic minds of our time, certainly the best known comedy musician of the modern era, and he sure looks a lot better since he got LASIK surgery and quit wearing those glasses all the time :-).
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Pick up Hustler magazine, look at the ad parodies. They happily insult all sorts of corporations and celebrities, every month, with fake ads. With impunity. Hustler is rich and could be sued for hundreds of millions, but isn't. That proves that their actions are protected.
The other point is this: Mastercard is not sending the letters because it wants to sue RHF, or because it is serious about making RHF cease and desist.
In other words, when they claim that Templeton violated various federal and state statutes, they are lying and deceiving in order to make him give up something of value (the posted joke). This is the definition of fraud.
For a large company like Mastercard, it is a worthwhile investment to have a staff of cubicled drones
It is a shitty investment. How many people cancelled their credit cards because MasterCard sued Nader over an ad parody, and lost? How many people will now think of Columbine everytime they see one of the priceless ads? It's amazine how much harm the cubicled drones did to the brand.
--
Even after fraud and bankruptcy losses, credit card lenders have the highest profit rates among all lenders. They want this bill because it increase those profits a bit more, and the GOP complies.
--
i think the point is that it *was* labled as satire, and that mastercard *doesn't* have a "pot to piss in".
:-) 'nuff said.
"I just want to say it's fecking great to be alive, and anyone who doesn't think so can fecking leave right now because this show is really gonna bum 'em out."
- Frank Zappa
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Here's a direct link to the Salon RealPlayer version (which I've just watched on Linux).
You can dowload a Linux version of RealPlayer Basic from here. Well, hopefully you can, assuming I've got the link right.
Pete.
Now that's interesting... The GOP recently pushed forward a bill that would make it harder for people declaring bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt.
Then to find that there is a direct connection between the GOP and Mastercard.
Well actually, not surprised. Just didn't realize the connection was so direct.
funny, i don't see UNIONS on that list...
where do you get a decent hooker for $200 in DC? I'd like to know, hehehe...
Hmm....
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
His UID is 149110. Numbers around there were handed out probably over a year ago. Until this story was posted, there was no reason to have an imposter BT account. Unless someone created this account a year ago for some reason, it's safe to assume it's the real BT.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Is Robert Selander. Chances are pretty good that robert.selander@mastercard.com is a valid address. Tell him how you feel.
Quake/first-person shooter maps based on actual floorplans of high schools or post offices or other such locations, in general, don't play well.
Good FPS maps have a "flow" to them where, in the natural progression of things, a player will encounter another player moving in another direction. This is why Quake's DM6 is so well-liked: Walkways cross over/under other walkways, where other players are likely to appear, affording lots of scoring opportunities.
Real-world architecture, by comparison, doesn't have this. Most of the space is consumed by rooms of various size, ususally with a single door. This means that another player isn't likely to be found inside, since the room doesn't lead anywhere. Players are always on the move, and won't walk into a dead-end unless there's a good reason. If you "force" people to enter the room by putting items inside, then the room becomes a camping site (just launch rockets at the only door and get dozens of cheap frags as people try to enter to collect the item). Very dull.
Unless the architect was unusually creative, most real-world buildings don't make good FPS maps. The only exceptions to this rule are shopping malls and amusement parks, where sculpting the flow of visitors past storefronts and attractions is actually a design goal.
If you're playing CounterStrike, however, all the bets are off, and real-world architecture tends to rule the day.
As I (dimly) recall, user-created maps for Duke Nukem 3D had an unusual leaning toward real-world and semi-real-world sites.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I think you posted under the wrong thread, dude.
The enemies of Democracy are
There's a fine line between humor and and outright poor taste.
There is, and thank God that you don't pick where that line is and that which side of the line a particular piece of parody is on has no impact on its legality.
The enemies of Democracy are
Not just you.
There's a lot of tragedy in this world. If you can't laugh about it, then how can you deal with it? It's a nice coping mechanism. People who can't laugh at tragedy have as their only recourse just not thinking about it, and I've never been fond of head-in-sand types of behavior.
I didn't find this funny when I read it, but that's because Mastercard slogan parodies were played out a long time ago. That, and I now associate Columbine with endless Katz articles and the mis-labeling of a clique of 20 rich kids as "outcasts".
The enemies of Democracy are
So you're saying that the school will be suing him too? When will it end!
You mean like this:
One honest day's work: $200.--
One microbrew: $1.--, plus deposit
One connection to the Internet: $7.--/month
Reading a 'Net story about another corporation full of overpaid, underbrained dweebs make fools of themselves: priceless.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I really like that quote. Did you put it together yourself, or is it from a movie? I'd like to give proper credit when I use it myself. :)
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
I wondered about that, too. Presumably, they meant "impugnity", but is that a word?
My
He doesn't HAVE to get permission. He DOES because he's a nice guy that doesn't want to offend the original artist.
There was a rather long segment in the Behind The Music show on him last year that went into the story behind Coolio not giving permission to spoof Gangster Paradise, but someone told Al that he HAD given permission. Al apologized several times, and said he would not have done it had he known.
However, even though it was known that Coolio didn't like it before the song (Amish Paradise) was released, they went ahead because they had already gone through the effort and money to produce it, and Coolio's permission is not needed
Yeah, but nobody going bankrupt owes Mastercard the money. The credit card issuers owe Mastercard, the people going bankrupt owe their card issuer. So M/C don't really care one way or the other.
~Cederic works for a Credit card firm, but doesn't know what he's talking about, and is in the Telco business area not the credit card area anyway
I think we are all missing the point. Copyright is not the issue here, but rather good taste. If such a sick parody is allowed to be made, what's next? It's not censorship to order the joke be stopped, it's responsible web hosting. I'm glad that someone is finally fighting for the children.
HAhahahahaha! Stop it! You're making my sides hurt!
But seriously, if you follow r.h.f, and I've been reading it for about ten years now, then you know that Brad has never shied away from "sick" humor -- or any other kind, for that matter. His only criteria for posts to r.h.f is that they should be funny. He's got a great sense of humor, and I'm glad to see him respond to MasterCard in such an appropriately funny manner. (And, BTW, it was Trademark infringement, not Copyright.)
Rec.humor.funny is one of the longstanding gems of the 'net. Long may it run!
--Jim
Mastercard's lawyers also know that sending off a bark letter when their client is offended is a slam dunk. It's cheap (for them), the hours are billable, and it's 100% within the law. Best case scenario, it could lead Mastercard to take rhf to court. Which would be lots and lots of billable hours.
Oh yeah...rights? Well, they're nice and all, but there's money to be made.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Interestingly, I knew some folks working for MasterCard, and they had a whole lot of fun passing around the, shall we say, questionable taste jpgs going around about black party dresses and doing the limbo etc, which were just as much infringers on this. Sadly, a jpg can't be traced to a specific person, so I guess the lawyers had to attack people who were more identifiable.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
That gives me indi _./*. gestion.
With that said, Mastercard probably could not bring a successful cause of action against RHF...
How the hell do you sue a USENET newsgroup?
Do you sue a moderator, who makes no claim of ownership over what gets posted? Do you sue every ISP who chooses to carry it? Do you sue every user who has chosen to read it?
I can see the idea behind suing the author, and maybe even the moderator, but a newsgroup?
But look at all the confusion you have caused in the marketplace. I meant to apply for a MasterCard, and accidently subscribed to rec.humor.funny instead. Now do you see the danger of infringing on their trademark?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Actually, rec.humor.funny has been around since the dawn of time. Or at least the dawn of usenet.
Yeah, pretty much the rest aren't funny. Rec.humor.funny is the only moderated ones, the rest are just massive flamefests. Or, they were anyway.
And I think this templeton guy has been moderating it for years.
rocketscientist.
It wasn't an automatically generated cease and desist. If you read the cease and desist letter carefully, you would have seen that the author had specifically mentioned the poor taste of the Columbine material.
Correction: The Problem *IS* Trademark Law. It gives monopolies and monopolies are bad. This is slashdot, remember? (sarcasm meant, but point is still serious)
-=Gargoyle_sNake
-=-=-=-
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So copyright law allows parody, but what the hell is a service mark?
are we allowed to parody those?
and trademarks?
-- Spankmeister General
There is a HUGE difference between being "unhappy" about something and sending a cease and desist letter.
You may as well send your bus driver a cease and desist note ever time he demands exact change.
768kb DSL link: $79.95/mo plus tax.
Login to slashdot: $free
Seeing big companies like Microsoft and Mastercard (and the Church of Scientology) get their asses kicked by the likes of Taco and Templeton:
PRICELESS
There's some news money can't buy. For everything else, there's Slashdot. :)
Actually, I'm not confusing copyright law and plagiarism at all. Your original post said copying is okay if it's for educational purposes and that simply isn't true from a legal standpoint, whatever 'rules' you believe exist about research and paper writing.
Sure you can cite and quote pieces of a copyrighted work in your thesis or term paper, just as I could do so in a newspaper article or a website. that's 'fair use' and applies if you're using excerpts for use as examples or references.
There are legal rules for what constitutes fair use, limiting you from copying an entire document, or selling excerpts without added value. These rules don't have anything to do with whether the document or individual is associated with an educational institution. They don't have any greater right under the law to bypass copyright.
And just to be clear, even though it happens all the time, it's not legal for a teacher to photocopy a chapter of a book for all their students without written permission from, and/or compensation to, the copyright holder.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
Actually, you're not quite right. Readers are very often collections of excerpts from books, be they novels, textbooks, whatever. These excerpts, like the chapter photocopied by a teacher for their students, are protected by copyright law.
Publishers rarely make an issue of it, but a teacher photocopying just those chapters of a textbook as are relevant to their lesson plan and distributing them to their students, are just as much in violation of copyright law as I would be if I posted the first chapter of the latest Neal Stephenson novel on my website.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
Excerpt from the same document:
Actually, Congress had quite a bit more to say in the notes portion of the same 1976 Copyright Act (summarized version):
As you can see, 17.107 is a starting point, from which many interpretations can be made. Since I no longer have access to Lexis-Nexis I can't pop up court cases, but citing 107 as a blanket permission for classroom use is not an accurate representation of the law in practice.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
'educational use' is not a legitimate use of 'anything copyrighted'.
Funny thing, I'm not allowed to go photocopy textbooks or swipe stat software from campus computers for homework.
Why do you think readers cost so much? It's not for the photocopying and binding, it's for the copyright royalties.
IANAL, but I know that much.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
There should be some law against knowingly threatening legal harassment.
This is all funny.. but there is absolutely *no way* any competent lawyer (and we can only assume mastercard has good lawyers) would even suggest that a trademark suit would be successful here. Given that, is the lawyer not fraudulently claiming, on his knowledge as a lawyer, that a common non-lawyer citizen is breaking the law?
How nice of them to trademark the misspelling "CAN?T" and leave the proper "CAN'T" unencumbered.
This isn't funny at all.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
There's a verb 'to impugn' (pron. imp-yew-n) meaning 'to denigrate, to cast aspersions upon' (or 'to slag off' if you want a more colloquial interpretation) but I don't think anything is being impugned here.
I honestly don't know what they meant.
--
Dunx
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
You may well be right that most people don't know what the word means; the author of the C&D letter, for one.
--
Dunx
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
--
Dunx
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
When the law and precedent are clearly on your side to not fight is the wrong thing to do. Mastercard's lawyers are being bullies, and they clearly have nothing better to do than smear the name of a huge corporation by acting like school-yard thugs. I think the moderator's response on r.h.f. was spot on and maybe the lawyers will get it through their slime-oozing minds that by attacking a two-year-old joke (which I thought squandered the use of "priceless" in a completely unfunny way... I'm pretty tolerant of offensive material if it's funny, but this just struck me as weak and stale) they are only causing themselves and their client harm in the minds of people who are just wacky enough to do things like cancel their credit cards (which I've considered), otherwise the real joke is on them.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Of course there is, Baker and Botts is Jim Baker's Dad's lawfirm, yep, THAT Jim Baker, GW's trusty sidekick during the FL spin sessions...
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Yea, I noticed that too. Surely you (as a young conservative) have a great resource to back up your YELLING.
--
+&x
Check out some of Bush's other priorities.
--
+&x
Add to this the concept that if you make enough laws, then everyone is a criminal, and you can see how we have appointed ourselves tyrants to rule over us.
I get upset when I hear the media crow about how "Congress is at an impasse" and "can't get anything done." In my opinion, they've done enough. I don't want them doing anymore. I'd like to see quite a bit of what they have done, undone. I'd like to see the air conditioners removed from Congressional buildings so that they would all go home in the summer like they did before the 1940's. Then they would have to live like normal citizens and could become criminals too.
Note than in history, when a king wanted to consolidate his power, he would remove the aristocracy from the countryside and make them all live close to him. Notice where all the congressional 'delegates' now live.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
A simple Google search should be enough to convince any judge that the trademarked phrases have been hopelessly diluted and absorbed into mainstream culture. It is far too late for Mastercard to go around trying to protect their trademark.
What do I recommend?
Kleenex : $2
Watching a major corporation engage in a humorous campaign of self destruction: Priceless.
It's not. A good definition of comedy/tragedy (I forget whose definition):
Tragedy is when I stub my toe.
Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and break your leg.
itachi
Uh, that would be statute, not statue.
Main Entry: statute
Pronunciation: 'sta-(")chüt, -ch&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French statut, from Late Latin statutum law, regulation, from Latin, neuter of statutus, past participle of statuere to set up, station, from status position, state
Date: 14th century
1 : a law enacted by the legislative branch of a government
2 : an act of a corporation or of its founder intended as a permanent rule
3 : an international instrument setting up an agency and regulating its scope or authority
Back in the day, there was net.funny.
After The Great Renaming (which was just before I came into the picture), it became rec.humor.
rec.humor was unmoderated, and as such had as much noise as any unmoderated group.
rec.humor.funny was a moderated forum where jokes were reviewed, catagorized, and some were approved for posting.
The nice thing was that it was all pretty even handed. There were such catagories as "smirk", "chuckle", "sick" and so on. If you sent in something, and it wasn't just dumb, there was a good chance it would show up.
Ah, for the yesterdays of Usenet....
I was horrified by original "joke". Maybe humor can be defined as when somebody else falls, but I don't believe that it is funny to parody providing the tools to destroy somebody else's life.
And with this is where I think MasterCard should have approached RHF. Instead of lawyers initially quoting registered marks and stating copyright law, wouldn't it have been more effective if a MasterCard executive wrote the email saying that they were upset at the suggestion that MC is a necessary element to a massacre?
I was shocked by the virtually unanimous support for RHF in this case (little web guy against multinational lawyers). How many people would be still be against MC if they had emphasized they did not want their product associated with tragedies like Columbine instead of initially quoting copyright law?
Maybe this is a case where the human element could generate more sympathy for the company.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Accidently bombed the Chinese Embassy??? I don't think so - it was probably deliberate. Remember, this embassy was bombed just two days after the stealth bomber was brought down. There is a very high probability that the stealth bomber was in the embassy when it was bombed, and that the bombing was done to destroy the plane.
That was a real live mistake made by a real live human being. I'll take credit (or the blame) for that mistake because I am a human being and have a moral sense. MS OTOH will do no such thing.
War is necrophilia.
most likely it's an artifact of frontpage. Frontpage makes it's authors look like morons by trying to get fancy with apostrophes. That's why there is the demoronizer
War is necrophilia.
Not to mention the april 1st posting: www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.html
Ho Hum.
--- there's no there there.
Yes, you do need to demonstrate that you've made efforts to protect your mark if you don't want to lose it. However, trademark laws are designed to prevent consumer confusion. Seeing that joke on the rec.humor.funny site is not likely to cause anyone to think that Mastercard wrote it.
Under European law you cannot buy alcohol on credit.
This is just plain wrong.
Like millions of Europeans, I have bought alochol many times on plastic in many countries in Europe, including the Republic of Ireland, including using Access (nka MasterCard).
Which country in Europe disallows alcohol sales on plastic?
This is the now generation, and for most /. readers, this is the USA, the home of consumerism. Save up? Get real, dude.
As for the economy, consumer spending generally helps things along; the only problems arise if there's a lot of bad debt generated. I think most countries have bad debt from consumers under control.
I really like the MasterCard add that was at the bottom of the page when I viewed it. It's a LinkExchange banner:)
They may be, but should they claim to be Funny(tm), they will be notified by Mr. Templeton that he is the sole owner of that mark.
--
Of course, being the G that he is, he could always arrange a driveby ;-)
j/k
(and I do)
MasterCard had better not try take this to court.
Brad is the Chairman of the board of the EFF, and if he needed a war chest to fight them, he could raise it with a few phone calls.
Way to go, Brad!
Knowing that a bunch of corporate drones have their panties in a bunch because you didn't just fold up and do what they said: Priceless.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
are probably more interested in showing a practice of defending
their TM's vigorously.
But I disagree that the "Flynt movie had an inordinate and unfortunate
impact on the American public." Rights are not static -- they evolve
over time. Unused rights wither, new rights grow. Look at the Miranda
Rights. Even British crooks are asking for their phone calls and
lawyers, even though they have no such rights under UK law. And
they are getting them, because the UK police cannot refuse everyone.
Democracy is a very powerful institution. It can certainly overpower
law. Once a significant fraction of the population start doing
something, the law simply cannot stop them. This is called civil disobedience, and generally results in laws being changed [sodomy].
Sorry, your logic doesn't work, but I too would love to see some VISA parodies like you talk about.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Hey! Slashdot Admins, or whatever you call yourselves. Can we please have better titles for the news stories??? Please? When I first read this one, I thought MasterCard was threatening the Usenet newsgroup. No, they're threatening some dude. Stop confusing me and make sure the titles actually reflect the facts of the story. Thanks!
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Of course, Al never mentioned that the whole idea for "Amish Paradise" came from a morning radio show out of Indianapolis (Bob & Tom) that had a long standing joke band called The Electric Amish...one day they interviewed Weird Al and he heard one of the EA songs and commented how funny it was...about a month later, here is "Amish Paradise" (using many of the same bits from the EA song) and Al has yet to give any credit to The Bob & Tom Show producers. I guess he only asks for permission/gives credit for the music, not the content.
Well, i don't think this "throwing money at something to make it valuable" attitude with trademarks makes not much sense, where it not for laws that made it so. I believe MasterCard is in fact very happy to see so many "priceless" jokes and to see their name under them. So if they have all those cubicled attorneys bullying people all over the world with cease and desist letters they deserve to be laughed at. If they loose face because the jokes now make ridicule of themselves they simply deserve it.
I'm sorry, but i don't think allowing big companies to send those letters without risking anything should be part of a good legal system. If i bully someone around on the street he can sue me, but if a 3rd grade attorney sends me threatening letters in the name of some company i can't do a thing. Oh wait, i can, i can publish it and damage the companys reputation that way. And that's exactly what happened.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
-- The First Amendment to the US Constitution
Maybe the greedy bastards over at Ma$terCard should watch The People vs. Larry Flint.
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
Selling out to Nike, by wearing their merchandise: $10 - $200 /. and not doing anything about it: priceless
Helping destroy small business, by shopping at Starbucks, Wal*Mart, and Best Buy: $200 - $1000
Constantly bitching about corporate america on
<RANT>
CUT UP YOUR FSCKing MASTERCARDS, HELL CUT UP ALL YOUR CREDIT CARDS.
TURN OFF YOUR TV
DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH PLACES THAT DO BUSINESS BADLY.
STARBUCKS == MICROSOFT
BEST BUY == MICROSOFT
WAL*MART == MICROSOFT
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME
KEEP YOUR MONEY IN YOUR COMMUNITY!
AND FSCK's SAKE VOTE!
</RANT>
this rant is brought to you buy the letter ý and the number ½.
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
Mastercard has the lead behind those Bank Cards that you can use at any store. Use it like a Credit Card, withdraw from your ATM account. No debt. If you overdraw, which the cards will let you do without complaint, the bank charges you, and makes money.
I have three of those Bank Cards (I'm transitioning from Wells Fargo evil bank to a nice Credit Union), from three different banks, both work through the Mastercard system.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
However, soon after Mastercard brought their lawsuit, Jay Leno actually had Nader on the Tonight Show, and they showed the ad for the audience. Jay Leno understands what parody is.
You can see the advert at VoteNader.org.
Unfortunately, you need Quicktime to view this ad. Feh!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I would say it is a joke, nothing more.
The reply is dated April, 1 (as seen in the URL).
Err., no. The URL has the year (2001, in a non-Y2K compliant format), and the month (April). The Index page shows that the reply was posted on the same day that Master Card letter was received, April 9, 2001.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this is for real. And a good reason why Shakespeare had it right when he said that the first thing that should be done is to kill all the lawyers.
Although there are a number of warnings I fail to see how the parody is very offensive. Anyone else feel this way or have I been completely desensitized by the media?
I thought that the joke is close to a disater/tragedy classic. Who the hell uses Mastercard anyway? I get so many offers for "pre-approved" credit cards it's silly. To all credit card marketeers out there: get a grip, I really don't need $4,000,000 dollars worth of credit cards. One is enough. The balance? Maybe $200. The limit? $10,000. That's enough to buy a few toys with, but I prefer to save. Think about it. I saw an article today about how our economy might be getting hurt by all the credit cards out there and the ways that people misuse them. Whatever happened to the day when a person saved up for something?
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Just need to change one word, and it'll fit in with the context nicely:
"There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else there's Blastercard"
MC wouldn't be able to do anything as in their C&D letter, "TASTTMCB.FEET" is not one of their trademarks. Adding MasterCard to the end is. Which means that anyone can say "There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else there's x", where x is any noun, except MasterCard.
--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
But in the context of the parody (Columbine), "BlasterCard" is a much more appropriate substitute.
--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
It has always been my personal opinion that, since the laws are WRITTEN by lawyers, PROSECUTED by lawyers, DEFENDED by lawyers, and finally offenses are JUDGED by lawyers, that it is in their best interest to make laws that laypeople cannot understand. That way, lawyers are then also needed to INTERPRET/TRANSLATE the laws.
Hell, when a lawyer 'mis-behaves', the 'checks-and-balances system' is STAFFED with lawyers.
Yet, in the computing industry, we get bashed because things are not 'User Friendly' enough, and Linux/UNIX gets bashed because 'you need to know computers to use it'.
The difference is, in computers, you still have to convince people to BUY them. We don't have that option on OBEYING the laws.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Now that's interesting... The GOP recently pushed forward a bill that would make it harder for people declaring bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt.
That's funny. You may want to check with one of the 36 Democrats who voted for that bill about the Republican's ethical issues.
Methinks that they take the word MASTER too seriously.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Dial up account: $10/month
/. article appears: 4 hours.
Perl Script to auto post when a new
The satisfaction of getting your ASCII Goatse.cx picture posted: Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's CowboyNeal.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
<i>
"There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else there's Blastercard"
</i>
<p>
Actually, make that MasterCRUD. The words should start with the same letters as much as possible, and by using words such as as 'crud' to describe their product, it would be a good way to hit back at the nitpickers.
>> PeptoBismol can actually trademark their color of pink!
I'm assuming this was just a for-instance, since there are numerous store-brand and off-brand stomach medicines that are pink... I think I have a bottle of Pink Bismuth in my medicine cabinet atm.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Please mod the parent up. The story the link links to is absolutely "PRICELESS".
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Are they absolutely sure it's a real cease and desist? Seems like this guy would be a prime target for a practical joke...
....
well the Friday the 13th drop dead date might be a clue
Yeah, and the punchline would be delivered to the pranksters in the form of a threatening letter from the real Mastercard lawyers, ordering a cease and desist of all attempts to falsely represent Mastercard litigation policy.
No sig.
Ahhh, the bitter taste of irony.
it's -> it is
its -> belonging to it.
Frontpage makes its authors look like morons.
Frontpage does not make it is authors look like morons.
--
If you don't rigorously enforce/protect your trademarks every time there's a possible infringement, the trademarks themselves can and will be wiped out.
This is very different from patent law, where a patent may be left idle. The patent holder can selectively choose to defend, license or ignore those who are possibly infringing. (It is for this reason that I am not against patents themselves, but against those patent bullies who find new revenue sources in the courtroom.)
"If you don't agree with the law, fix it." Explore the ways that trademark law can be fixed, and contact your local government official.
[
I seem to remember that Weird Al has to get permission to do things like the star wars version of American Pie, but does not to do things like Fat.
The reason being that Fat is a parody of Michael Jackson's Bad song and video, but the star wars song (don't know real name) is not a parody of Don McLean's American Pie, but just uses that song to parody Star Wars.
From this, MasterCard would have a much tougher time suing over Templeton's response (which is using MasterCard's marketting strategy to parody MasterCard's actions) than they would suing over the initial joke (which used MasterCard's marketing strategy to parody Columbine).
Remember:
system: $1000
cable modem: $45/month
watching jackasses lose their shirts after following legal advice on slashdot: priceless
...Satire is forbidden under the DMCA? After satire, there's little that isn't in there. All it'll take is a few very well done RIAA/MPAA jokes to erode the credibility of the organizations (not that they don't do that well enough on their own) and their shiny, expensive new laws. Jokes, of course, are a way of circumventing the content and meaning of the protected piece. Whether it's Columbine or playing Marco-Polo with your old pals, you know it's hinting at MasterCard one way or the other. One is hinting in the way intended and sanctioned by the 'content creator', the other is an illegal, undesireable hinting completely at odds with the way the origonal creators intended.
Oh Well...
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Are they absolutely sure it's a real cease and desist?
/. from bashing Mastercard anyway. :-)
Seems like this guy would be a prime target for a practical joke...
I would say it is a joke, nothing more.
The reply is dated April, 1 (as seen in the URL).
Where the letter is posted, the title bar of my browser reads, "April 3, 2001". And the letter itself is dated April 9, 2001.
So basically, he replied to the letter on April 1, posted the letter on April 3, and was sent the letter on April 9. Not a very good practical joke.
But that won't stop anyone on
Are they absolutely sure it's a real cease and desist?
Seems like this guy would be a prime target for a practical joke...
A house full of new furniture: $15,000.
Porche: $60,000.
Fucking over a credit card company you know is full of assholes to the tune of $85,000 when you declare chapter 7 bankruptcy: Priceless.
There are some things in this world that won't get you sued. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Every time there's a Slashdot story discussing a legal issue, one or more lawyers post and make the point that laypeople misunderstand the law, or often, that laypeople shouldn't be discussing legal issues in a public forum because they'll inevitably get everything wrong. And it's good that lawyers point this out, because the sad truth is that we *do* seem to get most things wrong.
There's the real problem - laypeople are expected to obey the law in a society whose laws we can't hope to understand. Shall we all hire lawyers to accompany us through life to make sure we don't accidentally break the law? I'm not trolling - it's really a serious problem, especially for people on Slashdot, who tend to be involved in Internet endeavors where the chance for accidentally committing IP infringement - and getting "caught" - is high. As you might suspect from my name, "plagiarist," I too have had these problems.
The effect of this is that people with lots of access to lawyers (i.e. corporations) have a very effective hegemony in regards to preventing the rest of us from speaking negatively against them. In other words, many people dare not speak out by parodying a corporation or otherwise speaking critically of them, for fear that a) "Big Brother is Watching," b) "I am Not a Lawyer, so I don't know what's protected and what isn't" and c) "therefore I'd better speak softly - and drop the big stick."
That's what I see as the real problem. Then again, IANAL.
Back in the late 70s, Frank Herbert wrote a book called "The Dosadi Experiment" in which he made some keen observations about our legal system. Sadly, it is out of print.
Are you serious? Too bad, that was always one of his better ones IMHO.
Speaking of parodies: I always thought Reeses should do a comercial "How a cocain addict eats a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup." And then he chops it up real small and snorts it in with a straw. That would have been priceless... Komi
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
Do you really think that the average member of the public, upon seeing the Mastercard Columbine parody on netfunny.com, would actually believe that Mastercard was behind it?!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
F-17 Stealth fighter jet: $30,000,000
Guided smart bomb: $1,000,000
2,000 pounds of high-grade jet fuel: $30,000
Accurate map of downtown Belgrade: Priceless
This joke was around right after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. I thought it was an efficient use of humor.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Actually, this sort of knee jerk response is exactly what overloads our legal system. Imagine this scenario- VP of marketing at mastercard emails the site owner expressing his displeasure at the use of the mastercard name in reference to columbine and their trademarks. Fast forward a couple emails, and a mutually agreeable compromise is reached- perhaps removing the tag line at the end as Databass suggested. Of course this is assuming the corporate thugs at mastercard are mature enough to accept a little bit of parodying of their marketing campaigns.
I agree that it is important to bring to light the values that are being implied by the Mastercard commercial (consumerism is good, money == happiness, materialism is a source of happiness, etc) but I don't think that it should be done at the expense of children who did not deserve to lose their lives. Yes, satire is very insightful, and I think this parody shatters the image that mastercard is trying to build, but it is also very unfortunate and disrespectful that it has to be done at the cost of making fun these victims. Just imagine how their parents feel. Or how the families in Oklahoma would feel if it had been talking about the priceless expressions on the vicitms faces as the building blew up on them. Its so easy to abstract this issue away from what really happened -- this article was posted because of free speech and parody vs. copyright blah blah blah. Typical slashdot fare to talk about the technicalities of how something occured rather than dealing with what is important. Nevermind that these CHILDREN are DEAD. Keep posting it! It's free speech.
Not quite. Brad's response included:
The Letter came from Baker Botts, a huge Texas-based law firm. (Y'all remember GWB's front man, James Baker, don't you?) No way they scratch for $500, probably the letter cost more like $5,000.
Basically what you are saying (and I'm not denying) that companies have a bunch of legal thugs on staff, and that they run around making baseless legal threats against people.
This is just a legalistic form of roughing people up.
A gun can be used in self defense, or to assault. So can the legal system. Unfortunately, we don't prosecute people for making legal threats, only physical threats.
i think those people at mastercard are fools. think of the untapped resource here! ... they say copywrite violation, i'd say it's a goddamn good advertisement for mastercard.
Keep reading here, those courts need lots of help.
Now for logic. Mean what you say and say what you mean. This would be much easier for big companies if they did not think they could OWN common and popularly used phrases like "priceless". Without such arrogance there would be no need for drones and their pointless missives to unreal infringers of property that requires very little intelect to steal from the public. This arrogance is compounded when people like you, impressed by the magnitude and costs of the whole insane chase, conclude that the property in question must be real because fools have spent so much defending it. Behavior like this gives the whole concept of intelectual property and all of it's participents (especially you!) a bad name.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That's it! We are laughing at this stupid waste of money! Most people here do not think such an abuse of email and the law is a good business practice to be implemented by "far better attorneys" aka clueless corporate twits. They may want people to roll over, for fear of not knowing any better, but what they've got is this burst of laughter in their face.
Now get back to droning! If your PHB sees this he might, just might, UNDERSTAND and fire the whole cubicle floor of you loosers. If he really gets it, he might quit spending tons of money on adverts and drop rates to drum up business. Duh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Looks like they have "Apollo", "Apollo I & design" and "Apollo II" trademarked as well. Watch out NASA, UPS is moving in:
"Well sir, our typical ground rate is $3.50, our overnight is $9 per pound, and we're having a special this week on our 'escaping earth's gravity' rate: only $2,543,789"
-psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
The only one who have a right to fight for the children are the parents of those children.
Oh and BTW about your sig. If God DIDN'T intend for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the power to invent flight.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Back to the children real quick. Who defines what abuse is? I'm not talking about physical injury. If I decide as a parent that my child should be allowed to wath sex and violence, that's my right as a parent. It's an ethical decision that I make. And it's not for anyone else to butt in.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Did anybody notice that their deadline for compliance is Friday The 13'th. They may not come after him with guns blazing (bad PR), but expect them come out with the blades drawn.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Brad .. Wins </voice>
How much fun it is to watch two idiots above the +1 bonus threshold argue... It really puts some spark in my mouse wheel...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Should it, now? How interesting that you should say so....
Disrespect to whom? MasterCard? I don't believe they're paying MY salary!
The original joke was about as tasteful as distilled water and not entirely funny. However, if tastelessness were to be made criminal, Yoko Ono would have been behind bars years ago.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
--
--
I like to watch.
FAX 212.705.5020
russell.falconer@bakerbotts.com
30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA 44TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Dear Mr. Falconer,
This letter is in response to your "cease and desist" letter to Mr. Templeton dated April 9, 2001.
I am neither associated with the netfunny.com web site nor do I read its associated newsgroup rec.humor.funny. While I personally know Mr. Templeton and can vouch for his outstanding commitment to 1st amendment principles; I alone am writing the letter.
I am very familiar with the technology used over Usenet and on the web, having been one of many people who helped in its creation. I am very proud of role that this technology has played in the exercise of free expression throughout the Internet. While I do not always agree with the content, I do defend their right of free expression.
From the tone of your letter your client (MasterCard International) appears to take their issue seriously, otherwise they would not have instructed you to submit such a letter and incur the legal costs of its processing. I want you and your client to understand that I take threats to the freedom of expression seriously as well.
We all have certain rights. However you and your client apparently believe you have the right to intimidate others who are simply exercising their own constitutionally protected rights. The exercise of rights sometimes comes with consequences: This letter is one of YOUR consequences. I hereby am "creasing and desisting" the use your client's services until such time as you retract the legal threats made in the above-mentioned letter.
The lack of new purchases from my account may do little to persuade your client from their present course of action. However through the use of the same technology that you and your client are attacking, I may be able to encourage others to do the same.
Signed,
Landon Curt Noll
Sunnyvale, CA
cc: Master Card International /.
+1 914.249.2000
Fax: 202.414.8010 (public affairs)
cc:
chongo (was here)
chongo (was here)
People do that now. They're called Mary Kay consultants.
--
Back in the late 70s, Frank Herbert wrote a book called "The Dosadi Experiment" in which he made some keen observations about our legal system. Sadly, it is out of print. I quote now from p. 336 of the Ace paperback edition:
"ConSentient Law always makes aristocrats of its practitioners. Gowachin Law stands beneath that pretension. Gowachin Law asks: `Who knows the people? Only such a one is fit to judge in the Courtarena..."
This is what I see as the real problem. The legal profession has a strong self-interest in making the law as burdensome and as complicated as possible. That way, people must consult an attorney much more frequently than they otherwise might, which increases their power, status, wealth and influence in our society.
If the parody is completely unbelievable, then there isn't room for the company to win.
Years ago...
National Lampoon did an ad with a picture of a volkswagon floating in water. The caption said, "If Ted Kennedy had been driving a volkswagon, he would be president now."
Enough people believed it that National Lampoon got into trouble. Not sure how much trouble. The strange thing is that there were people who thought volkswagon was running the ad.
- Jame - [IMAGE]
Rotten.com had their own run-around with Mastercard over a tasteless parody. They didn't cave:
Perverted Priceless Jokes (with accompanying pornographic pictures) are at http://vagina.rotten.com/priceless
Details on rotten.com's legal problem are at http://www.rotten.com/legal/desist-mastercard.htm
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I didn't like the article, but you are right. Although I find it hard to believe that you have been offered $4M in credit. Probably $100,000-250,000 is a more reasonable number.
Okay, bad joke. The funny thing about personal debt is that it is personal choice. That's what's great about america, that we can purchase whatever we want, whenever we want, provided we have the $$$.
Let me get back to my original point about the article. Temporary workers are not a sign of weakness for the U.S. economy, but a sign of strength. Mobility in the workforce is a huge asset, the ability to transfer labor from one sector to another sector on demand.
The reason that the "sosring cost of credit" is due to the fact that there is so little money to lend out b/c it has already been lended out. Money is just like any other thing you purchase, it has a supply and a demand. When the demand goes up and the supply stays the same, interest rates rise. That is why those second tier banks can charge 400% annual interest rate.
The article is poorly worded. It should talk about how much future earnings people are throwing away b/c they are spending now (we are really screwing ourselves) Debt is good (when used for investment) but frivilous debt is bad.
Are they also gonna get sued because of this: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991212
LOL
Bzzt Whir Click
You (Reg 233434, Tony Soprano) mean "to tell" (Reg 23432, CBS Networks) me that They (TM) can copyright (c) such short phrases? (Reg 345243). This is (Reg 4111999, Bill Clinton) getting ridiculous.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You can trademark all kinds of things, but the scope is limited. For instance, Apple computer can trademark the word Apple for use in reference to computers while leaving it OK for use in describing fruit. More amazingly, PeptoBismol can actually trademark their color of pink! That's right, you can't make your stomach medicine the same pink color as PeptoBismol, but you could paint your car that color if you particularly felt like it.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The question here isn't whether you like it, it's whether it's legal. And it is.
We are the attorneys for MasterCard International ("MasterCard").
What I heard:
We are the Borg . . .
(I just hope this comment doesn't infringe on anyone else'e IP.)
This is teh funney.
your the one thats not funny.
Actually, I rather thought it was Trademark infringement that was supposed to be the issue. You can't legislate or protect "good taste", whereas you can legislate or protect Trademarks. All of which is beside the point, anyway, if parody, which this clearly is, is protected under the law. Mastercard need to stop being so bloody precious.
Oh! You were trolling! Sorry.
--
Athy, athier, athiest.
User friendly and twisted humor.com are two places that have used this for a basis of a joke. I'm sure there are others.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
If Mastercard wants to start bringing suit about this, they need to really dig and if they win, every person on the Earth would end up in jail. Satire, discussion, educational uses, comedy, are all legitimate uses of anything copyrighted.
What next, they're going to sue David Letterman?
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
I have trademarked 'TM' and '[TM]' with reference to using the mark to annotate a term as trademarked. I think i'll trademark that circle around a c symbol next...
---
It wasn't all that funny or clever.
Like to stay and Chat but I have to destroy my G4 with OS X now
---
This
Fortunately I think this is the typical scattershot cease and desist letter a lot of firms send out just to look like they are pretecting marks and to scare people who don't know better.
I wasn't scared by it, but I did enjoy responding to a legal letter like that, and I wanted to get the message out to people not to be intimidated by such tactics.
But really, the picked the wrong guy. Aside from my history dealing with attempts to censor rec.humor.funny, I've also been a plaintiff in a free speech case before the supreme court, and I am chairman of the board of the leading free speech foundation for cyberspace (EFF). So while they did customize the letter, they didn't do to much research, did they?
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Don't sell people short - think of all of these poor idiots...
Question... Isn't there a statue of limitations or something anyway? It was posted like 2 years ago right?
I wish I had a nickel for every useless copyright suite I've heard about the last couple of years...
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Well, the letter did mention the subject matter being offensive to the client, so it was a personalized letter. Nice idea, though.
[sarcasm mode on]
After reading your ideas I liked them, and I therefore motion that your user id "Bassturd" is offensive and should be removed from slashdot. That's not censorship, its responsible webhosting. I'm glad when someone is finally fighting for the children who have to read nasty userids like yours. I don't care if that is your real name or not, it is just wrong to call yourself that while children are around. Pleaase use B.A. instead in the future.
All in favour of removing B. Assturd, please reply!
[sarcasm mode off]
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Here is his contact info: Russell H. Falconer BakerBotts 212.408.2564 FAX 212.705.5020 russell.falconer@bakerbotts.com 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA 44TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10112-0228 I am sure he would love to hear more of those!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Here is his contact info:
Russell H. Falconer
BakerBotts
212.408.2564
FAX 212.705.5020
russell.falconer@bakerbotts.com
30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA 44TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10112-0228
I am sure he would love to hear more of those!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
http://political.adcritic.com/content/ nader-priceless.html
(watch the space after "content/")
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
By gosh you're right--never actually checked the strip. (_Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat_, page 149) I corrected my .sig accordingly.
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
Where on earth did you get that? Safeway sells a private brand stomach remedy that is exactly the same shade of pink as PB. The PB lawyers may claim to own a specific shade of pink. They may even have managed to pursuade the P&T people to let them register it. But both acts do nothing but put them on record as claiming the that shade of pink. They still have to convince a judge that allowing a competitor to use that shade would confuse their customers. Some competitors may back down rather than deal with the legal hassles (just as restauranteurs tend to look for names that don't begin with "Mac" as a cheap alternative to dealing with McDonalds' lawyers), but that doesn't make PBs legal theory anything more than a theory.
You can trademark all kinds of things,
When you used "trademark" as a verb, I assume you're referring to getting the mark registered with the PTO. That action doesn't create the trademark, it just puts you on record as claiming it. You can actually establish a trademark just by using it. People were using trademarks for centuries before there any official registry. Fairly good legal summary here.
__
<sarcasm>Yep, that's what's wrong with America: unregulated humor!!!!</sarcasm>
If you knew anything about children, if you even talked them once in a while, you'd know that they revel in sick jokes. I've never met a kid without a totally nauseating repertoire of them. And this is a healthy thing. Childhood is a nasty, scary place. Well, so is adulthood, but kids don't have our facility for repressing their fears. So they resort to weird, disgusting mechanisms for coping with them.
If you really want look after your children, stop trying to hide the world from them and start working on helping them cope with it. It's more work than whining about "laxness" and installing useless censorware. But it's the job you signed up for.
And WTF is William?
__
Old legal joke: "Sir, you've examined this matter very thoroughly. There's plenty of documentation, and all the precedents are on your side. There's only one matter that needs to be settled before we can proceed. Exactly how much justice can you afford?"
Which is actually an even nastier joke than anything about Columbine. It simply doesn't matter whether MasterCard would win in court. What matters is that they can afford to go through the motions, and you can't stand on your first amendment rights unless you can afford it too. Once again, free speech is not free beer.
__
So am I. Your rights end with your nose. Or do you want to allow me to force you to do/not do things? It work bolth ways. Are you sure you want to start throwing around opinions? Are you 100% confident you won't get stuck with MY opnions forced on you. Old answer turn your censorware to block the site and keep your opnions off my reality.
Some people scream, some people would rather laugh. Who are you to tell everybody how to cope with the terminal thing called life?
But they're not! When we have Mastercard bitching about jokes, SGI threatening anyone using the words 'Open' or 'gl' in their product title, the head of the MPAA keenly aware that 2600 puts a parody of his ugly face on t-shirts but totally oblivious to everything else, Fox trying to shut down the "Why Files", Time Warner getting frisky with Harry Potter fan sites, Scientologists demanding publicly available information be taken off /., laws being passed that make it illegal for us to figure out how something works, what are we supposed to do about these guys? Between them, they simply want to patent/trademark/copyright every word and witty expression in existence. While we might reach a 'peaceable compromise' now, they'll just come back next week with some other goody their lawyers dug up. And consider what each side's agenda consists of here. RHF: "We want to amuse people with this joke." MC: "We're afraid some stupid people will equate MC with guns, so we want our name taken off of that joke or we will bluster about and threaten to unleash our flesh-eating lawyers whom we pay solely to spend time in courtrooms erasing people like you from the face of the earth."
--
Dyolf Knip
I think this was a rather tasteless "joke" and I don't blame Mastercard for their actions in this particular case. It's a very bad association for their name, linking a large business with a massacre (no matter what the intent was). There's a fine line between humor and and outright poor taste.
If you put my name up on the net in some way that linked me to, say, war crimes committed in the east (just as off-the-wall), I wouldn't be too happy with you either.
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 08:14:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: dante
To: bt @ templetons . com
Subject: Mastercard and Postal Service Violations
Brad,
After reading the cease and desist letter from Mastercard's lawyers, I noticed that they had sent you the notice via Federal Express. US law prohibits using private carriers to deliver first-class mail unless there is a specific need which the private carrier meets, which the USPS cannot. I do not see what need FedEx would fill which the USPS could not, as overnight delivery was unnecessary, and registered mail provides proof of delivery for letters from New York to California.
Legalspeak can be found here:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cfr/39p310.htm
While "calling the Feds" really would seem futile, sending them a letter to "cease and desist" using private carriers when not necessary
would certainly be funny.
-Anthony
... between Templeton's or michael's joke and the columbine Joke. They don't Mastercard and its image directly. I mean, read the last row: their jokes doesn't say "for everything else there's Mastercard". But Smith's joke does.
Let's be honest I would be pissed off too if someone associated my name with killers or terrorists.
Id just throw a semi-colon in there and call it a day.
There are some things money can't buy; for everything else there's Mastercard
I sorta like
The problem is that companies do not need have the law on there side to go around censoring people. Court cases are cost a lot of money.
This has started being a problem with people talking at city council meetings and the like and then sent a letter from a company that didn't like what they said.
I would think using the word "Mastercard" would be considered fair use, while saying a phrase like "There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else there's Mastercard" would be blatant copyright infringement.
I've seen other parodies on this theme (the one with the Flyers fan beating up the Devils fan was funny, even though I'm a Devils fan) but they always omit the last sentance. So it ends "Watching a Devils fan get beat: priceless".
I would think that Mastercard is "just being forced to protect its copyright" (as so many Slashdotters seem to argue when an open source web site gets socked). Plus, the subject matter wasn't exactly what I'd call "decent", but that's another, subjective discussion for later.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Parodies (even those as sick as this) add to Mastercard's brand name recognition.
What I really would like to see is parrodies of VISA's ad campaign that advocates credit card theft.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
Can that joke be labeled as satire? Is so, Mastercard doesn't have a pot to piss in.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Internet access: paid for by my employer while I waste my time which he is also paying for
Operating system and browser for surfing:you mean people pay for that?
Posting ridiculously offtopic, redundant, conformist, or stupid posts and getting mod'ed up:Priceless
There are some things you need to know. /.
For everything else, there's
---- heg - because some things are more important than karma
Most consumers don't read Slashdot or rec.humor.funny, so they wouldn't know about this. Plus I would venture a guess that Joe TV Fan wouldn't know a cease-and-desist letter if it hit him in the face.
That doesn't make MasterCard any less stupid, of course. But negative publicity is harder to come by among the general public than among the 400K or so slashdot fans.
sulli
RTFJ.
He does not have to get permission to do those parodies, but he does, because it's the polite thing to do. He won't do it if he doesn't get permission, but it's not because it's illegal to do those parodies, it's because it's impolite.
So Al wouldn't doa Mastercard parody, only because they wouldn't want him to, but he could if he felt like it.
In case the answer is no, I will note that there are several cases alleging that Hustler Magazine engaged in slander, defamation, libel, or other so-called dignity torts when it published material that the magazine asserted was satire or parody. See, e.g., Dworkin v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 867 F.2d 1188 (9th Cir. 1989).
As for your other comments about what you consider to be fraud and what you consider to have been bad investments on Mastercard's part, I share your disagreement with the system. However, the fact is that the marginal loss caused by people who cancelled their Mastercards pales in comparison to the potential value of loss that Mastercard will face if they lose the rights to their intellectual property.
Imagine that you and I, as the Axelboldt & Lawyamike Credit Card company, decide to start a marketing campaign that appropriates the "priceless" campaign in its near totality. Maybe we would use the tagline "invaluable" instead of "priceless." When Mastercard brings suit to show that they owned the rights to that line of advertising, and when it is time for the judge or jury to calculate damages, don't you think the efforts that they expended to protect their IP would be relevant?
With that said, Mastercard probably could not bring a successful cause of action against RHF. Not because parody and satire are always protected, but because the statements in this case could not rise to the level of an actual offense, e.g. business libel, deceptive practices, or other state statutory or other common law claims. The point is, don't think that you can insult, disparage, or mislead with impunity because you have labeled a statement "satire." Seriously.
The other point is this: Mastercard is not sending the letters because it wants to sue RHF, or because it is serious about making RHF cease and desist. For a large company like Mastercard, it is a worthwhile investment to have a staff of cubicled drones, supervised by a third-rate attorney, who is in turn supervised by far better atttorneys up the line, to mail merge and send threatening letters to people who refer to their trademarks, trade dresses, or other intellectual property in manners which they would not prefer.
The threat itself isn't supposed to be effectual, but the act of making a show to protect their IP is significant. It shows their competitors or actual, putative infringers that they are watching what's going on, and that they will take action if people get out of line. That way, when a competitor tries to appropriate their IP in a manner that they do not wish, they can prove to the judge or jury just how valuable their investment is, and how much they have spent in time and effort to protect it.
Write a newspaper letter using the term Kleenex as a generic name for tissue. If your letter garners enough attention, you will receive a letter from the Legal Department of the company that manufactures Kleenex for just that reason. They want to make sure that you understand the difference between Kleenex (proper noun) and the concept of tissue paper generally. They do not want you to dilute their mark in a manner that hastens its descent into public domain. But more importantly, they want to be able to prove that they care about how their IP is being used when a real threat to their IP surfaces.
That does it. From now on I'm going to post a story five times, at five different times of day, before I consider it "rejected".
The Infringing Material denigrates the tragedy at Columbine High School and holds our client out as sponsoring this highly distasteful material by using the format of the MasterCard Priceless Advertisements and prominently displaying MasterCard's famous trademarks.
...is it just me, or is this an extremely weak argument? I think MC would have a hard time convincing any judge or jury that the satirical material made people think MC was the sponsor for the Columbine tragedy...
This is nice, but MC is suing for trademark infringement, not copyright infringement. Completely different things.
It would be a fair suit for trademark dilution -- it's certainly a "tarnishment." The doctrine of trademark dilution is broader than traditional trademark law, so satire/parody wouldn't even be a question. But, as someone here pointed out, MC seems to have waited a long time to bring suit, so that goes against them. A trademark owner needs to protect his/her mark as vigorously as possible to keep from losing it.
Hiring some geek(s) to find a two year old parody which hardly anyone had looked at lately: thousands of dollars billed to client /.: Priceless
Sending a desist letter: more money billed to client
Getting slammed on
There are some things money can't buy - everything else gets billed to the client.
The reply of Mr. Templeton shows the sense of humor only the RHF editor can have...
... "priceless."
Another way of describing his response is
"And like that
there'll be some idiot telling you it's illegal. So if there's always some idiot telling you it's illegal and threatening to sue, why can't we sue the comedians?
No offense to our good friends to the south, but there's a reason that threatening to sue is an American stereotype. This whole load of BS with Ma$tercard threatening to sue the comics just reinforces that. M$ claiming that Linux is "against the american way" is another fine example.
Lawyers' fees: $1000/hour
Taxi to/from court every day: $60
Hotel fees: $400/night
Expression on the plaintiff's face when he's told the charges are bullsh~t: Priceless.
Some things Money can't buy. For everything else, who gives a flying foobar?
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Then why do you feel the need to point them out?
---
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
This is the section of US Code that deals with fair use of copyrighted works:
(Sorry it's in MS Word DOC format, write to your congressman if you don't like it.)
US Code Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107
Section 107 is on page 126 of the Word document.
If this was already posted, feel free to flame me to death (I'm sure someone will anyway).
I would've never known about the satire if it wasn't for those lawyers bringing it up. Now they have a cloud of negative publicity they'll want to get rid of... they're not the sharpest tools in the shed.
This statement is false.
Just a thought...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Mastercard sued Ralph Nader for a commercial that he made for the 2000 presidential election with the same theme. If I remember correctly, as soon as it hit the court the judge threw the lawsuit out.
It may legally be parody, and should be treated as such thank you everyone, for pointing that rather obvious one out.
Even though the disclaimer calls it a horrible tragedy, its not something to joke about since shit like this keeps occuring on a regular basis (in america...). For high school students like me, that will never, never, EVER be funny.
~ Detonating a nuclear device within the city limits will result in a 500 dollar fine.
I assume the Mastercard lawyers know about parody being protected. If not, maybe education in law is lacking something these days.
However, I understand their desire to not be associated with humor that so many people would find in poor taste (although I find it pretty funny). Do businesses today know anything about politely asking?
THIS is basically what I was refering to.
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
I rather liked the VIDEO of the couple gettin' it on in the upper deck at a ball game.
1 - 2 tickets to Major League Baseball game $60
2 - hot dogs and beer for you and girl friend $22
3 - the video of you fucking her, on the Internet - priceless!
Bwahaha!
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
you have seen someone with their face/head blown off.
Gee, wonder if they'll go after me for a tagline I use?? Fourteen bottles of cut-rate soda: $9.46. Six bags of chips and a pack of Hostess Snoballs: $8.17. Rulebooks, dice, and sharpened #2 pencils: $56.89. Making a saving throw against Dragon Breath, rolling 20 on strike, and dealing double damage: priceless. There are some things gold pieces can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
"On the Internet, no one knows you're a minifig....."
Whether or not this is a real letter or a hoax, freedom of speech and satire are still as American as... capitalisim and crooked politicians.
"Boys have a Penis, Girls have a Vagina", kids say the darndest things!
2) They are out for all publicity, negative or otherwise.
Regarless, the rebuttal was way in there.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Crack cocaine: $10 a hit
Decent hookers: $200 an hour
Legal fees: $68737.12
Getting your old job back after getting caught on video smoking rock with working girls: Priceless.
Some things, money can buy, yadda yadda...
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
And I *still* think that allowing one word to be trademarked, "PRICELESS", is ludicrous.
Ahh, so is that why the multivolume OED costs so much! They have to pay all those royalties!
Interrobang, who thinks trademarking the word "Priceless" is infringing on freedom of speech. What's next? And[TM]?!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Just in case mastercard wins...
If they do, however, we're all in a lot of trouble... the thought police are coming...
home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umroyma0
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
This was even funnier: The Onion ran a STATShot shortly after the Columbine incident. It was titled "Most Dangerous Rock Songs". At the top of the list was "Open Fire on Columbine High School" by Marilyn Manson.
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Buying a joke book next door: 3$. Buying a computer: 1500$. Connecting to the internet and reading jokes: 10$/month. Reading a joke from Mr. Templeton and ROFL: priceless. There are things money can buy. For everything else, there is /.
The line "There's some things money can't buy, for everything else there's Mastercard" line adds NOTHING to the Columbine joke or any other "priceless" jokes. No one cares which particular credit card buys the ammo. It doesn't make the joke more funny, but it does make the Mastercard people a lot more angry. Logical solution- drop the last line. It's not worth fighting for.
You can't buy that kind of brand recognition; but XEROX protected its tradmarks to the point that now most people don't think of them as the first in most of these catagories. As a result, They are paying for ads to maintain a dwindling market-share. The parody refered to was truely offensive to all but the real snuff perverts, I'd have told the moderator that he allowed something that was way over the line, and that was the real reason for the decese and desist letter.
If they had to, tell the judge that MC has a triage system to prioritise which trademark violators are gone after first. That way they could nail the slezzy stuff and look the otherway on the stuff that was actualy ammusing; without losing the trademark (consult your legal adviser before adopting this stratagy)
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
New 20 gig hard drive: $150
Cabling from sound card to stereo: $40
1500 songs: Priceless
Some things still cost money. For everything else, there's Napster. :-)
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Two relatively recent Supreme Court decisions which upheld parody and satire as forms of free speech:
Hustler Magazine, Inc. vs. Rev. Jerry Falwell, over a satirical account of Falwell's first sexual experience (with his mother).
2 Live Crew vs. Acuff-Rose Music, over a parody of the Roy Orbison song, "Pretty Woman."
rec.humor.funny ... does this mean that the rest of the rec.humor groups are unfunny?
for anyone interested here are some more priceless jokes:
_ 01 .htm
http://priceless.the-brodericks.com/images/page
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
This is an except from the "Copyright Myths FAQ" by
Ha! Terry Carroll's FAQ Get's it right. Read 2.9 and the first item of the 4 point test.
Could be time for Brad revise his FAQ, and perhaps take a more progressive approach. ("anarchistic" would probably be asking for too much from this quy...:)
A Question out to any legal historians who might be in the slashdot crowd. What descision provides the precedent that satire and parody are not considered trademark violation?
-Zuchinis
All Mastercard was concerned with is the preservation of their trademark... with no mention that the subject matter could be slanderous.
Who wants to bet that this thing was found by a search script? Potentially automatically generating the cease&decist?
If: find ": $xx" 1-5 times, followed by "there are some things in life that money can't buy, for everything else, there's Mastercard", then send(cease_n_decist)
Think of how much the law firm could bill Mastercard for the work done by such a script! "Yeah Bob, we worked 10000 hours to protect your trademarks on the web this month, at $500/hour that's a cool $5M."
Further diversion from my subject:
Cost of Mastercard lawyer to come up with the idea for a script: $5000 (conservative estimate)
Cost to get a high school/college/university student to set it up: $500
Monthly revenue to the firm: $5 000 000
Partnership in the firm: priceless
There are some things in life that money can't buy, for everything else there's "moderate down".
And I *still* think that allowing one word to be trademarked, "PRICELESS", is ludicrous. I wish I had $billions to facilitate my ideas/ideology/dictatorship of the world!
My answer is simple: I'm a parent.
And that means what?
Humor is as beauty: in the eye of the beholder. What is funny for others is not funny for you and viceversa. Welcome to the real world.
"If God wanted us to fly, He'd have given us wings with which to soar...." William, 14:35
Lucky we are! We have got a brain to figure other ways to fly without wings. That Willie guy got it wrong me thinks.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you read MasterCard's threat, you run into the absurdity that they trademarked their phrase not once, but twice. Then if you look closer, you see that they are different. One breaks the two clauses up with a comma; the other with a period.
So it's simple. If you want to do this sort of thing in such a way that even MasterCard's boneheaded lawyers will lose their means of questioning it, just separate those clauses with a semicolon, as in this sentence, which I donate to the public:
"There are some things money can't buy; for everything else there's MasterCard."
--Blair
"ALL YOUR DOLLAR ARE BELONG TO US"
I found this in the archives. I wonder when Slashdot gets theirs? =)
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Actually my school had a layout that would have been nearly perfect for a FPS map - walkways looking down on others or open areas, small openings along some areas that allow you to see other areas without being seen etc. Most of the rooms even had interconnecting doors. A few minor changes and it would have been perfect for hunting and shooting.
I had to fire off an email to the author of the complaint (listed in the letter)e .html. I just wanted to thank you for pointing me in this direction... Were it not for your cease-and-desist letter to this website (and the subsequent article on slashdot), I, and millions of other slashdot readers, would have never had the chance to enjoy this humor!
(QUOTE)
I just read a very funny, though possibly in poor taste, joke at http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Apr/columbin
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most
I'm still waiting for the Columbine High-School Quake mod.
"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
It's amazing how we pay these fees to mastercard and they go waste their hard earned cash to pay some junior lawyers to go surf the net on search and destroy missions. But hey I need a job like that. I'll work for half price too just give me a dedicated DS3. I'm glad I stuck with Discover.
Gotta love sick humor. Way to go to the guy for being a real smartass.
Mastercard learned from Nader. I think that is when they realized that they had no legal basis. But what theyre doing now, I think, is nothing more than a PR stunt. They are going after the "bad guys" that make fun of tragedies. It makes them seem heroic and trying to stop "evil" even though they know they can't win. So this costs them a few thousand, they might pick it up from people out there that see what they are doing as good, they might lose customers, who knows. Mastercard is pretty much just rolling the dice.
My answer is simple: I'm a parent. And to the poster who critisized my sig., go look up William 14:35 for yourself, and I think you'll understand.
"If the Lord had meant for us to fly, He'd have given us wings with which to soar...." William, 14:35
We should protect the children by allowing such material to be posted on the internet. It shouldn't be laws which dictate what is acceptable - that changes over time as society alters what is normal and justifiable. Yes, it might be sick humor, but to ban it would be worse IMHO. If people are that ticked off about it, then speak up and tell the author that. But don't bitch about it and use it as an excuse to start censoring - we have too many other problems.
Did anyone see the ad Nader showed on television during the campaign season? There was a link to it on the original article, but it didn't say a lot. I remember hearing about it, and later hearing how Mastercard had lost its suit against Nader. I doubt they'll have much more luck against a newsgroup. blizzardx
He killed RMS?
Firing or firing squad?
> I love Natalie... I would have her children.
Penile construction surgery, hysterectomy, and testicular transplantation for Natalie: $55,000.00
Uterus transplantation, penile inversion surgery, and vaginoplasty for you: $125,000.000
Advancing hormonal science such that she develops sperm and you develop eggs: $40,000,000,000.000
Look of joy as you bear Natalie's children: priceless!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
God, I hope 'they' aren't reading this, but... What they never seem to do is check exactly WHAT is being parodied. Is the MasterCard ad the target, or the shooting at Columbine? Quite honestly, I'd have to argue the latter. The courts never seem to care, as long as someone finds it funny, parody it is. But, MC is a huge corporation worthy of my distrust, especially since I owe them $10k! (Disclaimer: the above statement doesn't imply that MasterCard Inc. is an evil sinister corporation... its parody. Keep your letters to yourselves, thankyousomuch). Rick MP3s for your mind!
Doh. Rick You wouldn't dare...