Commercialization Of The Internet

Anonymous Coward writes "For those anti-corporate tech-heads out there, Excite is running an article about how companies are taking over the net through the use of the courts, trademarks and deep pockets. From the article, 'Big corporations have a significant and growing presence on the Internet. In March, just 14 companies controlled 60 percent of users' online time, down from 110 companies two years earlier, Jupiter Media Metrix found.' A final thought from the article, 'This is the last remaining communications medium that allows the small person to participate,' said Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery. 'To lose that would be a great tragedy.'"

Comments

Re:Issue I faced

[prisoner-of-enigma]

It's very easy for a company to send a "cease and desist" letter to someone like you, that neither means they have the legal wherewithall to prosecute you nor the time/money to do so. They hope you will be intimidated by the letter and comply. Sounds like borg to me.

What this is rooted in is not necessarily some greedy corporate culture drones out there (although they do exist) but more in patent and trademark law. Both, unfortunately, are horrifically broken in this modern era. What you are probably getting needled for is so that TI can defend it's trademark. Here's why:

Trademark law (in the U.S.) put simply states that if you do not vigorously defend your trademark, you lose it. "Vigorous" to lawyers means you sue anyone, anywhere, anytime they might appear to be infringing. Thus, the letter to you. TI could care less what you're doing, but the damn legal system wants its pound of flesh, and the corporate lawyers on retainer know that.

I'm willing to bet that outside the legal department nobody at TI has one inkling of an idea that you were "threatened". Further, and this has worked for me in the past, if you contact someone higher up in the company (and it is damnably difficult -- use the "investor relations" links to get their contact info) you'll usually find them sympathetic to your cause if you're not slandering them left and right. Nobody wants a PR black eye, and it's very easy to distribute negative info on a company to the entire world overnight via the Internet.

So, to sum it up, if you're being threatened, stand your ground. If things look to get nasty, contact the EFF for legal assistance. As a last resort, the ACLU might be of help sometimes as well (for Americans only, though). Sooner or later the legal system will change to catch up with technology.