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Hormel Gracefully Concedes On SPAM vs. Spam
dattaway writes: "Hormel has given up complaining about 'spam' referring to junk e-mail and makes a good point about our trademark system." Hormel has actually seemed pretty quiet, even good natured, on this front for a long time -- unlike certain companies, they haven't attempted to throttle everyone using those fateful four letters in sequence. (And that would have made them look bad, anyhow. Language evolves.) Now if only they would send infinite supplies of can-cooked spiced pink meat to the nasty kind of spammers ...
There are three reasons:
1. Fruit and vegetable consumption was much higher than it is today, partially negating the bad effects of high-fat diets.
2. Activity levels were higher, particularly in rural populations.
3. Most people died of something else first. For example, before widespread refrigeration, stomach cancer (from eating salted and smoked meats) was a leading killer.
Mr. Trademark-Protector (or should I say, Mr. Hormel-Employee?),
I think you mean "digitally edit the image" instead of "photoshop."
Thanks.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/spam.php
enjoy, I did
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Hormel has actually seemed pretty quiet, even good natured, on this front for a long time [...]
Indeed, the datestamp on Hormel's page about this is Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:46:44 GMT – nearly three years ago!
And I was so looking forward to Hormel making spammers eat their weight in salty pork products. Now my hopes are dashed!
Findlaw is your friend.
2'nd Circuit Court ruling here.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I have heard that it stands for Squirrels, Possoms And Mice.
V
However, for this story (only) the icon is appropriate. We are discussing "SPAM" as well as "spam".
Follow SPAM with "Luncheon Meat" or other descriptor. Remember, a trademark is a formal adjective and as such, should always be followed by a noun.
I never knew that. But it does make life interesting. As well as arguing over linux vs. gnu/linux, we'll have the grammar nazis insisting it's the linux operating system, and the fsf grammar nazis insisting it's the gnu/linux operating environment.
Of course, it does mean I was right in referring to "that windows piece of shit"
So you want SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, and SPAM?
*cue vikings*
Four years to realise that fighting the whole world in a battle that no one cared about - except for it's (mildly) humourous connotations - is counter-productive.
Of course they may have been told by their legal advisers that "spam" is now a defacto part of the English language (look iy up in the newer Oxford English dictionary) in both of it's meanings, and as such the use of the word to describe unsolicited e-mail could probably not have been challenged in court.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
UCE is people! PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
If the companies don't fight for their names, then not only can the general public use them to refer to all similar products, but their competitors can also.
For those that are from the south, I know you've seen this discussion:
Although the 'Coke' name means 'Coca-Cola brand cola soft drink' in many areas, in some areas, it's used interchangably with 'soda'. (And I think it's still more normal than calling it a 'pop', which is the name I use to refer to my grandfather.)
And for those that believe that any publicity is good-- imagine that there's a scare due to some sort of tainting in the factory, and the headline reads
But then the article says that it's some mom and pop soda company, and not Coca-Cola brand. If companies do not protect their trademarks, this is something that has the potential of happening. (The misleading articles, not the death of people by contaminated coke bottles)Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
And either get rid of the icon, or photoshop it to show locercase 'spam'.
Just making something lowercase does not make it no longer trademarked.
Photoshop is a rather nice program out there to edit pixelated images. It is not a generic verb which describes editing pixelated images.
Yes, the 'spam' image used by slashdot should be edited so that it does not show an image of SPAM canned luncheon meat. However, whomever wishes to edit the image should use whatever pixel editing program they may wish to use, such as gimp or any one of the other fine image editing programs out there.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It should also be remembered that this was back when most home users were happy to have a 60 Meg hard drive Most server disks were probably in the range of a couple hundred megabytes. Not much spare space for spam postings. Given the relatively lower volume of the usenet back then, a series of spam postings could be problematic for some smaller sites. -- forcing the expiration or rejection of many 'real' postings.
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
(spam spam spam.... ) {hundreds of lines of it!)
Originally, spamming really only referred to massive, crossposted postings on the usenet. Various names like UCE (Unwanted Commercial Email) / UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email) were the techinical term for the email 'spam', but Spam is far easier to say and remember (and more fun). People seem to have settled on spam (to Hormels mild consternation).
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Anyway, the term was coined from the Monty Python sketch. Shortly after that, most media outlets that ran a story on spam for some reason said the term came from the idea of "when spam hits the fan" and the resultant crap that flies everywhere.
I don't know where that came from, but it wasn't accurate, but was quoted as authoritave all over the news at the time.
At least I'm glad that pretty much everyone knows the true reason the word was coined in the first place. Small thing, but historical accuracy should always be maintained when possible.
Shame there are no archives from around that time...
This issue/suggestion has come up every single time there's a spam story (and thus, the SPAM logo is used). Somebody always, and correctly, brings up the Hormel Policy Statement and points out the problem with the logo.
The post is always, and correctly, modded up to 5, because we wouldn't like to see /. get sued.
The /. maintainers blissfully ignore the recommendations altogether. Do they even glance over the comments anymore? Even at Highest Scores First, Threaded, cutoff at +4, they should still have seen this recommendation half a dozen times by now.
If everyone suddenly stopped posting comments, how long would it take them to even notice?
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Bloody vikings...
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So i don't mind, if Hormel get's a little advertisement by publicly being 'generous' to all those people calling, uh..., unsolicited email spam. (They should've banned that Monty Python parody, or come about seven years earlier to stop this anyway).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
For contrast, let me offer up this recent post from Ashtung Wolfenstein!: I wish FOX would follow Hormel's lead. They could learn something.
(For the record, this post isn't intended as off-topic or flamebait or trolling. Just an observation.)
---
My parents' first shopping trip togther went something like this:
Mom: "Look, Spam! Do you like Spam?" (hoping he'd say "no")
Dad: "Sure, OK." (wishing she hadn't asked)
And so we ate spam once, often twice a week for 2 years.
Two years, when neither one would admit to hating the stuff, and we, being kids, didn't know any better so we ate it also.
I think it was my dad who finally fessed up, but I've never had want or need to confirm this. I'm just glad they decided together, before I reached 10 and started considering SPAM real food. Now, I can't stand the stuff.
btw, they're still happily married, and will hit their 20th anniversary this summer.
HI MOM! HI DAD! Congratulations!
One thing you have to keep in mind is that most ISP's, well a lot of them are sort of owned by one large corp. or have some form of agreement somewhere down the line. What's more is the fact that some of those ISP's may be providing colo services for some of those companies sending the spam.
Want Root?
Too many spammers have a variety of resources at their disposals to continue spamming, mixmaster remailers, horrible configurations of sendmail from corporations, and nickle and dime webservers, etc.
Now what may work, is going after those responsible for the advertisements contained in spam. Example www.joebloworsomething.com hires someone to promote their site, and those people send promotions out via way of spam, I feel holding the people at the site responsible is better fitted.
Now bear with me on this a second. Sure it can seem somewhat unfair, but no one asks for spam, and by using someone's resources (bandwidth, whatever) companies should be made aware of how much their actions cause versus the amount of people who actually reply to spam. Think about it, company X sends say 20,000 spam emails a day, of which 1 replies and actually buys something, but out of those 20,000 500 decide to take company X to small claims court bitching...
See the laws fail when they're passed because you can't have one country's law dictate what is law in another country, and many politicians fail to see that when they waste time and money with their so called AntiSpam bills. You don't cut weeds in the garden half assed, you cut them at the root.
Stolen Uranium, and unsolved murders? non fiction at its best
Want Root?
I've said it before, and I shall now say it again: don't just go after the ISPs, go after the domain.
If you receive a spam advertising www.chocolatemonkeynuts.com, look up the DNS server for chocolatemonkeynuts.com, and complain to the service that hosts it. Get the domain pulled, as well as the web site. Web space is trivial to find, but it takes (a little) more work to set up a domain.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, I always here it was
SPAM - SELECT PARTS of ANIMAL MEAT
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I notice now that my link to Hormel Foods Corporation vs. Jim Henson Productions Inc. (the opinion in a lawsuit) is now dead. Anyone got a good link?
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
From Policy Statement: We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. This would seem to say that Slashdot's use of a picture of a SPAM can to denote stories about UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail) is against their policy. And though I know I'll get modded down for saying it I can see their point.
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
Funny, but this pops up on *every* spam topic:
Please refer to spam as 'spam', not 'SPAM'!
And either get rid of the icon, or photoshop it to show locercase 'spam'.
Darn, the company is being so reasonable, and we're still doing our best to irritate them with this.
I just don't get it.
---
"What, I need a *reason* for everything?" -- Calvin
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
--
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I like to watch.
So this a case of accidental marketing.
Works on me. I had never had any SPAM before, but sometime in 1996, something changed in me. I tried it, and thought it was OK. Time passed, and I kept buying the stuff, and started trying out the recipes on the sides of the cans. Those folks at Hormel (tm) come up with some pretty tasty recipes! Let's face in, SPAM-n-eggs is pretty nasty, but Chicken SPAM-on-Bleu is fabulous! So is SPAM-a-roni and cheese, and SPAM and mushroom pizzas.
But take it from me, don't make SPAM cupcakes!
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
The nufty stuff you learn in HIS104 - 20th Century American History
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
CONTAMINATED COKE BOTTLES KILL 4
But then the article says that it's some mom and pop soda company, and not Coca-Cola brand. If companies do not protect their trademarks, this is something that has the potential of happening. (The misleading articles, not the death of people by contaminated coke bottles)
IIRC, a similar thing happened with the bombing at the centenial olympic park. News outlets had been refering to a "tupperware container filled with nails", and the official Tupperware (tm) people got very pissy because they were not only using their trademark as a generic word, it was in the context of a fairly traumatic event.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
There are three reasons:
1. Fruit and vegetable consumption was much higher than it is today, partially negating the bad effects of high-fat diets.
2. Activity levels were higher, particularly in rural populations.
3. Most people died of something else first. For example, before widespread refrigeration, stomach cancer (from eating salted and smoked meats) was a leading killer.
To the second point I would also add that during the winter the added fuel of all the fat would be burned off keeping the poor blokes warm. I used to give my family's outside cats (dad insisted, poor kitties) hot fat and meat drippings over their dry food or some stale bread during the winter. It helped them deal with the cold, they didn't get fat from it and like many of our ancestors they died of other causes well before heart disease was even on the radar.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Couldn't find any mention of it in his link, or at the Bayer site, though.
Aspirin is still a trademark in several countries. See also this Flash map.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How long till all the geeks admit "hacker" is the same thing as a "cracker"?
I'd be satisfied if the media called computer crime "illegal hacking," just as it calls recreational substances "illegal drugs" to contrast with legitimate drugs such as ASPIRIN®.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"aspirin" used to be a registered trademark?
According to this Flash map, ASPIRIN® is still a trademark in many jurisdictions; Bayer had to give it up in the U.S. after WWI.
trademarks slopping over into public domain even before the 75-year trademark expiration date.
Bullshit. Trademark registrations can be renewed every 10 years. This renewal is legitimate, unlike the 20-year across-the-board renewals that Disney keeps buying for copyrights that severely erode the public's end of the bargain under which the Constitution authorizes certain government-granted monopolies.
And yes, I do like the taste of SPAM luncheon meat and SPAMBURGER sandwiches.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Perhaps we should bear this in mind when we jump on newspaper articles that use the word 'hacker'. A language only means what people use it to mean, and I'm sure it's just as clear what people mean by hacker in context as it is that I don't have pink meat in my inbox.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
While there are tons of lawyers in hi-tech lawsuits, all are on the side of businesses, not consumers. Just think of all the b.s. TOS forced upon people buying Windows preloaded on a system. If you turn on the system you've agreed to the TOS before you've even read it. There are many situations like that which could be easially resolved in the courts, but never are. Just look at the Napster trial. Simply using a public Library as an example of fair use would have made napster fall well withing legal bounds. Either the lawyers don't know, or don't care. You're welcome to take your pick.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
How about a giant pile of letters with the hand of a guy buried beneath them trying to claw up to the top?
If the management of any company started saying, "oh gee, all this hassle over trademarks is silly, let's just forget about it, or at least back off a little," they be fired and sued by their stockholders faster than you can say "shareholder value". They have to protect their trademarks, period.
Hormel is simply abandoning an ineffective trademark protection strategy for one they hope will work better. Seeming to be "sensible" is just a side effect. Their old strategy, the standard our-trademark-means-this-and-nothing-else, wasn't working. The new usage of the word "spam" is just too well-established to be eradicated.
So now the Hormel party line is that only "SPAM" (all caps) is a trademark, and it's ok to refer to junk email as "spam" (all lower case). It's just a legal theory designed to prove their "due diligence", nothing more.
__
Well, I'm European and I had never heard about a meal called SPAM before. When I went to the U.S. I saw the cans on a supermarket shelf, and I thought: "Hey, this stuff has the same name as junk mail!" I tried it just out of curiosity... and they won a new customer. A side effect of this story was that now I understand what the "Spam" icon in /. is.
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
Actually, the use of the term "spam"to describe UCE comes from the Monty Python sketch.
You remember, the one in the cafe, where everything comes with Spam, includiong such delights as "Spam, spam, spam, sausage, egg and spam" etc.
So all the food came with vast quantities of spam, obscuring the rest of the food, just as email comes with vast quantities of UCE, obscuring the real emails.
(The sketch, btw, culminates in the Vikings in a corner of the cafe singing the Spam song -
"Spam, spam, spam, spam.
Spam, spam, spam, spam,
...
"
)
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
If Rollerblade or Xerox allow their trademarks to become generic words for in-line skating or photocopying, they loose the right to the trademark.
Ever heard of a "biro"? For quite a while nobody used the term "ball point pen" and the trademark is useless.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
No kudos whatsoever to those who for years refused to even consider honoring Hormel's quite reasonable requests regarding the use of the SPAM trademark.
After years of sticking to your guns and standing up for what you believe in, you've finally beaten the good guys. Go, team.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I eat it regularly. Fry it and put maple syrup on it...mmmm. That and fried bologna :)
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_______________________________________________
As for the name I had heard that it actualy stood for Shoulder Pork And haM. Also being a canned product means that it is not perishable like fresh meat would be, many third world countries just don't have the infrastructure to move large quantities of meat arround like most of us are used to. This explains its popularity with campers, its hard to keep meat with out refigeration.
Canned meats allow a lot of third world people to moderate the feast-fammine cycle, that they have all ways lived under, such as kill a pig and feast for a week, then half starve until the next one is ready. This is a big change in many cultures, it is difficult to conceptualize the thought of saving for the future when eat it before it spoils is all you've known. Actualy I've just about cleaned out my Y2K stock of Spam; so I guess that I'll have to tackle my Email next.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Um...yes, they do.
;-)
My ex-girlfriend's best friend and husband used to eat the stuff. They'd fry it and then eat it with maple syrup. I can't imagine what that tastes like. Truly frightening.
At any rate, when I was a child there was a similar product called "TREET" (or something similar). I think that it was made by Armour instead of Hormel, and may have been a competitor to SPAM. We used to eat it quite a lot when I was growing up, and I loved it. I don't think that you can find it in the stores anymore.
A couple years ago I was at the grocery and on a whim decided to try SPAM and see if it was actually any good. I knew that it was some kind of pork product, so I fried up a couple slices like you would a sausage patty and then made a sandwich of it (with lots of mustard, as you would with a sausage sandwich). It was quite possibly the most disgusting thing that I have memory of eating. After a few bites I actually threw the SPAM away and had a mustard sandwich.
But I'm hardly objective since I tend to dislike pork products anyway (with the exception of bacon and some sausages).
You've missed the point. The companies don't mind that everyone says "xerox that" or whatever. You're right, it's probably good for business, and in practice there's very little they can do anyway.
But to keep their trademark, they have to defend it - so they must go after people who use the name "officially", so to speak, in publications etc. If they didn't do this, they'd lose the trademark and they wouldn't be able to sue if (say) Canon brought out their new Xerox-2000 photocopier.
By being publicly strict but privately tolerant, they get the best of both worlds.
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
That has to be the best veiled political statements in corporate america's history...
I just don't get it. It's bad for you company that everybody says "go rollerblading" or "xerox that" ? I would just say that's the best kind of publicity. Your trademark is in the dictionary, for crying out loud! Of course it's different with spam, nobody would like to be associated with that. But still I would say that adds rather than substracts from the value of your trademark. In the case of Xerox and Rollerblade , it's beyond my comprehension. (Oops, sorry, I forgot, a Trademark is an adjective so in the case of Xerox copiers and Rollerblade in-line-skates...)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
THANK YOU for your donation of 1.0 slice(s) of human meat to a hungry person, paid for by: Hormel.
--
Spam! in my inbox all day
It's the best.
Thinking about bandwidth,
sending angry emails now.
Spam! Filtering it out,
keep it a-way from me!
The Internet is there
to send you Spam now.
The Spam is there to make you say "ow!"
Reading all my spam-mail, wondering if I'm a
junkie now. Spam!
With apologies to Weird Al Yankovic.
I'm the stranger...posting to