AmEx vs. rec.humor.funny

An anonymous reader writes "I worried that Brad Templeton's humorous reply in rec.humour.funny to the MasterCard threat might put an end to my daily read. I never heard the outcome, but since the column continues and he is using the same response to a suit from American Express, it must have been OK. This guy has more b*lls than I."

Comments

Pft, wrong threat

[Skyshadow]

The power to sue a website is insignificant compared to the power of the /. effect.

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[mirko]

Do you mean Slashdot got paid by Mastercard to close netfunny its own way ?

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[RLW]

Oh, that's insidious.
Step one, Send threatening letter to web site
Step two, get story posted on slash dot.
Step three, wait and watch as web site goes down faster than a pending injunction.

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[mrgeometry]

Does that mean step **four** is profit?

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[the_consumer]

We're talking about credit card companies. Profit is implied.

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[iminplaya]

And I'm sure, to them, it's a god given right.

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[RLW]

Step four is laugh your head off.
The profit is from having some other entity do your dirty work with out incurring court and attorney fees.

This is the modern entrepreneurial spirit at work!

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[cygnus]

The power to sue a website is insignificant compared to the power of the /. effect.

truly, this is the most creative way to comply with a cease and desist letter. post your site on slashdot and get slashdotted to death.

talk about falling on your sword... :)

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[PlexXoniC]

Can we remove this before someone gets a bad idea... :)

Re:Pft, wrong threat

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you idiot, it's step five. Step four, as you'd know if you read anything here, is "???".

slashdotted

[Karamchand]

link1
link2

Re:slashdotted

[Almost-Retired]

Priceless!

Cheers, Gene

Re:slashdotted

[Mundocani]

The site is still Slashdotted this morning and nobody seems to have posted a link for the original joke, so here's the link to the Google cache.

Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Mastercard threatens rec.humor.funny over satire
bt@templetons.com (Brad Templeton)
http://www.templetons.com/brad

(topical, chuckle, true)

Two years ago, rec.humor.funny published a sick satire of the Mastercard "Priceless" ads (There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's Mastercard) based around the Columbine tragedy. I won't repeat it here, since it was pretty sick and offensive, though you can find it on the web site at:

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Apr/columbi ne .html

Today we received a "cease and desist" letter from Mastercard's lawyers demanding that the parody be removed from our web site, falsely claiming it violates their trademarks and copyrights, in spite of the well established rules protecting satire and parody from such attacks.

The letter can be found at

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/price.html

Here, however, is my response...

Web site hosting for anybody: $10/month and up

Threatening letters to people who satirize you, hoping
they won't know the law: $500

Reputation as giant corporation required to intimidate
small publishers: $billions

Supreme court decisions protecting parody and
satire from accusations of copyright and
trademark infringement... Priceless

There are some rights money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard's lawyers.

============

April 13, 2004
American Express threatens me over joke on web site

On my rec.humor.funny web site, I maintain the newsgroup archives, including this 13 year old joke entitled American Expressway.

Today I got one of those bullying "cease and desist" letters from American Express's law firm, ordering me to take down the joke for trademark infringement. Here's the text of the cease and desist

Do these guys know who they are trying to bully? I guess not, here's my response to them:

You can "Screw More" with an American Express Lawyer

Do you know me?

I built a famous company with a famous name, and then satirists made fun of me by taking advantage of the constitutional protections afforded parody when it comes to trademark law?

That's why I retained Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd, the "American Express Lawyers." Should you ever feel your reputation lost or stolen by free speech and satire, just one call gets LVM to write a threatening cease and desist letter -- usually on the same day -- citing all sorts of important sounding laws but ignoring the realities of parody. Most innocent web sites will cave in, not knowing their rights. LVM will pretend it has never read cases like L.L. Bean, Inc. v. High Society and dozens of others. There's no preset limit on the number of people you can threaten, so you can bully as much as you wish.

After all, Being Giant and Intimidating has its Privileges.

American Express Lawyers: Don't leave your home page without them.

For more examples of such games, check out our joint project with the Berkman center to document them: Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. And yes, Mastercard pulled the same stunt several years ago.
Posted by Brad at April 13, 2004 03:17 PM | TrackBack

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[slackerboy]

And the text of the actual joke that AmEx is complaining about is google cached here.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[blair1q]

Brad's okay, even if he did take pecuniary advantage of Usenet and has a somewhat spotty sense of humor for a guy who runs a newsgroup with "funny" in its name.

But he's pissing in the wind. And that's all it is, wind.

Trademark holders must threaten everyone who coopts their mark, even when it seems like it's almost certain to be legitimate fair-use. If they don't make a sincere effort to protect the trademark, the failure to do so becomes evidence against them in cases the bring where the mark has actually been abused. Trademarks have been lost that way.

Same deal with Mattel suing over Barbie songs, Sony suing Sony's cafe, etc. The bad part is when they end up having to go through with the case and the big guy's lawyers beat up the little guy's lawyers and create new case law that erodes fair-use.

Brad's response that he'll bring up Parody and Satire is enough for them to argue that they didn't see value in fighting, but since they don't fight it doesn't create case law, and everyone has their asses covered. And it'll end there, just like the MasterCard threat did.

It's kind of odd that Brad doesn't get this right off the bat, seeing as he's also the guy who wrote the first real position paper on intellectual-property laws for the Internet.

N.B., IANAL, (but if the bar exam wasn't all about fiddly bits in real estate and divorce law and trial procedure I probably would be). I just like arguing with them and winning on the net.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

Name one company that has lost their trademark in the past 30 years for not protecting it.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

Asprin

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

• Sony and the Walkman
• Whatever company makes Kleenex and Kleenex

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually work for MasterCard, so I think I've got a bit of an inside view of their reasoning. MasterCard doesn't really mind the stupid remakes of their ad campaign. They don't even mind some of the more off colored ones like the soccer player with his junk hanging out. They view it as a messure of success when there are parodies made of their ad campaigns. It's just when something that horrible is associated with their ad campaign, they take offense to it. MasterCard is no different than any other company in regards to trying to stay as far away from a bad thing or horrible event than any other company.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[jc42]

So what in that qualifies as "sick and offensive"? I'd bet that most of the American Express folks laughed at it, just before they picked up their phone to call the company lawyers. It's fairly clever and well done. But I couldn't spot anything that even the most rigid fundamentalist type could find offensive.

Anyone want to enlighten me? Maybe I can learn a bit more about how to offend people ...

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Jim Starx]

Bubblewrap

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

That happend in WWI when Bayer, a german company, lost it when they supported the losing side.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[sjames]

Actually, that's just what expensive corporate lawyers would like you to believe.

It is true that a trademark can be lost if it is not vigorously protected from infringement. However, since satire isn't an infringement, there is nothing to protect it from when satire happens.

The various bullying C&D letters sent out are nothing more or less than willful bullying.

If there is any doubt about the nature of a trademark's use, the various lawyers could just as easily send out a letter noting the existance of the parody, and reminding the author or publisher of the parody that while parody is perfectly legal, they should take steps to assure that they do not cross the line by going into (for example) the banking and credit business using that parody. There is no need to threaten gloom and doom or willfully ignore important portions of trademark law other than to bully the recipiant of the letter.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

Trademark Notice: Kleenex® is a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark Corporation and may not be used for any purpose without the express written agreement of Kimberly-Clark.

And if search Sony's site they clame a trademark on the word walkman.

I would search the USPTO db but I am unable to reach it at this time.

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfini ty /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_ViewStatic-Start;sid=zxRCWk 5SqQhCCQ4vlpVIUQFDUCWg3zfhypI=?page=%2fstatic%2fco pyright%2fsy_legal_copyright%2eisml

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so it does not matter if they are abuseing the law just as long as they are getting their way?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

Bubble Wrap® is a registered trademark of Sealed Air Corporation.

http://www.sealedair.com/products/protective/bub bl e/bubble.html

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

First - That's a load of bullshit. There is no such thing as protecting your trademark. As long as you continue to use it in the course of business it is protected. It is an urban legend, an old wives tales, general bullshit. There has never been a case where a company failed to protect its trademark and lost.

Second - Trademark infringement can only come when another company uses your trademark in business. Just using the name of a company in a joke is not trademark infringement any more than me typing MasterCard right here is not infringement.

Third - Contrary to the moron AC below Kleenex still holds its trademark. You will never see Scotties Kleenex - they are called Scotties Tissues. People can refer to common items (like band aids, kleenex, vasoline, etc) but when a company sells a similar product they can not use that name. Just go to a grocery store and that is plain to see.

Fourth - This has nothing to do with trademarks. this is about Copyrights. You don't trademark a commercial. It is copyrighted. Parody is allowed under copyright law and this is surely a parody.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

"Aspirin was first sold as a powder. In 1915, the first Aspirin tablets were made. Interestingly, Aspirin ® and Heroin ® were once trademarks belonging to Bayer. After Germany lost World War I, Bayer was forced to give up both trademarks as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919."

That has nothing to do with not protecting trademarks. It has to do with losing a war.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent links to the wrong joke. The offending one is about the shootings at Columbine. Columbine Joke

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Lord Dimwit Flathead]

Dumpster?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[ahrenritter]

No, the sick and offensive one was the parody of a MasterCard ad based on the Columbine tragedy. Check elsewhere in the comments for links.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[plumby]

Don't know if any of these are in the last 30 years (or even if they're true, but hey it's the Internet so I can publish what I like and claim that it is).

Anyway, it's quite interesting reading, from what seems to be a law firm's website, around protecting/losing trademarks.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[jc42]

Oh, yeah; I remember that one. It truly qualifies as "sick and offensive". And, of course, Iaughed again when I read it this time.

I wonder if there's a way to get the AmEx execs involuntarily submitted to a treatment program for the humor-impaired?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Wooo]

McDonald's lost the right to use their famous golden arches in South Africa because another local South African company beat them to it. More info here

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[andreMA]

"Sick and Offensive" apparently applied to the earlier MasterCard parody, not the current Amex one.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[guile*fr]

aspirin was lost because it was owned by Bayers. it was I believe part of the Versailles' Treaty.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than people citing Kleenex as an example of a lost trademark, I've never heard anyone refer to a tissue as a Kleenex.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Almost-Retired]

Except thats its actually spelled Asperin...

Cheers, Gene

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Almost-Retired]

And even I (shudder) can be wrong, obviously its "Aspirin"

Thats what I get for letting my mind outrun my fingers on the keyboard. At my age, a fast typing session is too much exersize and I get winded...

Cheers, Gene

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Escalator

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[blair1q]

>The various bullying C&D letters sent out are nothing more or less than willful bullying.

Corporate executives are often lawyers themselves, and if they caught their legal staff billing hours for unnecessary actions and destroying the company's public relations for no tangible or intangible benefit, it'd be open season on trussed-up corporate shysters for the ivory-tower clan.

Too many companies have been burned by this for it to be something they don't know will burn them.

So either they're plug stupid, or there's a purely CYA legal reason.

And that can go either way in a big corporation.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[gurps_npc]

I strongly agree with everything you said. There is no need to bully if you just want to protect your rights, you can give the polite letter you mentioned.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[sir_cello]

Under UK trademark law, if you send a letter threatening legal action for trademark infringement, and turns out that there was no infringement, you can sue the trademark owner for "threats action". What the trademark owner can do is send a "nice" letter "simply" stating the presence of trademark rights and so on.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Aneurysm9]

First - a trademark can be lost through a process known as "genericide," which happens, among other ways, when a mark is not protected against uses other than those by the owner identifying a good or service sold in commerce. See The Murphy Door Bed Co., Inc. v. Interior Sleep Systems, Inc., 874 F.2d 95 (2d Cir. 1989) ("In finding a lack of genericness, the district court was influenced by Murphy's efforts at policing it's mark"). It is only when a mark has "entered the public domain beyond recall" that policing is of no consequence. See King Seely Thermos Co. v. Aladdin Indus., Inc., 321b F.2d 577, 579 (2d Cir. 1963). Second - It is using a trademark in commerce in such a way that creates a likelihood of confusion as to the source of goods or services that constitutes trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. 1114. Because "commerce" has such a broad definition thanks to Congress and the courts wanting to include everything under the sun in the Commerce Clause power, telling a joke could constitute using a mark in commerce if, for example, it was told by a comedian at a performance for which he was receiving money. Third - Kimberly-Clark still holds a valid trademark on Kleenex because they have policed the mark. You will notice that they are never simply "Kleenex," but always "Kleenex brand facial tissue." Just like the old "You can't Xerox a Xerox on a Xerox but we don't mind at all if you copy a copy on a Xerox copier" ad. It's all about ensuring that the mark is associated with a particular source of a type of product and not the type of product in general. Fourth - If MasterCard and AmEx have registered trademarks, they need to assert trademark infringement as much as they would need to assert copyright infringement related to the style and structure of the ads. I think it highly unlikely that any copyright theory would succeed given the history of parody and fair use in the copyright jurisprudence. Given the Mattel v. MCA decision about that well known "German street walker" (er, Barbie) I doubt that a trademark claim would succeed either. That doesn't mean that neither of them should at least be brought to the attention of the potential infringer. Remember, fair use is an affirmative defense. When you plead fair use you are, in essense, saying, "yeah, I did infringe, but you can't hold me liable because what I did is protected." If your argument doesn't fly with the judge, you're going to be liable.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

willfully ignore important portions of trademark law? holders of marks are also protected against "disparagement" if they can show that it harms their business.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[cayenne8]

"Other than people citing Kleenex as an example of a lost trademark, I've never heard anyone refer to a tissue as a Kleenex."

Well, depends somewhat on where you live. In the south in the US, it takes place quite often. Kleenex is generic for any type tissue you could blow your nose on...even toilet paper might apply if that's all you had. Down here..Coke is synonymous with any carbonated beverage. If someone asks you "Hey, you want a coke"...it is usually followed by "What flavor?"

BandAid...any adhesive bandage you put on a cut.

I once had a girlfriend from Iowa in highschool....took me awhile to figure out what the hell she was talking about when she said she'd like some 'pop'. Hahaha...

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[raju1kabir]

McDonald's lost the right to use their famous golden arches in South Africa because another local South African company beat them to it.

In Iraq, too?

In Australia, Burger King is called Hungry Jack's for exactly the same reason.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[MarkGriz]

Perhaps the fact that no one company can be named is a measure of the ferocity with which trademarks have been defended in the past 30 or more years.

Whether or not they must defend against an obvious parody to protect their mark is debatable. But if you were the lawfirm, would you pass up the opportunity to bill your client, regardless?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

Yes, I would. But than again I have ethics which may explain why I am not a lawyer.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

Genericide is not a legal term but a marketing term. The case you quote has to do with a company not policing its trademark when it is used in business by other businesses. We discussed that already. That has nothing to do with this case.

A joke is never commerce. Your example is a joke. A comedian using a trademark name in an act in no way would confuse people to think that that joke is a product of the company holding the trademark. That might be the lamest argument I have ever read. Do you think that every stand up comedian gets permission from every company that it jokes about. Absolute nonsense.

Policing a trademark means not allowing other businesses to use the trademark in business. How many times do I need to repeat this?

Copyright on the other requires no such policing. It is in no way similar to Trademarks. It is covered under different laws and maintainted by the Library of Congress not the US Patent and Trademark Office.

You have made no substantial rebuttals to any of my points. Policing trademarks has nothing to do with people using a trademark in a conversation. It is an abuse of the system to even suggest it.

And learn how to format your posts.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

Perhaps the fact that no one has a picture of God is a measure of the ferocity with which God defends himself from photographers.

Point being - absence of proof is not proof in itself.

Companies must defend their trademarks when other companies use them and it must be in a fair manner. The idea is that McDonald's can't let Wendy's get away with selling a Big Mac and then sue Burger King for doing the same (without licensing the name of course). Once you let one company get away with using it in their business then you have to let everybody else use it. Of course, this has nothing to do with this case at all.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps more importantly, the German Bayer Corp (Bayer means "Bavaria") lost the name "Bayer" to an American company. The names were expropriated during the war, and then the theft was codified by treaty. Bayer in Germany recently bought back the American name.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[starm_]

yeah and in some cases if you exagerate in enforcing your trademark, and send C&D when no one is breaking the law. In the future when you realy want to protect your trademark by using letters to someone you already sent exagerated letters, the person can argue than since it received non sensicle letters from your party all letters are void.
IAN...

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Aneurysm9]

There is no such thing as protecting your trademark. As long as you continue to use it in the course of business it is protected. It is an urban legend, an old wives tales, general bullshit. There has never been a case where a company failed to protect its trademark and lost.

The case you quote has to do with a company not policing its trademark when it is used in business by other businesses.

Which is it? Do you have rights to exclude another user so long as you use the mark in commerce or can you lose those rights by not policing the mark. Your posts seem to imply both.

For the record, I never said that a comedian using a mark in a joke would constitute infringement. Infringement requires use in commerce that generates a liklihood of confusion as to the source of goods or services. I merely said that it could be construed as use in commerce, which would probably be enough to survive a motion for summary judgment and cause more trouble than it should as liklihood of confusion is a question of fact.

A copyright owner does have an obligation to police its rights in order to mitigate damages prior to suit and avoid limitation to statutory damages. I don't believe I ever suggested that a copyright could be forfeited by lack of enforcement. Avoiding forfeiture is not the only reason to enforce your rights.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[zvar]

Formicia and sheetrock to name two.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

Protecting your trademark and policing it are two different things. You don't lose your trademark just by your name being common place. You don't have to actively attack people who use your name to protect it. Policing it means not allowing other companies to use it in the course of business.

Protect in this instance means - to maintain the status or integrity of

While police in this case means - detect and prosecute violations of rules and regulations

Do you understand the distinction?

A joke can never be construed as being used in commerce. You are not selling the joke. If the comedian took the joke and wrote it down and called it a "MasterCard joke" and sold it then it would be using it is commerce and even then it might not be infringement because MasterCard doesn't hold a trademark on jokes.

If MasterCard and AmEx have registered trademarks, they need to assert trademark infringement as much as they would need to assert copyright infringement related to the style and structure of the ads.

Now that seems to me like you said that they have to pursue copyright infringers in order to keep their copyright much like they have to with Trademarks. This is not true. A copyright never loses his copyright even if he never sues anybody.

This case has absolutely no weight and arguing about it is silly. You will never see this case even get close to court. It was a C&D letter to cover their ass in case of fallout of being associated with a joke told in bad taste.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[jafiwam]

And from Deja.com (now Google Groups)

The original posting

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[iminplaya]

From your previous post, There is no such thing as protecting your trademark.

From this post. Companies must defend their trademarks...

Really?? I'm stuck in an infinite loop trying to figure this out...Is it like saying
1. The second statement is true.
2. The first statement is false.
?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Aneurysm9]

You're right that arguing about this case is silly as it will never get to court. I guess I just love to argue, which is probably why I'm wasting three years of my life in law school.

As for the distinction between policing and protecting, it seems to me that they're different faces of the same coin. You may need to "detect and prosecute violations" to "maintain the status or integrity" of your mark. Like you say, it doesn't make much difference in this case, but it does matter to companies who rely on their trademark to ensure differentiation in a competitive marketplace.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Ungrounded Lightning]

McDonald's lost the right to use their famous golden arches in South Africa because another local South African company beat them to it.

Ditto in Canada - but I hear they bought 'em out.

(Total clone of system, mark, etc. - except add a little red maple leaf over the point where the two arches cross.)

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Jim Starx]

It also a generic term that's been used on the packaging of similar products that aren't name brand. They have no control over it anymore.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[RazzleFrog]

They are the different faces but as a law student you know that small distinctions mean everything. To give a clearer example:

Band-Aid is commonly used when referring to bandages. Just the other day we referred to a small system change as a band aid. J&J does not need to worry about that common use. They don't have to go out of their way to make sure that band aid is not used in things like TV shows, articles, etc. in order to protect their trademark. Their trademark is safe even though everybody uses it.

If Nexcare or some other bandage company comes along and starts calling their product Band-Aids instead of bandages THEN J&J has to go after them. They have to police to make sure nobody is breaking the rules.

Yes policing does protect your trademark but protecting is not just policing. It is that old man evolved from monkeys but monkeys didn't evolve from man thing.

I would think that as a law student you would already be going nuts with these tiny logistic arguments. As an accountant with a strong business law background I know it very well.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[DAldredge]

Can you provide an example of those products?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[edrain]

Yup.
Try this. :)

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Ed Drone]

Actually, the parodies don't use the trademarks, but the form of an advertising campaign, so, since ads are copyrighted, "fair use" is in play. If the companies think they can use "priceless" as a trademark, they should check Fox News et al vs Franken. Ed

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[BobTheLawyer]

as an expensive corporate lawyer I'm happy to confirm you're right on this.

Instead of sending a cease and desist letter to (e.g.) a fan who has set up a Buffy website, Fox could offer the fan a restricted license to use the trademark for non-profit-making purposes for a token sum (say $1). Once there's a license, there's no infringement and the trademark holder is in no danger of losing their rights.

The only reason this doesn't happen is a combination of laziness and machismo.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm stuck in an infinite loop trying to figure this out.

Your parser is broken.

Defend != Protect

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[dinojemr]

No, the parent was correct. He posted a link to the joke that American Express was complaining about, not the one which Mastercard was complaining about.
There were two incidences of this, one with each company.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

What in that joke qualifies as "humor"?

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[andynz]

I find the existence of a 'sealed air corporation' highly amusing. Putting air into plastic bags has to be a fairly demoralising market niche. I wasn't aware they had the trademark on bubble wrap, I thought they just did the bigger bags of air.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, fair use is an affirmative defense. When you plead fair use you are, in essense, saying, "yeah, I did infringe, but you can't hold me liable because what I did is protected." If your argument doesn't fly with the judge, you're going to be liable.

That's not true. Fair Use is by definition not infringement (read the law). Fair Use is a restriction on the scope of copyright -- if it's Fair Use, the public never gave the copyright holder permission to restrict that use in the first place! You can't meaningfully plead "Fair Use" and "I did infringe" with respect to the same use because it is a contradiction in terms. It's analogous to pleading "innocent" and "guilty" at the same time to the same murder.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Spazmania]

There has never been a case where a company failed to protect its trademark and lost.

The most commonly cited example would Sterling Drug Inc, which in 1921 lost the trademark on "Aspirin" when the name was ruled generic.

Kleenex still holds its trademark.

Kleenex and Xerox are typically cited as companies which -almost- lost their trademarks the same way Aspirin was lost and likely would have without a costly late-game defense.

This has nothing to do with trademarks.

According to the cease and desist letter, it has to do with trademarks and nothing else. The complaint was about the use of trademarks, not about copyrights.

Its also worth noting that parody is only specifically addressed in US -copyright- law. There is no similarly explicit exemption in trademark law.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Aneurysm9]

That's not true. Fair Use is by definition not infringement (read the law). Fair Use is a restriction on the scope of copyright -- if it's Fair Use, the public never gave the copyright holder permission to restrict that use in the first place!

I have read 17 U.S.C. 107 many times. In fact, I was reading it again for class tomorrow just before reading your post. Section 107 is a limitation on 17 U.S.C. 106 and says that "Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, ... is not an infringement of copyright." What it doesn't say is that the acts which may be characterised as fair use are not infringement. Copying a portion of a book for scholarly comment is likely to be found a fair use, but until it is the copying is still an exercise of one of the exclusive rights under section 106 and an infringement. The way to look at it is this, if you fail to convince the judge or jury that your use was "fair" under section 107, you have infringed the exclusive rights granted under section 106. It is only when you have convinced a judge or jury that your use was "fair" that it is rendered noninfringing.

You can't meaningfully plead "Fair Use" and "I did infringe" with respect to the same use because it is a contradiction in terms. It's analogous to pleading "innocent" and "guilty" at the same time to the same murder.

No, it's not analogous to pleading "innocent" and "guilty," but is more analogous to pleading "not responsible by reason of insanity." You're saying, I committed an act that would otherwise be unlawful, but there is a justification/excuse which prevents this punishment from attaching as a result of my actions.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[jonadab]

> Other than people citing Kleenex as an example of a lost trademark, I've
> never heard anyone refer to a tissue as a Kleenex.

Other than on the internet, I've only one time in my life ever heard anyone
call a kleenex a "tissue". I remember it vividly because it took me a long
time to figure out what she meant.

Around here (central Ohio), tissue is an art supply, a sort of really thin
brightly coloured paper used for children's crafts and stuff, a bit like
crepe paper only thinner, and it comes in square or rectangular sheets rather
than long skinny rolls. kleenex are things you wipe your nose with. (While
we're at it, soda is an ingredient in cookies. No, I'm not going to start
calling it "sodium bicarbonate" all the time just so you can call pop "soda";
it's not; there's no soda in it, and there never was. That's carbonation
that makes it fizz, not soda. If it fizzed because of soda, it would taste
quite utterly nasty.)

The most popular brand of kleenex is Puffs. About one out of every five
people actually knows that Kleenex is technically a brand name also, and
*nobody* as far as I am aware reserves the term for only referring to that
brand (in speech, I mean; in print is another matter, since editors are
taught how to cleanse writing of trademarks prior to publication).

As far as I'm aware, Kleenex has not lost their trademark, because they've
managed to keep people from using it generically *in print* (or of course
in advertising), which seems to be key for trademark law. But it is so
much the dominant term in speech that I can't think of a synonym, unless
you count the phrase "facial tissue", which nobody actually uses except in
situations where they legally can't get away with calling a kleenex a kleenex,
such as in print or in advertising.

So, _legally_, Kleenex is a trademark, but informally, it's used as a word.

Jello is in *almost* the same boat, except that Jello has a viable synonym
("gelatin", which is what Jello was short for in the first place). But
nobody ever calls it "gelatin" except in print when the editor says they
can't call it "jello". Thermos is in _exactly_ the same boat as Kleenex;
there's no other word, no suitable synonym for "thermos", so if you're in
a situation where you have to avoid the trademark, you end up describing
the thing's function or its physical characteristics in order to communicate
what sort of thing it is that you're talking about. "I had a Thermos full
of soup" becomes "I had an insulated container full of soup in my lunchbox",
which is awkward in the extreme. It would be nice if there were a legal
precedent for the government to purchase a trademark from a corporation in
order to liberate it for the good of everyone, in cases where there's no
real synonym. It wouldn't be right to just confiscate the mark (well, not
in cases like Kleenex and Thermos where the word was nonsense before the
company created the product; Windows and Office are another matter), but
the English language could really use the word. With all the tax money
we spend on stupid stuff, I'd be quite happy to have the government shell
out a couple hundred million to buy the word kleenex out of trademark hock;
that would be something genuinely useful, and Kleenex or their parent
company or whoever could spend the money advertising a new brand name;
a couple hundred million ought to buy quite a strong brand recognition
for them, methinks -- stronger than "Kleenex", which is in serious danger
of being considered generic by a lot of people.

As far as trademarks that have actually been lost, I don't know, but the
legal departments of corporations seem to consider it a real possibility.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[sjames]

So either they're plug stupid, or there's a purely CYA legal reason.

Or, they are perfectly aware of what is going on and WANT the legal staff to bully satirists. Consider, that we're a lot more likely to hear about cases where the bullying fails. We have little idea how many times such bullying has been successful. It is entirely possible that on the balance they feel that the benefits of the successes outweigh the risks of the failures we hear about.

For many executives, profit and loss don't matter as long as they can present a public image that will keep stock prices high until they are ready to bail out.

Another alternative explaination is that in large companies, it is typical that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. At the executive level in a $30 billion company, who will notice $100 thousand where some percentage of that IS valid, especially when the report from legal will no doubt be well stacked in favor of the valid expenses.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[dave420]

But when Microsoft does it, it's EVIL!

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[fatphil]

Do what?
They /can/ use priceless as a service mark, as they have it as a registered service mark. Whether they should ever have been able to get a service mark on a common English word is another matter entirely.

FP.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[mph]

Thermos is in _exactly_ the same boat as Kleenex; there's no other word, no suitable synonym for "thermos"

Sure there is: "Dewar." Shorter, same number of syllables. Yeah, nobody uses it to describe ordinary "thermos" (and similar) bottles, but it's a perfectly good and appropriate word.

And "tissue" is a good word for "Kleenex" and is in common use where I live. What your people call "tissue" is called "tissue paper" by everyone I know, and that's what it says on the package. Likewise, you don't have to choose between "soda" and "sodium bicarbonate." You can call it "baking soda," just like it says on the box, and just like everyone I know does.

You seem to be confusing "There's no good word..." with "People around me don't bother using another word..."

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[sjames]

Parody and Satire generally don't meet the requirements of disparagement. To prove disparagement, you'd have to show that the satirist could reasonably expect that people wouldn't realize it was a parody.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[jonadab]

> Sure there is: "Dewar."

Never heard of it.

> You can call it "baking soda,"

That's silly. It's used for lost of other things besides baking. In fact,
it was the popular use of soda in bathroom toys, an application that has
absolutely nothing to do with baking, that lead the dude to mistakenly think
there was soda in the pop and incorrectly dub it "soda pop". The truth is,
it's not soda that makes it pop but rather carbonation. Soda is also used
as a cleaning agent, and sometimes it's also used for its mild alkalinity.
Also it's used as an odor absorber and as a whitener. And yeah, in baking,
but calling it "baking soda" would be like calling sugar "baking sugar".

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Mycroft_VIII]

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, ... is not an infringement of copyright."
No, it's not analogous to pleading "innocent" and "guilty," but is more analogous to pleading "not responsible by reason of insanity." You're saying, I committed an act that would otherwise be unlawful, but there is a justification/excuse which prevents this punishment from attaching as a result of my actions.

To me it seems your second paragraph still supports a leagle 'excuse' for infringement even though your quote makes it clear fair use is NOT an infringement.
In the U.S.A. it's supposed to be innocent untill proven guilty (in theory at least) not the other way around.
Your last paragraph seems to imply fair use is a way to avoid consequences of unauthorized copying of a coprighted work.
Fair use is not an exscuse for doing something otherwise illeagle it's simply not illeagle in the first place.
I'm sorry if I'm not being totaly clear on the difference, or if it seems I'm playing semantics games when there is little if any practical difference. It's just that I do feel that some of these distinctions are important. Many other things like this bother me as words and perceptions DO matter.
E.G.:
If people constantly hear reference to the rights granted by the Bill Of Rights rather than protected, they are far more likely to accept their being whittled away.

Mycroft

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Aneurysm9]

It does seem like semantics, but it can have important consequences. Your example of the Bill of Rights is very apt. All rights are inherent in all persons and the Bill of Rights only clarifies that the Federal government has no power in these areas. The distinction between fair use as a defense and fair use as noninfringement can similarly have important consequences. What immediately springs to mind is preemption of state law claims. I'm not entirely clear on the intricacies, but I was discussing the issue with a fellow student while he was preparing for the Cardozo/BMI moot court competition and the reasoning behind his argument seemed to be that if fair use was not a defense but simply noninfringement then the Copyright Act would not preempt state contract law claims to the extent that copyright owners attempt to limit fair use by contract. If a copyright owner can limit fair use by EULA then fair use is dead for all intents and purposes.

Re:Both sites already slow, here they are

[Mycroft_VIII]

Now why do I feel like the phrase, "damned if you do damned if you don't" aplies.

Mycroft

A little slow...

[bbrazil]

Web site hosting for anybody: $10/month and up

./ed after just one comment: Priceless

Re:A little slow...

[gandalf013]

Nope, getting the "spelling" of /. incorrect: priceless :)

Re:A little slow...

[MostlyHarmless]

./ed after just one comment: Priceless

-bash: ./ed: No such file or directory

. . .

~$ watch -n 10 w3m slashdot.org

Re:A little slow...

[CaseyB]

Try 'cd /bin' first.

If that doesn't work, you must be using some newfangled "visual" editor instead. Those waste a lot of line printer paper.

Re:A little slow...

[Tackhead]

> > Web site hosting for anybody: $10/month and up
> > ./ed after just one comment: Priceless
>
>-bash: ./ed: No such file or directory

Be thankful you have a terminal emulator that'll let you echo > ./ed and write it yourself.

What do you expect for $10/month? ed? vi? EMACS?

(There's a "Priceless" joke in here somewhere, Bobdammit.)

Re:A little slow...

[Ripplet]

./ obviously being the parody site of /.

Hey you there on ./ decease and resist ... or something!

Re:A little slow...

[KnarfO]

Decistance is futile!

All your ./'s are belong to us!

Re:A little slow...

[SeregonSandgrain]

Web hosting:
$10/month

Religious wars on which editor is better:
$20 in bandwidth

Not having either text editor on your host:
Priceless

There are somethings money can't buy. For everything else, there's CasterMard.

Re:A little slow...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia ./ browses You.

He's safe

[PingKing]

I'm not a lawyer but I'd bet the guy is pretty safe. Satire is protected from accusations of copyright infringement and IMO there's not a judge in the land that wouldn't view the AmEx parodies as just that.

Re:He's safe

[d88-jwn]

Hm, so according to USA Law, you can slander a company (or person?) in any way you want as long as it is deemed to be satire. Is it not just the Copyright that is protected in this way could he not be sued for "slander" (in lack of juridical term).

Re:He's safe

[Mazzie]

Also you have to look at the other side of the coin. Can you imagine this country, in this day and age, if true satire/parody was not protected?

Re:He's safe

[R2.0]

In order for speech to be "slander", it must be untrue. Since parodies don't purport to be truth, they are not covered.

Oh, and you are really talking about libel, which is written. Slander is verbal.

Please get your terminology straight before talking out of your ass.

Re:He's safe

[moviepig.com]

Indeed, an obvious instance of parody, and therefore equally obviously protected.

Why, then, is there no mention of any counterclaim against MasterCard for a frivolous lawsuit (which, I think, covers such plainly deliberate harrassment)?

(I'm no trial-judge, but I pay one on TV...)

Re:He's safe

[warrax_666]

Um... correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't it trademark infringement that's protected? (Or is it both trademark and copyright infringement?)

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because there was no lawsuit. They sent him a C&D, which might have threatened a lawsuit, but they never filed an actual suit.

Re:He's safe

[Alien Being]

Oh, and you are really talking about libel, which is written. Slander is verbal. Please get your terminology straight before talking out of your ass.

Hmm, out his ass? Slander, no. Libel, no. Must be ... splatter... yeah that's it.

Re:He's safe

[Profane MuthaFucka]

No, you can't slander anyone with satire, because satire is defined specifically NOT to be slander.

Re:He's safe

[arkanes]

It's both, fair use provisions for copyright include protections for parody and satire.

Re:He's safe

[Igmuth]

Well, possibly, because there was no mention of a lawsuit by MasterCard. Just a plain C&D letter from the lawyers. (Possibly becuase they know they don't have a leg to stand on)

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it wouldn't surprise me if a jury got hung up on the fact that he parodied *Columbine*, in a way that makes him seem sympathetic to the shooters...

Re:He's safe

[RLW]

Slander is making a claim that is know by the speaker to be false, and causes actual damages to another person (or corp. entity) or inhibits that person's ability to make money.
It varies a lot by jurisdiction but that's the basic gist of it.

Re:He's safe

[K8Fan]

As the Supreme Court majority opinion in "2 Live Crew vs. Rose-Acuff Music" said:

Parody, even witless and stupid parody, is deserving of the highest level of protection.

Re:He's safe

[BrynM]

Can you imagine this country, in this day and age, if true satire/parody was not protected?

Mybe I'm becoming a cynical slashdotter, but I really expected the typical slashdot finish to this sentence:

Can you imagine this country, in this day and age, if true satire/parody was not protected? ...oh wait.

Re:He's safe

[Sfing_ter]

Then we'd be France. Mmmmm mayonaise.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and you are really talking about libel, which is written. Slander is verbal. Please get your terminology straight before talking out of your ass.

This distinction is totally obsolete. It's a relic from a time when the spoken word could not be recorded and transmitted in mass. Slander and libel are effectively the same.

Is there any jurisdiction in which the legal consequences of slander and libel differ? If so, why?

I'll pick the right word when I speak, but I don't see any need for hostility toward someone who does not.

Re:He's safe

[esme]

i can't read the linked story now b/c it's slashdotted...

but, there's an interesting wrinkle in the protection of satires: there was a case in the nineties (an o.j. simpson parody in the form of 'cat in the hat'). the case hinged on the fact that satire only lets you use the work you are parodying. i.e., you can't use one work to parody something else.

now, parodying the mastercard stuff is probably ok, since it's the stupid, touchy-feely nature of the ads that's being parodied. but it's important to know that satire isn't a magic wand that lets you do anything you want.

-esme

Re:He's safe

[Rufus88]

In order for speech to be "slander", it must be untrue. Since parodies don't purport to be truth, they are not covered.

This seems like a non-sequitur to me. If it doesn't purport to be truth, then it is, in all likelihood, not true, and therefore it meets that criteria (the one you mentioned) for "slander" (or "libel").

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the person is a public figure. Remember when Larry Flint accused Jerry Falwell of having sex with his mother. Yep, its protected. Thank God.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll thank you to not butcher my language, please. They are different and separate words.

Re:He's safe

[3terrabyte]

My favorite part of all this is that he now has new material to make fun of them with.

Re:He's safe

[Rufus88]

I never claimed they weren't. I was implying that my point applied to both words.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, America has a satirical "President"!

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine this country, in this day and age, if true satire/parody was not protected?

That would be great! We could sue Microsoft for Windows being a bad parody of an OS!

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

"Accused"? Don't you mean "stated the obvious"?

Re:He's safe

[_Sprocket_]

...i.e., you can't use one work to parody something else.

For example, Penny Arcade's parody of American McGee and Strawberry Shortcake.

Re:He's safe

[Surt]

Because a lawsuit isn't the same as the threat of a lawsuit, or a cease and decist letter.

Re:He's safe

[R2.0]

Actually, I was hostile toward the first sentence: "Hm, so according to USA Law, you can slander a company (or person?) in any way you want as long as it is deemed to be satire."
The slander/libel thing was just an illustration of the poster's ignorance of the laws he was commenting on.

As for the actual difference between the two, I'm not sure that there are differences in the penalties. But your post would imply that when slander is recorded and transmitted, it becomes libel, which is not true. Or am I misreading?

Re:He's safe

[R2.0]

Allow me to expand. Slander is when a speaker says something that he knows is untrue but presents it as the truth. There is intent to deceive. Same with libel, which is written.

A parody isn't presented as the truth; there is no intent to deceive. A parody can be mean, cruel, and damaging, but that doesn't make it illegal.

On the other side, people will commit slander and then hide behind the shield of parody, but the MC spoof in question certainly doesn't qualify.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll thank you to not butcher my language

Ack! The split infinitive is butchering me!

Re:He's safe

[chrisbtoo]

[Y]our post would imply that when slander is recorded and transmitted, it becomes libel, which is not true.

IANAL, and IANAAmerican, but my understanding is that a recorded and transmitted slander (for instance, if it happened on a TV show) becomes libel - in Britain, anyway.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the actual difference between the two, I'm not sure that there are differences in the penalties. But your post would imply that when slander is recorded and transmitted, it becomes libel, which is not true. Or am I misreading?

I did not mean to imply such. Your definitions were correct: slander is spoken, libel is written.

I'm looking at the reason for the distinction. These words predate radio but not the printing press. Slander was comparatively minor because of its inability to travel beyond those who heard it. Libel was more serious.

Though I don't remember now how a reporter's written record of an oral statement fits in. Probably the reporter is in the clear, and the speaker has still only committed slander, despite the wider audience.

Nowadays, the distinction is totally meaningless - there's no reason oral statements are less powerful than written ones. Thus, I think "slander" and "libel" can be reasonably called the same.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Even written speech is verbal(of words) - you mean that slander is oral.

Re:He's safe

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

Mybe I'm becoming a cynical slashdotter ...

You beat me to it, you insensitive clod!

Actually it doesn't take MUCH imagination the way our Bushie neo-conservative overlords have been stomping on basic civil liberties for the last few years and I, for one, salute them ... with one finger extended.

Re:He's safe

[carlos_benj]

This seems like a non-sequitur to me. If it doesn't purport to be truth, then it is, in all likelihood, not true, and therefore it meets that criteria...

I believe the parent meant to imply that the slander/libel must be told as a truth. I think there's also a consideration of malicious intent, but I may be wrong...

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and you are really talking about libel, which is written. Slander is verbal.

Please get your terminology straight before talking out of your ass.

So would that count as slander?

Re:He's safe

[Aneurysm9]

There's a great case on the issue where Jerry Fallwel sued Hustler for a parody of a Compari ad suggesting that Fallwel's "first time" (not explicitly referencing sex, but this was Hustler) was in an outhouse with his mother and a goat. Hustler was found to be protected because it was parody, the ad said it was parody, and anybody with half a brain reading it could tell that it was a parody and did not really intend to state factually that Jerry Fallwel had sex with his mother and a goat in an outhouse.

We in the U.S. also have these lovely distinctions to be made between "public officials" "public figures" and "private individuals" that affect the standards a publisher must adhere to in order to avoid libel charges. Basically, in the case of a public official or public figure, all you have to do is not wantonly and willfully disregard the truth or falsity of what your publishing. Even if it isn't true but you had some reason to think it might be, you're probably ok.

Re:He's safe

[Aneurysm9]

That was Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994). It should be read by anyone commenting on copyright and parody before posting as it is the seminal parody case currently controlling U.S. law.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

You are fucking clueless. We started losing our liberties in a bad way when Clinton was in power. It's just that its far easier to blame Bush, so all you cheeseball liberal treehuggers do that. Blame yourself, you elected Clinton.

Re:He's safe

[brre]

libel, which is written. Slander is verbal.

Both libel and slander are verbal.
Verbal includes written and spoken word.

This is a common error, and appears to be
driven by avoiding the dread word "oral".
If so, "spoken" is a perfectly good synonym.

So you mean: libel is written, slander is spoken.

Please get your terminology straight before
orally expessing yourself out of your anus.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Soviet Russia, is that you?

Re:He's safe

[HokieJP]

Dude, I gotta step up on this one. The name of the case is:

LUTHER R. CAMPBELL aka LUKE SKYYWALKER, et al., PETITIONERS v. ACUFF ROSE MUSIC, INC.

according to Cornell's Legal Information Institute. I point this out because (1) it is funny, and (2) while I could care less about 2 live crew, to mangle the name of Roy Acuff's music company is something of a sin in where I come from.

Re:He's safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Is Latin your first language?

Re:He's safe

[HokieJP]

On further review, I think this quote is spurious. Searching the text, I can't find the words 'witless' or 'stupid' in either of the two opinions filed.

Re:He's safe

[dave420]

You have satire/parody??

Brad needs a lawyer

[ptomblin]

What Brad needs, instead of writing sarcastic responses himself, is to get a lawyer to write a letter pointing out to these pinheads that satire is constitutionally protected, and if they don't want to make asses of themselves and get laughed out of court like Fox News did against Al Franken, they should shut the fuck up.

Preferably in those exact words.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[jdifool]

Well, this is what he did, basically, though with slightly different words... :)

You don't need a lawyer when your common sense is enough to protect you... or at least you shouldn't need it.

Regards,
jdif

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[lukewarmfusion]

Nah, I don't think he's willing to take them that seriously. He's right that these letters are not all that serious themselves, but mostly scare tactics.

All he has to do is demonstrate knowledge/awareness of the law, his rights, etc. and they'll back off. He's done nothing wrong and they know it - so their threats are empty and he calls them on it.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Ami Ganguli]

You're probably right, but think there's something wrong when you're compelled to spend money on a lawyer every time somebody makes a stupid threat.

If he's confidident enough about his position to write the response himself then more power to him.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[luckyXIII]

The only people who win when we need lawyers to articulate a simple statmement of existing laws are the lawyers themselves. He seems to have a good grasp of the laws and precedents, so why can't he respond himself?

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Colz Grigor]

If he should do it in those exact words, he doesn't really need a lawyer now, does he?

What was your fee, anyway?

::Colz Grigor

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[ptomblin]

Many lawyers will write stuff like this for free. Some years ago the Canadian Olympic Committee sent Orienteering Ontario a letter saying that the logo we were using for our sport infringed the stick figure logos that they'd been using since 198x. Well, what they didn't count on was that one of the members of the Canadian national Orienteering team was a lawyer, so he wrote back a letter that basically said we got the logo from the World Orienteering Championships of 197x, and they could stuff their claim up their collective asses, and we never heard from them again. So they went after some guy named Olympus for calling his pizza restaurant "Olympic Pizza" instead.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[AndroidCat]

"First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Of course, you have to pick your battles. You have to be careful when you poke a large organization with lots of lawyers and no sense of humour. (Note to self: fix up site to be "more poking".)

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[cwhicks]

I am sure all the lawyers are well aware of the legality of the parodies. Their hope is that the person receiving the cease and desist does not.
You'll note that after the Mastercard incident, nothing more was heard from the lawyers, as will happen here.

Why waste money paying your own whores, when simply rubbing their face in it accomplishes the same thing.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[smack_attack]

I remember that, it happened in Savannah, GA during the 1996 Olympics hosted by Atlanta. The best part is the guy changed his business by adding one l little line to the 'c' at the end of Olympic, changing the name to Olympia.

A judge ruled in his favor when ACOG tried to sue him again.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Gulik]

What Brad needs, instead of writing sarcastic responses himself, is to get a lawyer to write a letter pointing out to these pinheads that satire is constitutionally protected...

This presumes that the aforementioned pinheads really don't know that his parody is constitutionally protected, which is somewhat unlikely. They know that the charges in their C&D are groundless, but figure that he will be cowed just because he got a letter from a lawyer. He's disabusing them of that notion.

Now, if they're dumb enough to actually bring suit on these charges, I'm sure he'll get himself a lawyer. Hell, there will probably be a pro-bono line outside his house -- who wouldn't want to get a slam-dunk against American Express on their resume?

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad Brad wasn't idiotic enough to let himself be provoked into the lawyer arms-race that this sort of fearmongering is designed to produce. When going against a large corporation's battery of lawyers, that's a fool's investment.

What Brad needs, instead of mealymouthed protest and armchair ballsiness, is acknowledgement and support for his chosen course of action.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[ptomblin]

which is somewhat unlikely

Back when Fox News tried to C&D Al Franken's book, I assumed, like everybody else in the world, that Fox's lawyers were actually graduates of law schools that teach things like that, but we were all wrong. Fox, being one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, evidently has a legal staff who all got their law degrees at Joe's Garage and Lawer Stuff Skool. You should hear Al Franken's own description of what happened when they went to court - the judge literally laughed when he told that not only don't they have a case, but if they persist they're very likely to find out that "Fair and Balanced" isn't trademarkable.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Mazzie]

Law schools are pumping out more lawyers than the economy can support. I think the new trend of sending out thousands of cease and desist letters is the law firm form of telemarketing, phishing, or even spamming.

I think they look for a mega-response. If they get a response from a company written by a big law firm it tells a lot about what the company has to lose, and how big their bank account is.

IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[AndroidCat]

Every time the Olympics come to a city, they have lawyers run around threatening all the long-established Greek restaurants, travel companies, etc. Anyone know how they managed to obtain obtained such an overarching trademark/ownership on that word? I understand Zeus wants a word with them.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[jdifool]

True enough.

But the real power of his answer is that he made a parody of this cease-and-desist letter, hence making the point even clearer.

It's just like asking them to stick their fist in their ass instead of only one finger... :/

Regards,
jdif

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[DoraLives]

You have to be careful when you poke a large organization with lots of lawyers and no sense of humour .

Which gives me to understand that you are aware of large organizations with lots of lawyers that have a sense of humor.

I am but a humble traveler seeking wisdom here on /. Please point me in the direction of these large organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense of humor. I would like to learn from them.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Lehk228]

well the USOC re a bunch of knob gobblers as well, they threatened the makers of "Legent of the five rings" for trademark because the wording for the USOC trademark is "five interlocking rings" the fact that the L5R logo was in a pentagon shape rther than a row of three and a row of two didn't matter, IT LOOKED NOTHING LIKE THE USOC trademark, ever since they pulled that crap i stopped caring about the olympics.... oh yea the corruption, bribes, and steroids don't help either

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[jratcliffe]

From what I've heard, Fox (and particularly their General Counsel's office) knew that the suit didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, knew that they'd lose, and knew that they'd look like idiots if they went forward. They were forced to do it by Bill O'Reilly. Probably shouldn't blame the lawyers on this one, sometimes, as an attorney, you're forced to argue something you don't believe for a second.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[AndroidCat]

I could have said "lots of lawyers and therefore no sense of humour", but the reverse is also true. I'm not sure if it's a cause/effect relationship, and if so, in what order.

Perhaps you should seek a large organization without lots of lawyers and with a sense of humour? Those, while likely rare, at least seem possible.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[BenBenBen]

IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?

It's ironic that you are describing spam-onomics, and the first ever spam was sent by a firm of lawyers.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

What Brad needs is army of lead pipe wielding volunteers and a floorplan of the Master-Slave-Card office.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, FOX "News" almost sued The Simpsons for running a parody news ticker in a couple of their episodes. I guess it hurt their feelings or something.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Dirtside]

I know you meant it as a joke, but, what about Google? They seem to have a pretty good sense of humor.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[eclectro]

So they went after some guy named Olympus for calling his pizza restaurant "Olympic Pizza" instead

Supposedly when the trademark law concerning "Olympics(tm)" was passed, existing businesses that had "Olympic" and places that referenced a geographical feature (like Mt. Olympus here in Utah) were to be "grandfathered" into the law.

However that has not stopped the Olympic committee from taking a number of "Olympic diners" to court to get them to change their name, even though they had rights to their name.

I am sure they were/are hoping small businesses would fold rather than face expensive legal battles.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[DarkSarin]

I wasn't aware that it was Maslow that said that, but it really is ironic. His theories were definitely "pet" theories, and are NOT taken seriously by Applied Psychologists today. Clinicians perhaps, but not AP's

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[flossie]

Please point me in the direction of these large organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense of humor.

Here's one! (You didn't think they were serious, did you?)

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[jeffasselin]

Perhaps being a corporation is the cause, and getting lots of lawyers and losing their sense of humor is the consequence?

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Deflagro]

I'm surprised you guys never went after them for using the stick figures that were originated 10 years earlier. That woulda been funny. Send them a C&D letter back.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Mateito]

> Please point me in the direction of these large
> organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense
> of humor.

Company: Microsoft.
Joke: Microsoft Bob*

*Insert MS product of choice... except for the version of flight simulator that allowed you to crash into the twin towers, the Word fonts that contained symbols from ancient religions a couple of hardline Jews took offence at, and Monster Truck Madness which, other than Pipedream, is about the only fun thing they've every put out.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Stephan Schulz]

Brad is fully competent to handle this case on his own. Not only has he been longer around the net than I have been (which puts him in the bang-path-era), he also is the current chairman of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation and has weathered more censorship/civil liberties suits than most other people or organizations.

I do think his reply is a little bit to serious - maybe an mp3 with really sinister laughing would have been more appriate, or s simple and polite "Fuck off".

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmh. But think of the alternative -- offshoring your paralegals and maybe eventually 'real' lawyers. Then you'd get more C&D letters like this:

Dear respected sir,

With regret I have to inform you about infringement of company XYZ's most excellent product called ZYX. It is with displeasure that we have to take action to protect our valuable trademark, and to litigate your estemeed behind to fullest extent of the established law.
...

Actually, that wouldn't be too bad. Especially watching court videos, with lawyers arguing like twin Simpson's Apus, about some mundane legal precedents.

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[KaledZeCamel]

He doesn't even need to show he knows his rights...

Because "He's done nothing wrong and they know it"

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[schon]

Please point me in the direction of these large organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense of humor. I would like to learn from them.

Here ya go. Not only a large company with lots of lawyers, but a large company of lots of lawyers. :o)

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[ekuns]

FOX "News" almost sued The Simpsons for running a parody news ticker in a couple of their episodes

That's not actually true. If you google for this piece, you will find out it was a strange joke by Matt Groening. Google for groening fresh air fox news

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[dave420]

The lawyers are going to be pretty busy in Athens this year, then :-P

Maybe it'll be a competition in its own right...

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[dave420]

Anyone who listens to Bill O'Reilly deserves everything they get - it's even sweeter when they're lawyers. heh.

Can't Fox do anything right?

Re:Brad needs a lawyer

[bar-agent]

Doesn't it violate lawerly ethics rules to argue a position you don't accept?

This guy has more b*lls than I.

[dexterace]

Soon, he will much have less b*ndwidth...

B*lls??

[Seekerofknowledge]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?

Oh, maybe he means bills, as in dollaz. Meaning, he can afford the law suit?

Either way...

Re:B*lls??

[stratjakt]

Think bells, as in "tinker".

Re:B*lls??

[caino59]

Oh, maybe he means bills, as in dollaz. Meaning, he can afford the law suit?

No....meaning can he afford the bandwidth b*lls....?

Re:B*lls??

[Skye16]

Crap, I thought he was saying bulls. Here I was thinking he was a rancher of some sort.

Re:B*lls??

[pangloss]

This is /. grasshopper. It's a wildcard, not self-censoring ;) Although if you really took the long view, it's a wildcard that even includes self-censorship.

Re:B*lls??

[CaseyB]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?

It looks to me like he was just saying that the guy has more lls, blls, bblls, or bbbbbbbbbblls than himself.

Re:B*lls??

[ajs]

Hey, watch it! A lot of ducks (sorry, waddling-challenged flight-enhanced avians) are quite sensitive about their facial features! They prefer the term "facial extension".

Re:B*lls??

[carnivore302]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

Why do you think he has more bills than you?

Re:B*lls??

[DdJ]

What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?

Of course you can't! You can't mention anything covered by a swim-suit. That'd be like, like, admitting genitals exist! It's only a short step from that to admitting that sex occurs! We can't have that in our media.

Re:B*lls??

[dr_dank]

What, can people not say balls now?

I think he wanted to avoid offending people. He must have heard that there are a lot of people into eunuchs here.

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a short step from that to admitting that sex occurs!

Damn. I suspected as much.

Re:B*lls??

[Eric Savage]

Silly me, I thought he meant bolls, "The seed-bearing capsule of certain plants, especially cotton and flax", and was using it as a subtle reference to testicles.

Re:B*lls??

[cwis42]

Do not forget, about fifty percent of the population doesn't have balls neither.

Re:B*lls??

[SmackCrackandPot]

I thought he was saying bells - I thought he was a professional church bell ringer.

Re:B*lls??

[Sgt York]

Yes I agree, because the media is so devoid of sex these days.

If it weren't for the porno mags under my Dad's filing cabinet, I wouldn't even know what this "sex" things was! I mean heck, June and Ward still sleep in seperate beds!

Oh crap, I said heck, I'm going to hell...

Uh-oh...

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but only 5% of them read /.

And it's "either", not "neither". Actually, you could have just stopped at "balls".

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

you see, he's just demonstrating that he's too chickenshit to curse, as evidence that he lacks b*lls. it's subtle, but now i've explained it.

Re:B*lls??

[skinfitz]

What, can people not say balls now?

In america after J*net J*ackson? ARE YOU CRAZY?? You can be shot for that you know as technically you are a terrorist.

Re:B*lls??

[_Sprocket_]

See that little asterisk? It's an ascii-graphics representation of the word. That is, a ball. Kinda like "se7en".

Re:B*lls??

[stridebird]

Damn, I thought he said barbells. I thought he was a sturgeon.

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. T ate them

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Think bells, as in "tinker".

No, as in "Hell's." What are hell's bells for anyway? Is that like a foghorn so the damned can find their way through all the smoke and brimstone? I thought they were already guided straight to the front desk upon arrival...

But no, he probably meant more of : balls, bells, bills, bolls, and bulls. (and maybe bylls too, on the off chance that it maybe be some obscure, or better yet, obscene word)

Re:B*lls??

[Delphis]

Argh.. people.. just type the fucking words, honestly.

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

No, incorrect usage of the word. Just because most /. readers will never *use* their balls for their intended purpose (mating) does not make them candidates for guarding an Iraq bathhouse. :)

AC

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like "se7en".

What's a seZen?

Or would that be sesevenen? Sounds like some sort of prescription drug. (Consult your doctor. Take only as directed. Side effects include heart disease, liver cancer, and turning into a chicken.)

Re:B*lls??

[flossie]

Do not forget, about fifty percent of the population doesn't have balls neither.

That's not really true
they just get the other half
to carry them on their behalf.
Why else would men have two?

Re:B*lls??

[NanoGator]

"He must have heard that there are a lot of people into eunuchs here."

Probably worried about the Mac people after he heard OSX was built on eunuchs...

Re:B*lls??

[MyFourthAccount]

Hehe, these are the kind of jokes I read /. for. :-D

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

B*llocks. Original author was probably one of those hyper-sensitive Political Correctness crap artists, who not only is afraid to use Big Seven (fuck, shit, cunt, piss, tits, cocksucker, motherfucker... ?), but also afraid to use anything anyone would ever think relates to sex or nudity. But without understanding there's no security by obscurity.

I think it's pathetic someone would use "b*lls"; there's nothing funny or insightful about using wildcards in weird contexts.... and it's obvious she (independent of gender, author was writing like a bitch; no offence to real bitches intended) was just full of (sh)it.

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't understand why it wasn't phrased more directly, to convey exactly what author meant:

This guy sure has bigger dick than I do!

or maybe "This guy sure has larger penis than I", to be more literal. Or, to be gender-neutral, "bigger genitals".

Re:B*lls??

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't that be

(?i:b)*lls

? :-p

Re:B*lls??

[222]

Microsoft obviously must have sent him a S&D letter claiming that "balls" infringes on one of their trademarks....

Re:B*lls??

[nacturation]

Thanks for carrying my breast for me.

Re:B*lls??

[sharkey]

Do not forget, about fifty percent of the population doesn't have balls neither.

Basic grammar appears to be a scarce item as well.

Re:B*lls??

[fatphil]

b*lls is short for _bills_.
The guy has more _legal bills_ than I.

FP.

Google Groups mirror of the post (hopefully)

[lintux]

Can't check the link in the article, but I guess it's about this post. (Message-ID: )

Hell Yeah!

[kwpulliam]

Let's here it for Simple and To the point legal arguments. Both the Amex and the MC responses are great (Though the MC Response was better)

Re:Hell Yeah!

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

The MC response wasn't just better, it was, dare I say, "priceless".

huh? what? who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brad templeton who? humerous reply? what? Huh?

Looks like we're actually going to have to read the article on this one

April Fool's Day?

[__aarimw2106]

Is that 01 Apr in the url the date? Is there any substance to this other than it's a good joke?

you're right!

[arpy]

"This guy has more b*lls than I."

Judging from his tendencey to get sued, he certainly would seem to have more bills than you.

Re:you're right!

[finkployd]

I think the point is he has not been sued yet, only threatened. There is no basis for a case.

Finkployd

Re:you're right!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think the point is he has not been sued yet, only threatened. There is no basis for a case."

The current climate leads people to assume the threats alone are sufficient cause to take action, and many people do, out of fear of the legal process itself.

This translates of course, to "might makes right" and it threatens to alter our society in fundamental ways.

Re:you're right!

[Nplugd]

There is no basis for a case.

Well, it doesn't seem to be a problem for some people...

Re:you're right!

[53cur!ty]

How many cowardly people there are! You would rather subject yourself to a bully...Perhaps if I smile nice they'll leave me alone...

Get a spine. And in this country we don't need a lawyer to represent us, not if we have a brain and a spine. Brad has proven he has both.

Re:you're right!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point is he has not been sued yet, only threatened. There is no basis for a case.

*whoosh*

Posting a funny parody...

[Frennzy]

Posting a funny parody...free.

Getting a C&D letter from MC/AmEx...free.

Having /. do more to take away your free speech than MC or AmEx could ever dream of....priceless.

What to do? What to do?

[StateOfTheUnion]

Are there any site that give advice on how to react to a situation like this? Most that I have seen basically say IANAL and to consult a professional . . . it seems if you don't have money, its hard to get good advice . . .

Re:What to do? What to do?

[tsg]

That's precisely why there isn't any fair use anymore. Yes, it's protected and well documented in the law, but if the deep pockets file a suit anyway, you now have to hire a lawyer to defend your rights and convince a judge that it is fair use. You can be totally in the right and still have it cost you a bunch of money. The threat of litigation is usually enough to stifle most fair uses.

Re:What to do? What to do?

[abb3w]

As I understand it, the reason that most sites giving basic advice add "IANAL/consult a professional" is threefold. First, laws vary from state to state; good advice in California may be very bad advice indeed in Massechusetts. Second and similarly, sometimes the big picture hangs very heavily on a couple of very small but important details; lawyers are well practiced at straining at gnats and swallowing camels, and knowing which is which is not something for an amateur off death row to try. (If you're on death row, what else do you have to do with your time?)

The third reason, however, is the most important. As I understand it, if you give someone legal advice, it both makes you civilly liable for any bad consequences of taking it (IE, you get sued next if they lose the case), and may constitute the criminal offense of practicing law without a license if you are not admitted to the Legal Bar for the jurisdiction your advisee is in. I've heard Arizona is an exception to the second half of that, but I don't know the truth of this.

Many lawyers offer a free initial consultation; if you have a problem, taking advantage of that sounds like a good place to start.

Re:What to do? What to do?

[SpacePunk]

IANAL...

That is why everyone that this happens to should file a counter suit for the cost of the original suits litigation.

Larry Flynt

[Mazzie]

Billion dollar companies still struggling to overcome protections championed by a pornographer: priceless

obligatory

[dj245]

10/month hosting at a craptastic company: $10
Writing an article about trouble with the law: $0
Bandwidth overage charges from being slashdotted: $260
Being parodied in a slashdot posting because your lawsuit stems from the fact that you made a parody of a commercial: Priceless

There are some rights money can't buy. For everything else, there's google cache.

Paying the lawsuit penalties

[AtariAmarok]

What if the guy loses the suit and pays for it with his American Express card?

Re:Paying the lawsuit penalties

[H8X55]

What if the guy loses the suit and pays for it with his American Express card?

It'd be even funnier if he was paying his webhost bills with his MC.

Re:Paying the lawsuit penalties

[sik0fewl]

What if the guy loses the suit and pays for it with his American Express card? Priceless.

Good, another meaningless trial

[Nplugd]

...thank God common sense will make those litigious bastards stop pretty quick. Because you know, when a case's built on bullshit, the whole thing is taken care of in no time. Right ? Right ?

The Joke

[Manip]

200 rounds of ammo: $70 Two ski masks: $24 Two black trench coats: $260 Seeing the 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.

Re:The Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

200 rounds of ammo: $70 Two ski masks: $24 Two black trench coats: $260 Seeing the expression on your classmates' faces right before you blow their heads off -- priceless.

Wow... truly a work of art. Of course, I've always been of the opinion that "Priceless" joke modders should get a C&D Order for complete lack of originality.

Re:The Joke

[Lehk228]

Computer: $1000
Broadband internet: $45/month
Getting modded Troll for no fucking reason: Priceless

Re:The Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Mastercard threatened to sue because it was unfunny, like most of the other Mastercard parodies.

Re:The Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

And this guy is an "inspiration to us all"? That joke sucks. There were people DYING at Columbine, if you'll remember. Innocent schoolkids got shot. Someone remind me: How is that funny?

Re:The Joke

[proj_2501]

read rec.humor.funny's policy on offensive jokes.

there's way worse stuff in the rhf archives and in the internet oracle archives too.

Re:The Joke

[meringuoid]

200 rounds of ammo: $70 Two ski masks: $24 Two black trench coats: $260 Seeing the 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.

I remember that! It was on trenchcoatmafia.org the day after the shooting; turned out rotten.com had set the site up to cash in on some easy notoriety. Millions of people were looking for the legendary Eric Harris Website with all the murder plans on it, so I imagine it seemed like a great idea :-) I remember reading through their collection of hatemail a couple of days later - ah, gallows humour, don't you just love it?

Re:The Joke

[Lord Ender]

Thanks you, fellow slashdotters, for modding this post as informative instead of funny.

Lawyers email address public

[swingheim]

Not to say what you should do with it... *cough* just noted that it was at the bottom of his letter.

Re:Lawyers email address public

[TheLink]

Here's a copy:

Anne E. Naffziger
LEYDIG, VOIT & MAYER, LTD.
Two Prudential Plaza
Chicago, IL 60601
312-616-5600
Fax: 312-616-5700
e-mail: anaffziger@leydig.com

Black Friday?

[chendo]

Accordingly, we demand that you confirm immediately and no later than Friday, April 13, 2001, that you will remove the Infringing Material from the web site www.netfunny.com and that there will be no further publication of the Infringing Material or any other material which infringes MasterCard's rights as set forth above.

Is it just me, or is it just a coincidence that day is a Black Friday? ;o

Re:Black Friday?

[lkaos]

It's just you. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. Do you mean Good Friday?

One is a retail holiday/consumer-whore-fest and the other is one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Quite a bit of difference ;-)

Re:Black Friday?

[chendo]

I thought Black Fridays were Fridays that were on the 13th of a month, since Jesus died on a Friday and there were a total of 13 people (Jesus plus 12 diciples). Guess I read it somewhere.

Re:Black Friday?

[surprise_audit]

demand that you confirm...that you will remove the Infringing Material...and that there will be no further publication of the Infringing Material or any other material which infringes...

Kinda sweeping demand, isn't it?? I mean, leaving out the parody aspect for a moment, it seems like they're demanding that Brad promise to police the Internet to make sure that nobody would ever again post anything infringing. Not even whole governments have that much control of the Internet...

Re:Black Friday?

[@madeus]

Black Friday is used to refer to any Friday culminating in something overwhelmingly negative occurs, typically if it relates to a stockmarket crash and/or especially if it falls on the 13th of a month (due to the association in Western culture with the number 13 as being unlucky) but not exclusively either.

There have also been 'Black Mondays' in US and UK history (the last one I recally being in 1987, the earliest is in the 1800's, in the both the US and the UK). The term has also been used to denote national tragedies/disasters.

It is also used in the United States (though not other countries) by the retail industry to denote the Friday after Thanksgiving, but that usage is long preceeded and superceeded by the former. It's complete nonsense to associate 'Black Friday' in this manner, as it has the very opposite meaning to the origional usage of the term, meaning that the person who dreampt up this usage was attempting irony or was simply ignorant of the origional established meaning.

Re:Black Friday?

[@madeus]

See my other post for the explanation of Black Fridays. It has nothing to do with the number of diciples rather to do with the state of financial markets, though I'm sure the name was inspired by the use of the monkier Good Friday in the Christan calander but it does not have any overtly religious connection.

That doesn't stop bible bashers from trying to kid people on it does, but faith peddlers are not typically interested in matters of factual reality and are often keen to burble on about any old nonsense if they think they can use it as a platform to harp on about their particular chosen deity.

That's why it's good to throw rocks at them (to remind them of the sinners they are). I like to think of that as a public service.

Re:Black Friday?

[chendo]

Speaking of rocks...

Nobody (including me) was interested while my teacher blabbed on about religon one RE lesson one day, and somehow, I heard (not sure of exact phrase) him say "Eleven of Jesus' disciples were crucified(?)". I immediately butted in with, "And the other one died of drug overdose?"

The reply was: "No, he was stoned to death."

Yes, this was a true story ;p

Re:Black Friday?

[samjam]

When I ran an ISP and we got a demanding email to remove "all infringing links" I replied pointing out that I wouldn't be able to tell which material was posted with permission and which would not, but that they ought to be able to, and if they could tell me I would look at doing it.

Sam

Re:Black Friday?

[autechre]

Actually, the 13th disciple was Judas, and you probably remember what happened with him.

Re:Black Friday?

[thadeusg]

It's complete nonsense to associate 'Black Friday' in this manner, as it has the very opposite meaning to the origional usage of the term, meaning that the person who dreampt up this usage was attempting irony or was simply ignorant of the origional established meaning.

You've never worked in a mall on black friday, now have you? ;P

Re:Black Friday?

[lkaos]

The black in Black Friday comes from earnings charts where red and black are used to distinguish the difference between loss and profit.

Black means profit and historically, this is the day of the year that most retail chains break the barrier and become profitably for the year. This is also where the expression "In the red" comes from.

He's an inspiration to us all

[mjm]

Here's the addition to my .Sig.d rotation the Master Card brouhaha inspired:

--
Threaten not the comic with your lawyers' bluster,
all toothless to suppress parody and satire;
for you will not amuse him, but you may inspire him.

Re:Deja vu?

[MrBlackBand]

I guess most people here glance through BB once I (sic) day...

You've guessed wrong.
I've never even heard of Boing Boing so this is no repeat for me.

Original MasterCard Joke

[shamir_k]

Google Cache of original mastercard joke. I can't believe MasterCard sent a C&D over a scik joke.

Re:Original MasterCard Joke

[Fuzzums]

Why not? It's not sick. It's very sick.

If I were to change some words and numbers to, let's say, 'airplane' and '3000', it would piss off 250.000.000 people and even though I'm not an anerican I'd say it's would be pretty respectless to make jokes out of this kind of horrible events.

Re:Original MasterCard Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Box Cutters - $10
Airline Tickets - $500
Spending the afterlife surrounded by virgins - Priceless

Somethings, only the religious zealouts can buy. For everthing else, there's Mastercard.

Re:Original MasterCard Joke

[hopemafia]

What, you mean something like this

WARNING: This will be offensive to anyone who has ever been offended by anything, view at your own peril. But take comfort that it's on a free geocities site, so it will be /.ed out of existence in about 0.1ns.

Re:Original MasterCard Joke

[Tet]

If I were to change some words and numbers to, let's say, 'airplane' and '3000', it would piss off 250.000.000 people and even though I'm not an anerican I'd say it's would be pretty respectless to make jokes out of this kind of horrible events.

Were you to make those changes, I'd laugh. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks there is such a thing as a joke that is "too tasteless" needs to take a step back and rethink things. Laughing at tragedy is a natural human trait. Some of the best jokes are pretty sick. But that doesn't make them any less funny. Nor are they disrespectful. Humour and respect are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Original MasterCard Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech doesn't just mean what you personally approve of. The whole point is to protect viewpoints that differ from what's accepted.

There was a time that the idea of killing members of the English Army was considered by many to be every bit as outrageous and tasteless as the airplane example.

I don't actually believe the 9/11 stuff was all that big. Tragic if you knew anyone involved. People got up-in-arms about it, it had a huge effect on pretty much everything because of people's reactions. But it really wasn't that big a deal. I feel sorry for people who think it was, because they will not be able to handle it if something *really* big comes down.

What if there was an attack that really *WAS* high tech, that really *DID* require some huge amount of coordination and financing? We'd clearly be unable to cope.

Speaking of American Express and humor...

[daveschroeder]

...and totally off topic, but these little bits with Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman are pretty good:

The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman

Re:Speaking of American Express and humor...

[Anonymous Coward]

these little bits with Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman are pretty good:

An acquaintance of mine sent me a link to those "adventures," which I find to be utterlyl craptastic. They're extended ads for the privileges available to American Express account holders. I cringed my entire way through the first short, "Uniform."

The production value of these ads are high, but it's just ADVERTISING. I think people who like TV will like that site. Otherwise, don't bother.

Trademark for "Priceless"

[tiny69]

Word Mark PRICELESS
Goods and Services IC 036. US 100 101 102. G & S: Financial services, namely, providing credit card, debit card, charge card and stored value smart card services, prepaid telephone calling card services, cash disbursement, and transaction authorization and settlement services. FIRST USE: 19980200. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19980200
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 75658792
Filing Date March 11, 1999
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition November 30, 1999
Registration Number 2370508
Registration Date July 25, 2000
Owner (REGISTRANT) MASTERCARD INTERNATIONAL INCORPORATED CORPORATION DELAWARE 2000 Purchase Street Purchase NEW YORK 105772509
Attorney of Record COLM J DOBBYN
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Re:Trademark for "Priceless"

[R2.0]

Ahh, excellent.

Please note the form of the mark. First, not a trademark, but a service mark. Second, it only applies to the use of the word "priceless" in conjunction with "Financial services, namely, providing credit card, debit card, charge card and stored value smart card services, prepaid telephone calling card services, cash disbursement, and transaction authorization and settlement services. "

There is a point to trademark - it is to keep competitors in your line of business from reaping the fruits of your advertising. Yes, people and companies try to abuse it, but the reason for its existence is still valid.

Re:Trademark for "Priceless"

[Anonymous Coward]

FIRST USE: 19980200. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19980200

Would that be the 0th day of February, or the 2nd day of Nomonthuary?

Re:Trademark for "Priceless"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 2 AM sometime in '98.

Looks like they're on a suing tour...

[Jugalator]

- Humorless lawyers suing attrition.org (includes reply to their letter)
- Humorless lawyers suing Ralph Nader... and losing

Should you laugh or cry at this?
TESS Info for trademark #2370508

Re:Looks like they're on a suing tour...

[Jetifi]

For the Attrition case, this page tells the whole story. Put simply, Mastercard ends up looking stupid.

Re:Looks like they're on a suing tour...

[fallen1]

Sheesh... I hope these guys never take a look at my site. Of course, that page will be changed if I ever get around to actually doing something _with_ the site :-p

Re:Looks like they're on a suing tour...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for IT at a big law firm, let me tell you, this type of thing, like your site, crosses my desk at least once a week. We have whole departments of lawyers doing this type of work. I don't know if it's always the client (Mastercard for example) that calls and asks for it to be removed or whether our lawyers go out there and find this stuff and then notify the client. I think probably both.

But it's bullshit. Last week one site was going to be taken down because of what the guy wrote in his blog about a bad interview experience.

I'm giving notice today . fuck those bastards.

Re:Looks like they're on a suing tour...

[inditek]

for the MasterCard/Nader case -- Nader won.

http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/03/nader _w ins_pric.html

http://www.votenader.org/media_press/index.php?c id =12

Did the lawyers actually look at the website?

[91degrees]

Your unauthorized use of AMERICAN EXPRESSWAY ... is likely to cause consumers to be confused, mistaken, or deceived as to the source of origin of your services.

...In addition, your continued use of these marks constitutes a deceptive business practice and unfair competition in violation of state law.

Considering that he's not running a business, claiming to run a business, or using these terms for advertising a business, these statements seem rather curious. Did they just use a search engine and automatically send out a nastigram based on the results? Would my writing "American expression, Membership has its Privileges" in this post result in Slashdot getting a letter? (If so, sorry guys)

Re:Did the lawyers actually look at the website?

[Belsical]

Would my writing "American expression, Membership has its Privileges" in this post result in Slashdot getting a letter?

Definitely not. But it might result in you getting a letter (if /. gives them info to find you).
ZERAN v AMERICA ONLINE INC upheld that hosts can't be held responsible for what posters say, or even held responsible if they're asked to remove it and don't do so.

It's not the the result which matters in America

[Moderation abuser]

It's the cost of the process itself. For individuals It doesn't really matter whether you'll win or not. The process itself is so long, slow and expensive that it'll bankrupt you.

A great MasterCard parody

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this link,
http://www.yjd40.dial.pipex.com/mastercard. html, or google for "indecent proposal" + mastercard if you like mastercard parodies. ;-)

Isn't this old news?

[Cooper_007]

Come on folks. This was a usenet post from 2001.
What is it exactly about this message that makes it relevant now?

Cooper
--
This truth probably doesn't come as shocking news to any of you,
and if it does then you're stupid and I hate you.
- Everything Can Be Beaten -

Re:Isn't this old news?

[happyfrogcow]

The first one, the Mastercard threat, is from 2001. The second one, if i'm not mistaken, regards a threat from American Express that is dated from this month. I've close the browser window with it open, so i'm lacking details.

Re:Isn't this old news?

[blirp]

Come on folks. This was a usenet post from 2001.

The MasterCard joke was, yes, but the AmEx wasn't. See, it's two links up there... :*)

What is it exactly about this message that makes it relevant now?

The fact that AmEx sent a similar letter April 13, 2004.

Re:Isn't this old news?

[Cooper_007]

Whoops. Sorry, my bad. The google links don't hold the update from yesterday that were quoted in another comment.

Not a case of not RTFA. Just putting too much trust in a link to an outdated backup copy.

Cooper
--
This truth probably doesn't come as shocking news to any of you,
and if it does then you're stupid and I hate you.
- Everything Can Be Beaten -

Re:Isn't this old news?

[happyfrogcow]

gotta love mederation of +4 informative on the parent. moderators don't read the stories, posters don't read the stories... what is this, Slashdot? oh.. um *@!&#(>NO CARRIER

Re:Isn't this old news?

[zhenlin]

The AmEx joke... is from a usenet post... from... 1991.

This is like digging up skeletons.

Wow, AE is clueless!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the page includes words like 'joke', 'chuckle', 'funny', and 'humor', the Amex letter still implies that Brad has posted an advertisement -- as if the "American Expressway" was a real thing being advertised! How could these people have been so blind as to not even bother reading the damn thing before sending the mail?

aQazaQa

This guy has more b*lls than I.

[DougMackensie]

I'll say Mr. "anonymous reader"

Free Speech Is One Thing

[Czernobog]

Decency is another.

I really hate self-censorship.

[CGP314]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

Either have the balls to use the word balls or pick a different word. Writing b*lls is just stupid. Allow me to demonstrate:

On slashdot I can say: I thought that anonymous coward was a fucktard.

Relaying the same information to my mother in an email I would say: I thought that anonymous coward was an idiot. Not I thought that anonymous coward was a f*cktard.


-Colin

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[superfast-scooter]

i thought the wildcard could have meant -
"This guy has more balls than I." - the strongman types.
"This guy has more bills than I." - guys gonna get screwed.
"This guy has more bulls than I." - sounds like a compulsive bullshitter.
"This guy has more bells than I." - is a complete cuckoo.

so, how do yoouuu know what he meant eh?

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he really meant "This guy has more bills than I."

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Lord Ender]

I have no problem saying 'fucktard' to my mother... guess she's just cooler than yours.

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just a cum-guzzling whore.

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Brandybuck]

Actually, "balls" is a registered trademark of American Express. The aster*x prevents an automatic lawsuit.

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Brandybuck]

What makes saying 'fucktard' to your mother cool?

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[edraven]

Or bulls? Bells?

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Lord Ender]

To be offended by simple words is a pathetic human weakness. Haven't we evolved past the need for taboos to keep our societies together? Can't we think and communicate with our brains instead of our emotions? Saying fucktard to my mother is not cool. The fact that she doesn't feel mentally injured due to hearing a particular sound wave pattern makes her cooler than you and your weak-minded mother.

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a coincidence ... I have no problem fucking your mother!

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[Brandybuck]

There is this thing called "culture". Traditionally females, like your mother, have been in charge of guarding it. One of the elements of culture is a common set of mores and decorum. Calling people "fucktards" is against our culture's standards of decorum. The word is not what offends mothers, it's the demonstration that they raised uncouth louts that offends them.

Calling people fucktards is like not bathing, not shaving, peeing in the street, and flipping off little children. How dare the parents of those children teach them to be offended by hairy smelling men pissing in the gutter!

Re:I really hate self-censorship.

[chochos]

How dare the parents of those children teach them to be offended by hairy smelling men pissing in the gutter!

Right, they should teach the kidds to love RMS.

The Amex Joke (they sued over this?!?)

[Tolvor]

The MC joke was tasteless, and i can see MC execs wanting to kill the joke, as it simply isn't funny. The Amex joke below seems almost complimentary, as it implies that having the AmEx card gives you special privilages. I suppose that if a popular celebrity gave them a free endorsement, they would issue a cease-and-desist letter. No wonder AmEx is the card chosen by the select few who don't want their card to be accepted in many stores.

You are invited to become a member of the American Expressway, one of the newest and most innovative road systems in America. There are many advantages to the American Expressway over the standard tollways, parkways, highways and freeways but by far the biggest advantage is:

No Preset Speed Limit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Instead your personal speed limit is determined by your vehicle, your personal resourcefulness and your past speeding patterns. When you enter the expressway your personal id number is transmitted to Central Control to tabulate your tolls and record your initial speed (all AE members may travel at 55 with no restrictions). If you decide to pursue a greater speed then an authorization will be sent to Central Control and our highly specialized, non deterministic and little understood AI algorithm will decide if you are approved for your new speed. If you are not then a Service Technician (formally known as a State Trooper) may stop you to ask a few questions to verify that you were capable of handling your new limit (Do you increase throttle to induce oversteer in a decreasing radius turn?), that you have adequate resources (Is that a Crosley Wombat V16?) and that you are not too far out of your previous speeding pattern (Have you ever driven at 180 mph before?).

Membership has it's Privileges

To apply for membership call 1 800 HAUL ASS

PLEASE LEARN TO USE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS !

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant all words described by the following grammar:

S --> bT
T --> bT
T --> lls

Re:PLEASE LEARN TO USE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS !

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what he meant but what he wrote was

S --> bS
S --> lls

Re:PLEASE LEARN TO USE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS !

[Anonymous Coward]

All the languages that can be described with regexps can be described with grammars, but not the other way around

Learn your context-free languages please

so uptight

[t_allardyce]

graham norton used to show all the parody versions, if i was mastercard id be stoked i was getting all that free advertising, sex and gore sell!

reminds me of fallwell vs. flynt

[flyneye]

is this not a lot like jerry fartwell vs.larry flynt? it was all a matter of parody of a liquor ad i think.

YRO?

[fraudrogic]

Shouldn't this be under the Science section?

Posting Date.

[A Commentor]

It would be a little more interesting if it didn't appear to have been posted on April 1st.

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.h tm l

Re:Posting Date.

[ticklemeozmo]

It would be a little more interesting if it didn't appear to have been posted on April 1st. http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.htm l

Ooo, swing and a miss.

Most websites owner sort things chronologically, meaning a sorting of descention. Applied, that would be sorted by: Year, Month, Day, Hour, Min, Sec.

So in your example above, the 01 would be year.

They have to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations have to protect their trademarks. It's easier to send C&D letters to everyone that might possibly be violating their trademark than to evaluate each one and decide if it's a parody. That way they have covered their asses in the event someone tries to invalidate their trademark based on that site. Unless you are not using their trademark to make money or publically associating it with something like killing baby seals, they don't care so long as they have sent you a C&D letter they can pull out at a future date and say, "No, we did something about that one."

Re:They have to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

>Corporations have to protect their trademarks.

When they violate someone else's rights by trying to assert their own, there should be consequences. Dire consequences. There should be a real risk of LOSING their trademark protection if they used it to abridge someone else's rights. It should not be so simple as "we have a mandate to be as big assholes as we can possibly be." They should also be held accountable for any damage they do in the process.

If Amex and MasterCard faced any risks as a result of their actions, they would NOT be so quick to fire off threats without doing research.

"We were just doing our jobs to protect our interests. Sorry about your puny little 'rights'."

That shouldn't fly. At all, ever. It should be enough to bring down the people who engage in the practice, if not disbar the lawyers or put the execs into prison.

The rights of the individual should always trump the privileges of a corporation, or the interests of a government.

Don't you mean...

[Sfing_ter]

BAWLS? How many cases should I buy to have more than he?

Haiku

[Big_Al_B]

Lawyers loom, free speech threatened. Comic's mind--way too sharp. Satire protected always.

Dammit. The *one* time I don't preview

[Big_Al_B]

Parse the parent's CRLFs on periods.

Here's the Supreme Court Ruling:

[Whatthehellever]

Hustler Magazine, Inc. et al. v. Jerry Falwell

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speec h/ hustler.html

No. 86-1278

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

485 U.S. 46

Argued December 2, 1987

Decided February 24, 1988

Syllabus

Respondent, a nationally known minister and commentator on politics and public affairs, filed a diversity action in Federal District Court against petitioners, a nationally circulated magazine and its publisher, to recover damages for, inter alia, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from the publication of an advertisement "parody" which, among other things, portrayed respondent as having engaged in a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse. The jury found against respondent on the libel claim, specifically finding that the parody could not "reasonably be understood as describing actual facts . . . or events," but ruled in his favor on the emotional distress claim, stating that he should be awarded compensatory and punitive damages. The Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting petitioners' contention that the "actual malice" standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, must be met before respondent can recover for emotional distress. Rejecting as irrelevant the contention that, because the jury found that the parody did not describe actual facts, the ad was an opinion protected by the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, the court ruled that the issue was whether the ad's publication was sufficiently outrageous to constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Held: In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with "actual malice," i.e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. The State's interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is not sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. Here, respondent is clearly a "public figure" for First Amendment purposes, and the lower courts' finding that the ad parody was not reasonably believable must be accepted. "Outrageousness" [47] in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors' tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression, and cannot, consistently with the First Amendment, form a basis for the award of damages for conduct such as that involved here. Pp. 50-57.

797 F. 2d 1270, reversed.

REHNQUIST, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, AND SCALIA, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 57. KENNEDY, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner Hustler Magazine, Inc., is a magazine of nationwide circulation. Respondent Jerry Falwell, a nationally known minister who has been active as a commentator on politics and public affairs, sued petitioner and its publisher, petitioner Larry Flynt, to recover damages for invasion of [48] privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The District Court directed a verdict against respondent on the privacy claim, and submitted the other two claims to a jury. The jury found for petitioners on the defamation cl

Brad Templeton

[maggard]

For all of those who don't know who Brad Templeton is (and judging from all the posts so far none do) Brad was the Founder, CEO, and Publisher of ClariNews, the first public-subscription online newswire (via NNTP). He's also the author of the fantastic "10 Big Myths about copyright explained" so yeah, he knows his rights. Oh, and he's Chairman of the Board of the EFF . In short he knows what he's doing and AmEx's lawyers definately tangled with the wrong perosn.

Re:Brad Templeton

[abb3w]

Not to mention his tenure as chief moderator of the rec.humor.funny Usenet group, when the infamous Jewish Ventriloquist joke incident occured. He's no stranger to this sort of battle.

Mind you, I hadn't remembered he was chairman of the board of the EFF. Could AmEx have possibly picked a worse person to try to intimidate?

Re:Brad Templeton

[emtboy9]

He may know what he's doing, but even he can not withstand the slashdot effect...

anyone have a mirror for the sites listed in the original article?

Re:Brad Templeton

[Anonymous Coward]

reading what Templeton wrote on his website, he's very proud to be a fighter for free speech. However, fighting racism and bad taste are two other ideas that free speech says should be out in the marketplace of ideas, out there so that they can be considered. That is the point of free speech, isn't it?

The joke in question has a bit of humor, but also reveals itself with a bitter and violent end as both gratuitously racist, and not a clever joke. A smarter person would look for one that was better formed. Templeton says he chose the jokes on the basis of humor. His standards are very low, i.e. he's either racist or not very smart.

here is a funny "jewish" joke:

Three Jews are walking down the street when they pass a Christian church offering "free lottery ticket if you convert to Christianity". They talk it over briefly, and the first one says I'll give it a try so he goes in. He comes out 10 minutes later and his friends say did you convert and he says yes and they say did you get the lottery ticket and he says yes and they say did you win any money and he says, Jesus, is that all you people can think about?!

Re:Brad Templeton

[Anonymous Coward]

Baloney.

A) He is jewish, although not practicing.

b) Oh woe the bitter and violent jokes, as if that makes any difference in the "badness" of racism. If anything, political correctness has just taught racists how to hide their hatred behind happy fluffy words. Ever listen to talk radio? Those guys are just as bigotted and mean-spirited as they ever were, but today they couch their hate in euphemisms and PC terms. Just enough to let the lower-IQ range of their audience feel like their hatred is a perfectly valid way of interacting with society.

Re:Brad Templeton

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that U of Waterloo pulled RHF for a while. They went on to be one of the most net.censorius of Canadian universities, including some alt.sex groups and the alt.fan.karla-homolka group (some other universities did the same during the Paul Bernardo trial, but not all). Complete lack of understanding not just of the Internet, but of the role of a University.

Re:Brad Templeton

[Anonymous Coward]

and he says, Jesus, is that all you people can think about?!

The ventriloquist joke wasn't very funny, but it was a lot funnier than your stinker. I think maybe you forgot the punchline, which goes something like: "Hello? (tap tap) Is this thing on?"

How is this different from the Penny Arcade thing?

[neonfrog]

Remember the Strawberry Shortcake debacle? Were "Gabe & Tycho" just stupid? (said with affection, of course, for their appreciated contribution to my world)

I thought the reasoning behind their pulling the strip was that they were accused of parodying American McGee using American Greetings material. I don't know how it all worked out, but if there is actually real legal precedent here then parodying Columbine with a credit card ad might be in the same boat. Not that I agree that it should be, but precedent can be the basis of law after all...

The cease and desist letter itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The text of the cease and desist letter can be found here.

Off the shelf

[lorcha]

It's an off the shelf threatening letter. They use it over and over again just substituting different names.

What the website operator should have done is either (preferrably) get a lawyer to write an off-the-shelf response, or craft one himself if he has the confidence. But, really, it's better to have a lawyer do it, since that is more likely to end the issue immediately.

Notice, I did not say "hire" a lawyer to craft the letter. Remember all the times you helped Uncle Ernie, Esq. with his computer problems? It's time to call in a favor. You did help him instead of telling him to go fsck off, didn't you?

Brad *doesn't* need a lawyer

[maggard]

Brad needs a lawyer

Uh, no.

As I pointed out elsewhere Brad is well aware of his rights (early online publisher, author of "10 Big Myths about copyright explained", Chairman of the Board of the EFF ), rather folks need to be more aware of their own rights.

Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on /. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is...

Re:Brad *doesn't* need a lawyer

[cellocgw]

Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on /. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is
Hey, I've been reading r.h.f since its inception, you insensitive clod!

Re:Brad *doesn't* need a lawyer

[Lost Race]

Hey, I've been reading r.h.f since its inception, you insensitive clod!

Old-timers like you and me don't expect online messages to go stale 30 seconds after they're posted. We read them in due time, after a few hours or days, then cogitate for a while before posting.... Thus we never get the +5 moderations, which are reserved for teh fr1st p0strrz.

What's the point of IANAL disclaimers?

[roystgnr]

Or more specifically, what's the point of the "I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice unless you're paying me" disclaimers that I've seen? I had always assumed that such disclaimers were necessary because there was some law that could make lawyers liable for giving bad legal advice otherwise, but if that is the case why hasn't anybody used such a law to counterattack one of these "Your parody is illegal" C&D letters?

I mean, if lawyers can put grossly inaccurate legal threats in writing and get away with it, why would lawyers giving out accidentally inaccurate advice have anything to fear?

Re:What's the point of IANAL disclaimers?

[applemasker]

Attorneys' speech is protected by the "litigation privilege" when advancing a client's interests. Generally, this immunity covers acts and statements made in connection with the pursuit of litigation (in particular, it protects attorneys from suit for things such as liable and defamation). Depending on the particular jurisdiction, as well as on the specific circumstances, the privilege may be qualified or absolute.

The privilege may not exist in the circumstances you describe, hence the disclaimer.

(Note - this is not legal advice.)

Re:What's the point of IANAL disclaimers?

[Some Bitch]

Note - this is not legal advice.

No shit! FYI, it's libel not liable and defamation is an umbrella term covering both libel and slander.

Copy/pasting from the first Google result you find is not exactly reliable, if you'd Googled further you'd have found that litigation privilege does not extend to malicious prosecution (look it up).

Re:What's the point of IANAL disclaimers?

[Chiasmus_]

I had always assumed that such disclaimers were necessary because there was some law that could make lawyers liable for giving bad legal advice otherwise, but if that is the case why hasn't anybody used such a law to counterattack one of these "Your parody is illegal" C&D letters?

IANAL, but I am a paralegal, and I can answer this one, although obviously this is not legal advice.

The "this is not legal advice unless you're paying me" disclaimer is there to avoid malpractice liablity. If you, as a lawyer, give someone some bad or misleading legal advice, and that person suffers financial harm, they can sue you.

It's exactly the same reason all online doctors post little more than "see your doctor immediately." If you said "I slept funny and I'm having some minor neck pain," and a doctor replied, "Ah, that's nothing, take two Asprin," and you ended up paralyzed because you hadn't fully described your symptoms... that doctor may well be liable for malpractice. And you can sue.

However, it is *not* malpractice to make a legally unfounded threat. A threat is not considered legal advice. There's a huge legal difference between saying "Put on a pink dress or I'll sue you!" and "As a lawyer, I advise you to wear a pink dress to your court appearance." The first is protected speech; the second is an actionable tort.

Can't we go after the lawyers?

[MojoRilla]

This is a baseless complaint, one that any ethical lawyer would not file. Are there any avenues to pursue with the state bar of the lawyers state?

Re:Can't we go after the lawyers?

[Doogzee]

There are ethical lawyers?

Gone Bowling

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that as if it's wrong to be on the side of the shooters.

Re:Gone Bowling

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it all depends on what your view on murder is.

Re:Gone Bowling

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehhh... it *is* wrong to be on the side of the shooters. If they were just standing up to bullies, that would be one thing. They would be heroes. Instead, they also committed suicide, which is a real tragedy.

You see the difference?

Its not self censorship

[Srin Tuar]

Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.

Using alternate spellings does not in any way make the word unintelligble, but it does make it more resitant to automated censorship.

So, personally, I dont have any problem with the practice.

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's understandable for "fuck", "shit", "motherfucking cuntfaced asshole", etc, but for "balls"? If filtering software were that stupid, it'd block sites that included phrases like "rubber balls", "balls of wax", "strikes and balls", "snow balls" and lots of other sites that would only seem to be a testicular reference if you were a chuckling 10-year-old boy.

Andy

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it just means you're a fucking pussy with no balls who will just gladly bend over and take it up the ass.

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Using alternate spellings does not in any way make the word unintelligble, but it does make it more resitant to automated censorship.

Right, so does "posting to your own damn site." If someone doesn't want profanity on their web site, what right do you have to tell them otherwise? It's not like they're stifling your right to free speech.

So if somebody wants to filter out shit, don't be a fucktard.

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

>So if somebody wants to filter out shit, don't be a fucktard.

No, its better to show that they are the fucktard for attempting to do the impossible.

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's complete and utter bovine manure. Just because Site A has stupid-ass filter, it doesn't make this childish lame 0bfuxation sensible. Yes, if Slashdot prevented one from using "balls", you'd have a case, but since it does NOT, you have just spewing hot air.

Re:Its not self censorship

[TheRaven64]

When I was at school, the IT technician tried installing some software that did that. He took it off a day later after he found an article headline he was reading said:

Do You Wi** ** Support was Better?

A school my mother worked at for a while had a similar system that would (among other things) completely block any pages with more than a threshold number of occurrences of the letter X. It turns out that Linux and XFree86 are dirty words...

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretty difficult to keep track of what sites filter and what sites don't. Deliberate side-wise spelling works on all sites.

Re:Its not self censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, I saw a post on a ZDNet game board the other day where the poster had been forced to substitute for "sucks". So saying the game sucks up CPU or bandwidth or time would be off-limits.

Rather than try to game around these sorts of idiot schemes, I simple reduce the number of boards I'm willing to read and/or post to by one. Which has the added benefit of saving me time online reading (and writing) useless tripe. ;)

Re:Its not self censorship

[horza]

Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.

Then surely he would write "b@lls"?

Phillip.

Re:Its not self censorship

[g0at]

Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.

Ahh, good. So "balls" is a profanity now? So much for kids playing baseb*ll, or learning about housings which use b*ll bearings, or using colloquialisms such as "being on the b*ll". Will we have to start packaging wool in cylindrical shapes or cubes now, instead of selling them in b*lls?

Jesus.

I guess we better start censoring other such potentially damaging words as "d*g", "b*by", "t*ble", "toothp*ste" now as well...

-ben

* = O?

[livetoad]

This guy has more b*lls than I...

...but fewer astersisks...

mirror / cache here!

[kylector]

Google cache of original on netfunny:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:EbL5xyjk04AJ: www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q2/amexprew.html+&hl= en&ie=UTF-8

Google cache of original in Groups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22American+Expr essway%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=S253.433d%40look ing.on.ca&rnum=1

Drop em a line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send the shiny-suited lawyers an email!

Let them know just how trouble they've created.

technologies.group.counsel@aexp.com

SLASHDOT EM!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Nah, just /. em a few times, they'll get the point. I mean, it's all a question of applying a little leather where it's needed. They try to kick one of US in the crotch, 1.5 million of US kick THEM in the crotch. Think of it as an executive training program. At first they'll think: "Hey! Great! Look at all the... traffic.... holy crap... aiiigghhh!!!...zzzZZT!!!!!"
LOL

Re:f1rst ps00t

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Let jAmEx/MasterTard know you hate 'em!

[infochuck]

Everybody reading this thread should contact AmEx and let them know they'll be cutting up their card(s), or never getting one.

I also suggest calling/emailing everyone you can at MasterCard for their consistent badgering of parodies - most recently (and notably) Ralph Nader's ad.

Here's some MC contact info. Anybody got some for AmEx?

Tell 'em you don't appreciate companies that attempt, over and over again, to bully others into compliance with THEIR wishes, against the letter and spirit of the law, and you won't stand for
it. Call 'em again and again. They like hearing from irate consumers.

Some folks are claiming this is "old news", but it's been going on for some time, and resurfaces every once in a while - send these folks a message NOW, and maybe they'll finally figure it out.

MasterCard Executive e-mail addresses:
Sharon Gamsin Vice President, Global Communications
sgamsin@mastercard.com
Phone: 914.249.5622

Chris Monteiro Vice President, Global Marketing Communications
chris_monteiro@mastercard.com
Pho ne: 914.249.5826

Ayde Ayala Global Communications Coordinator
ayde_ayala@mastercard.com
Phone: 914.249.5388

Marc Levy Director, Global Marketing Communications
marc_levy@mastercard.com
Phone: 914.249.3233

PR/Media Inquiries:
Christina Costa
Ph: +1 914 249 4606
Email: christina costa@mastercard.com

North America:
Michael Madden
Tel: +1 914 249 1354
Email: Michael Madden@mastercard.com

(Media Contact only)
MasterCard International
Christina Costa
1-914-249-4606
christina_costa@mastercard. com

Beating a Dead Horse

[Anonymous Coward]

Trojan Condom. Don't get boned without it!

Mastercard sued BEFORE the trademark was granted!

[MattT]

>Filing Date March 11, 1999
>Current Filing Basis 1A
>Original Filing Basis 1A
>Published for Opposition November 30, 1999
>Registration Number 2370508
>Registration Date July 25, 2000

The original joke appeared in R.H.F on 04/27/99!

Sony Walkman. In Austria

[UrgleHoth]

Sony lost their exlusive use of walkman trademark in Austria in 2002.
Read about it here and here.
Or search google for sony walkman trademark case austria

Re:Sony Walkman. In Austria

[DAldredge]

I am in a hurry so I did a very quick read over that wired story. It appears they lost because someone defined the word in a dictonary? Isn't that prone to abuse?

FOX News

[Anonymous Coward]

FOX News, in my opinion, are a bunch of lying assholes and should be lined up and sprayed with lye until they're GONE - like any other blot on society.

MOD This Shithead DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? So why does the ballot read "Kerry" and "Bush" instead of "Strong America" and "Against A Strong America".

How about a vote for Kerry is a vote for ketchup while a vote for Bush is a vote for oil? Seems more accurate to me, shithead.

As an aside...

[autechre]

2-digit years? STILL? Gah.

The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which? I have to figure out whether you were from the U.S. and meant January 4, 2003, or from somewhere else and meant April 1st, 2003.

(If you don't think that this is a problem, consider that many restaurant kitchens employ large numbers of people from Spanish-speaking countries. Consider that food has expiration dates.)

I see many people still writing dates like this, too. I guess they saw "Y2k" as just some buzzword that the Morlocks were supposed to fix for them, and it didn't have anything to do with what they did personally.

Really, if you want a short date, you could at least use the 3-letter abbreviation for the month so that it was less confusing. Asking everyone to write ISO dates is probably too much, but dd/dd/dd is just evil. YY/mmm isn't all that much better, although if you're looking at it as a directory structure, it should be obvious that the directories would have to be in descending order. I mean, who would group things by the first day of the month, then the month?

Re:As an aside...

[ajs318]

The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which? I have to figure out whether you were from the U.S. and meant January 4, 2003, or from somewhere else and meant April 1st, 2003.

Or from Japan or Sweden and meant the 3rd of April 2001 ..... or 1901 .....

By the way, two figure years are quite legitimate, they could be years AQ {Age of AQuarius}, sometimes also written ACE {After Christian Era}. 1 January 2001 CE is 1 January 0001 AQ or ACE.

Re:As an aside...

[orcus]

CE = "Common Era"
BCE = "Before Common Era"

Having "CE" stand for "Christian Era" would sort of defeat the whole purpose for getting away from the archaic "AD" and "BC" designations in the first place.

Re:As an aside...

[execute85]

The humor behind CE/BCE replacing AD/BC is that the dating system is still Christ based. If you really want to secularize dates then you need to pick some new point in time. But I guess the wankers who decided that CE was somehow better than AD knew no one would go for their idea if people had to calculate what the real date is. I get a little chuckle whenever someone uses BCE/CE.

Re:As an aside...

[jazman_777]

I get a little chuckle whenever someone uses BCE/CE.

Yeah, these same people will still call the planet Mars "Mars", a Roman god. The stupidity just never ends.

Re:As an aside...

[amber_of_luxor]

By the way, two figure years are quite legitimate, they could be years AQ {Age of AQuarius},

Why not just use Thelemic Dates. That would also allow one to include the time.

XX xii Sun in Aries Moon in Aquarius Ascendent in Sagitarius.

Wind under thy Wings

Amber

Re:As an aside...

[fireweaver]

So fucking what. Lots of societies that are not christian at all have adopted the use of the gregorian calendar because [1] COMMON use elsewhere, and [2] it is simpler than the other systems out there (You practically have to have a degree in astronomy to work out dates in the Jewish or Islamic systems since they are lunar rather than solar calendars.)

So if you want to wank to the fact that the common calendar started when you favourite superhero was born, go for it. Whoop-tee-doo.

Re:As an aside...

[execute85]

Bah, it's not that the calendar is based on Jesus (so what). The funny part is that people think it is less Christian because they call it CE instead of AD. If the point is to secularize the calendar then make up some new time scale.

Re:As an aside...

[MurphyZero]

Exactly, we need to decimalize the time system. 10 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour and 10 hours in a day. 10 days in a week, 10 weeks in a month and 10 months in a year. For those who insist on keeping some of the archaic methods, change the length of a second so that the length of a day remains the same. Choose sidereal or solar. As far as the old year, it was based on orbital period, and really, what does that have to do with time keeping? Especially a civilization with space capability. Ditch it. For those who truly need dates based on the position around the sun, do the calculations and add the appropriate number of days, rather than changing the calendar to fit the orbit. As far as the zero, set it to a known event, perhaps the Y2.037K event.

Re:As an aside...

[ticklemeozmo]

The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03

You mean like our beloved slashdot?? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/14/130201

Re:As an aside...

[DynaSoar]

autechre (121980) sez: "2-digit years? STILL? Gah.
The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which?"

I know, I have the same problem. I can't tell if the directory structure is referring to files generated in 2004 or 1904. Nor can I tell whether the files will did is beinged (please pardon the trans-temporal grammar) generated in 2104 and transmitted to me via time machine. I sent a complaint about the latter, but got back a form letter response from someplace called the "Terran Occupation Forces", saying something about being fed up with us broadcasting illogical bitwave formats into space, yada yada, your normal netcop BS. Oh, and something about eating our brains. Kind of harsh for a simple annoying little date format issue, I thought.

Re:As an aside...

[sdo1]

I precede all work related files with a date code. Today's is 20040414. That way no matter what OS I happen to be looking at my files in, I can sort them by date.

Of course if I'm in DOS, I can pretty much only have one file of each type every day.

-S

Re:As an aside...

[Fred_A]

A decimal calendar was introduced as part of the metric system back in the French revolution days. Unlike the rest of the system it unfortunately didn't take. Presumably because time coordination was so difficult at the time (and also because it removed all the religious markers). It wasn't extremely well designed but had several interesting design traits. See http://prairial.free.fr/calendrier/sommaire.html for a full description (in a variety of languages). For the link between orbital period and timekeeping, the obvious link is algricultural/seasonal cycles. It is simpler to have a regular cycle than a random one. The Mayan calendar was especially elegant (although not very easy to use).

wildcard

[timothy]

hey, your guesses are as good as mine. :) It arrived pre-(semi-)bowlderized.

Tim

Re:wildcard

[mfh]

Drat, I hate it when they do that. Neuter em', I say!

up on charges

[Doc Ruby]

When both American Express AND MasterCard are suing you without a leg to stand on, it's time to run up your credit card bills as an advance on your settlement.

Advice companies need to remember

[Todd Knarr]

I think someone needs to reiterate to these companies a bit of advice from Michael Rathbun:

"Remember: every member of your 'target audience' also owns a broadcasting station. These 'targets' can shoot back."

MC went after Ralph Nader too.

[wk633]

http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/08/18/nader18.sht ml

Attrition has links to several MC threats
http://www.attrition.org/news/mc/

Re: Loyeerin' fer the rest of us...

[schodackwm]

Actually, the pinheads may know that.

From the C&D letter: "This material (the "Infringing Material ") blatantly copies the sequential display of a series of items belonging to one or more individuals, showing, the "price" of each item, and, at the end, infringes, with impunity (emph supplied), the MASTERCARD Mark and the Priceless Marks."

from one of 3 nearly identical cites at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=impunity

impunity: Exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm.

Granting -- since IANAL and have NO desire to be one (henceforward: IANALAHNDTBO) -- legalese may give some counterintuitive meaning to impunity, one might still wonder if the pinheads really did graduate only from "Billy-Bob's Loyeering Skool" (after flunking hs english?)

Please distinguish among "interesing," "insightful" and "informative." The latter two require substantiation!

Anatomy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

He has three?

How to fight back

[TrentL]

When you go home and get those stupid credit card offers in the mail, fill the envelope with trash and mail it back. That's what I do.

Re:How to fight back

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, tape the postage free reply to a brick...

The b*lls thing....

[Doogzee]

Did anyone think that perhaps the censorship of balls was purposely done? You know, as to say that he doesn't even have the balls to say balls.

ahhhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese Finger Cuff over internet... clever...

Re:It's not the the result which matters in Americ

[TheRaven64]

Actually, if you're sure you have a good case you can defend yourself which costs nothing. The only time it's expensive is if you lose a case, in which case you will often be forced to pay court and legal fees. And don't forget that judges know about people (or corporations) abusing the legal process. In some cases in the UK (not sure about the USA) it has been known for judges to rule against the defendant and then have the plaintiff pay court and legal fees while awarding token (e.g. the price of a cup of coffee) damages. Since you can't appeal if you win, this effectively ends the suit, and while the plaintiff technically wins, they lose overall financially.

Re:slashdotted (RHF URL)

[jc42]

For the benefit of those few who may not have it at the top of their bookmarks, here's the rec.humor.funny URL:

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/current.html

The latest installment of this series is currently the top joke on the stack. Let's see if we can slashdot them ...

Also, for those who may not be familiar with this newsgroup-turned-website, they may well now have the world's largest collection of jokes. So you can blame me if the productivity of the rest of your week is destroyed.

They have had to explain their slowdown in new jokes in the past couple of years. The problem is that they have a policy of rejecting jokes that are just trivial retellings of jokes already in their collection. As their collection grows, it slowly becomes more difficult to find truly new jokes. Most of their posted jokes now are the highly-topical type, like this one.

But they're still worth checking out every 2 or 3 days.

Why it's necessary to publicise this

[btempleton]

Some have asked why I respond to them with more humour instead of a more formal response, and whether they have to do this to protect their trademark.

As some of you know, I am with the EFF, and so I don't lack for legal advice on cyberspace free speech issues. That's not the question.

This letter is an example of a new phenomenon I call "spammigation." Automated bulk legal action. I suspect Amex told their lawyers to just threaten everybody using an Amex trademark on a web page without authorization. Or perhaps the lawyers convinced Amex this was a good idea. In worse cases, DirecTV sues everybody who bought a smart card writer, and the RIAA sues hundreds of Kazaa users at once.

They send threats or sue because they know they are the big guy and the little guy will almost always cave in. It's easy and cheap. For a typical web site owner, it's too expensive to even figure out if you are within your rights, certainly too expensive to get a lawyer. So people just take their web sites down.

Every so often they get somebody like me who knows his rights, and I predict they have no desire to fight me once they see who I am and that I can defend my rights. So I'm not in much danger personally. The people in danger are the other people who got this letter and didn't know the truth.

So I make fun of them to ridicule them, to point out what they are doing, and to inform people that they don't have to give in to impressive sounding threats on their parodies. By doing it in an amusing way, people pay more attention to it.

They do need to defend their mark, but parodies are not infringing so they don't need to send C&D letters on those. They do it because they are lazy, or because they want to be very sweeping, or perhaps because the lawyers want to bill the client for more hours, who knows? It's a foolish strategy, but they do it.

And another reason for the publicity is that it teaches them to be more careful, and not to just threaten willy-nilly. I want it to come back and bite them. Last time, Mastercard got people cutting up their mastercards, and the law firm doesn't want the client calling to say "what the hell did you do, customers are cancelling accounts!"

So write Amex if you don't like them bullying. Tell them and the lawyers there is a cost to bullying in the modern age.

(If you don't get /.ed. My pages have been /.ed before and handled it fine but for some reason not today. The server is up and furiously spitting out pages but obviously not fast enough.)

Re:Why it's necessary to publicise this

[vegetablespork]

I wrote Amex as a customer. It'll be interesting to see what (if any) response I receive. Give 'em hell, and thanks for fighting the good fight to help protect all our rights.

For Brad there's a wicked sense of humor

[geekotourist]

and...

For Everybody else there's The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Don't leave a threat to your homepage without it. As the ever busy EFF is part of ChillingEffects, if Brad Templeton hadn't hadn't already known about the right to parody vs. scare tactic legal letters he could just call them up and ask.

But if you yourself have received one of these letters, you also can report it to Chilling Effects and ask for help from the EFF. But the EFF can only be there to help you later if you support the EFF through joining now.

google ads

[orn]

Wow. I wish I had gotten slashdotted with those google ads on my page.

I wonder if you could start a business model around posting stuff on a site and submitting the articles to slashdot... :-)

13 Years Oh Yeah!

[Nom du Keyboard]

So this is a 13-year-old joke. Makes me wish AmEx would wait 13 years to bill me for my purchases.

A special act of Congress, actually

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

http://www.inta.org/info/basics_olympictm.html

This is just in the US, though.

Re:A special act of Congress, actually

[AndroidCat]

Ah, a special statute (and likewise in other countries), how nice. (I doubt MasterCard or American Express can muster that kind of clout. Probably.) I notice that there are some exceptions that they don't pay much attention to when hassling the little guy:

The word "Olympic" may be used, without sanction, to identify a business or goods or services if:
such use is not combined with any of the Olympic trademarks
it is evident from the circumstances that such use of the name "Olympic" refers to the naturally occurring mountains or geographical region of the same name, and that it does not refer to the Corporation or to any Olympic activity;
such business, goods or services are operated, sold and marketed in the State of Washington west of the Cascade Mountain range, and marketing outside this area is not substantial.

Also, any use of "Olympic" commencing before September 21, 1950, may continue.

That should excuse Zeus and the local Olympic Restaurant (est. 1948), but they always seem to send out the suited thugs with legal shotguns. ("Nice place, shame if someone dropped an Olympic torch on it..")

Re:A special act of Congress, actually

[AndroidCat]

Oh dear. Did I just say that MC and AmEx don't have clout? Of course not! "Clout Card" is VISA's trademark...

Re:Brad needs a lawyer -- Lawyer Spam?

[Nom du Keyboard]

IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?

Sounds like harvesting and spamming to me.

Oops, I forgot. The first spammers were lawyers!

Re:It's not the the result which matters in Americ

[mercuryresearch]

Not true.

My company, Mercury Research, does computer and chip research and trademarked its name in my home state. We then went for a national trademark.

FTD, the florist company, has an internal computer system named Mercury, and Mercury is the greek god on one of their logos, but not mentioned by name. They fought the trademark.

It took about five years and ~ $15K in legal fees before we gave up. It was obvious both FTD's lawyer and ours were gaming the system to make money. As long as they keep the paper flowing, fees get made. Simply getting to court would clearly have cost at least double this.

Re:B*lls?? The Real Hacker would say...

[Nom du Keyboard]

This guy has more b*lls than I.

What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?

The real hacker would say: b@llz.

Re:Paying the lawsuit penalties -- Since you asked

[Nom du Keyboard]

What if the guy loses the suit and pays for it with his American Express card?

He'll get airline miles for it.

YOU'RE FIRED![tm]

[Nom du Keyboard]

Your unauthorized use of AMERICAN EXPRESSWAY ... is likely to cause consumers to be confused, mistaken, or deceived as to the source of origin of your services.

1: Does AmEx really want consumers that dumb to start with? They might get confused and send all their payments to MasterCard instead.

2: Does AmEx want lawyers this stupid? The bad publicity over this is truly priceless.

3: To steal another trademarked phrase: AmEx to their lawyers: YOU'RE FIRED!

(Ring, ring. "Hello, please hold for The Donald, who wishes to have a word with you...")

Ever hear of Aspirin?

[nacturation]

First - That's a load of bullshit. There is no such thing as protecting your trademark. As long as you continue to use it in the course of business it is protected. It is an urban legend, an old wives tales, general bullshit. There has never been a case where a company failed to protect its trademark and lost.

See the Aspirin Wikipedia article where it states (emphasis mine):

• Bayer registered aspirin as a trademark on March 6, 1899. However, the German company lost the right to use the trademark in many countries as the Allies seized and resold its foreign assets after World War I. In the United States, the right to use "Aspirin" there (along with all other Bayer trademarks) was purchased from the U.S. government by Sterling Drug, Inc in 1918. Even before the patent went into the public domain in 1917, Bayer had been unable to stop competitors from copying the formula and using the name elsewhere, and so with a flooded market, the public was unable to recognize "Aspirin" as coming from only one manufacturer.
• Sterling was subsquently unable to prevent "Aspirin" from being ruled a generic mark (and therefore unprotected) in a U.S. federal court in 1921. Other countries (such as Canada) still consider "Aspirin" a protected trademark.

Like the recently settled Pan-IP patent case

[geekotourist]

As written about in this recent article. PanIP thought they could extort licence fees by going after tiny businesses. If PanIP thought they had a real patent they'd have gone after Amazon or Buy.com: nope- just little people who can't afford to fight. But these little businesses found each other, joined in a group, fought back as a group, and won.

For C&D letters Chilling Effects is our group defense, as is the EFF in general.

chillingeffects.org

[geekotourist]

At the minimum you can research their site, see if similar letters have been sent out, and get general information on where your case might stand. If you are Our Welcomed New Overlords you can use Chilling Effects to comply with takedown notices without those site links being lost entirely.

They're still at it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mastercard has been at this for a while now. They went after atrition.org in July of 2001.

Re:How is this different from the Penny Arcade thi

[Anonymous Coward]

The Penny Arcade guys pulled the comic from their site rather than go through the legal battle. From my understanding, however, this happens all the time.

Even legal journals have to (self-censorship)

[geekotourist]

One of the largest newsletters going out to free-speech advocates, lawyers, judges and the like has to do this. This article in 2001 covered it. Its because of all the filters, and is doubly difficult when your newsletter's topics include censorship itself. Thus all the "sez" and "druks" and "Promography" and "Right to Azzemble."

Who Speaks Loudest?

[DynaSoar]

People are too easily swayed by the legalistic propoganda to remember their own rights.

UUNet/Worldcom tried the same back in 1998 when people were parodying them regarding their pro-spammer stance. When the UUNet lawyers sent out their opening salvo, people responded by sprouting numerous mirrors and other parody sites. Here's a page (most links fairly outdated) about it. http://www.sputum.com/uunot/

One of the resulting media articles that was written concluded with a particularly apt phrase, something along the lines of "No matter who has what to say, the Net is always going to speak the loudest."

Bull, lots of bull and mismanagement

[elpapacito]

From the Cease and Desist letter the guy received from Ammerucan Asshats:

Your unauthorized use of AMERICAN EXPRESSWAY, a mark virtually identical to our client's "AMERICAN EXPRESS"(TM) mark, is likely to cause consumers to be confused, mistaken, or deceived as to the source of origin of your services.

Your service ? It's a joke it's not a service.

It is likely that someone viewing your advertisements and other uses of AMERICAN EXPRESSWAY and "MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PRIVILEGES" (TM) would believe that your services are connected with, affiliated with, approved by, or otherwise sponsored by our client, when in fact they are not. Your continued use of our client's marks violates the Federal Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1114, 1125(a), and 1125(c). In addition, your continued use of these marks constitutes a deceptive business practice and unfair competition in violation of state law.

For competition to exist, the guy making the joke should be using the joke for the purpose of incrementing the sales of his own brand of credit cards at expense of Ammmerukan Assgrabbers ; that could probably be considered as a kind of unfair competition.

It is quite evident that this is a standardized Cease & Desist Letter sent to companies that are abuusing a brand to ATTRACT customers ; they're probably routinely sent by thousands to scare the hell out of ignorants, who can't spot that they're standardized. The "lawyer" , assuming she is one, didn't even care to adapt the letter. Brilliant, really brilliant.

Even in a court, it would not stand one minute as during the judgement actual confusion is also evaluated , not only potential.

That is NOT protecting the trademark from abuse, that's a kind of harrasment that probably, in a few occasions, borderlines indirect blackmailing as the consumer is "offered" to pay in advance to avoid further prosecutions (which is a lie, they still can prosecute you).

Full size version of that picture...

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's interested, an original version of the American McGee / Strawberry Shortcake picture can be found here.

bcc

[top romulan]

> bcc: Colm Dobbyn, Esq.

uh, how is that a blind carbon copy if they
wrote it on there, it's just a copy, eh?

suckahs

trademark law

[God! Awful 2]

I'm not an expert on trademark law, but did this strike anyone as odd?

"THERE ARE SOME THINGS MONEY CAN'T BUY, FOR EVERYTHING ELSE THERE'S MASTERCARD" (Reg. No. 2,259,941);
*and* THERE ARE SOME THINGS MONEY CAN'T BUY. FOR EVERYTHING ELSE THERE'S MASTERCARD." (Reg. No. 2,297,299)

Read it again. The only difference between the two trademarks is a comma vs. a period. Do you literally have to be that specific in order to protect a trademark? Perhaps you can avoid a lawsuit simply by using a semicolon! (If only patents had to be that specific.)

-a

Re:How to fight back II

[GnarlyNome]

glue the envelope to a brick