Slashdot Mirror
FedEx Cracks Down on Box Furniture, Citing DMCA
nospmiS remoH writes "Wired is running an article about a guy with no money making furniture out of FedEx boxes. If that weren't strange enough, FedEx is going after him, legally citing the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA. Apparently they are not upset about the furniture itself but rather this site that he put up with pictures of his creations (pretty good work really). My favorite quote from the article, '...Avila clearly intended to operate a business from his website because he used the .com domain suffix, the "commercial level domain," rather than .net.' You just can't make this stuff up."
I explored both his site and the fedex site... seems to get the boxes from fedex, you need an account... the good new? the USPS will send you free shipping supplies :)
Can they justifiably go after him for trademark violations? Absolutely. But copyright? You'd have to be insane.
It's constantly amazing to see the extent to which people will abuse the DMCA to get what they want.
I love their generosity.
UPS, especicially. You can get huge "25KG" boxes intended for international shipping. I have UPS drop these on my doorstep every time I move, all for free.
It's free publicity for FexEx. And now, it's all negative!
I think fellow used fedex.com to order a whole lot of boxes with no intention of using them to actually ship stuff in. It's a bit like someone taking an enormous number of ketchup packets from a Burger King in order to have ketchup in his house, rather than using them on the fries he didn't buy there. So I can see why FedEx would take umbrage at his using the boxes they're paying for to make furniture, and then turning around and showing everyone in the world how what a bunch of suckers FedEx is for giving boxes away for free.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
It's only a matter of time before FedEx starts going after the homeless that live in FedEx boxes...
They put out these stupid phone directories. No one wanted them. They were the biggest waste of money, and they ended up sitting outside on huge stacks for people to grab. One night, we took a whole bunch of them, added some duct tape, and we had a couch for our dorm room. The only problem was that the covers were glossy and we would also slide off the couch.
IANAL but after looking at the website it strikes me that on this scale the effort and pictures can almost be considered artistic. this guy did some very creative stuff with those boxes and I'm pretty impressed with the results. It seems pretty draconian even for DMCA to stifle this kind of work.
Weird... very weird
Mirror.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Aren't there laws about making absolutely unreasonable legal threats towards someone? ...
This is wayyy over the line!
Well, guess I won't be shipping any packages with FedEx any time soon. Knowing that "that could be me" is enough for me to boycott the company and encourage others to do so as well...
Just because some lawyer writes you a letter doesn't mean you have to do anything asked. If that were the case, there would be pure anarchy.
A judgement, which generally comes after a hearing, is another matter.
There's no way they'd win any claim of damages, period. They might be able to persuade a network provider to remove a site, but that's only because the customer usually has signed a contract with the provider that waives any right to damages resulting from a site being taken down, not because lawyers get to make law merely by writing letters to people.
If he's violating copyright and trademark law, then why can't Ford sue me for driving a Ford with Ford trademarks all over it? If I put a picture of my Ford on the the web, can they take down my site?
Precisely how is this different?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Here's the real deal. FedEx doesn't want to be providing thousands to millions of boxes to people who won't be paying to use them to ship items via FedEx.
The lawsuit is probably not expected to succeed, but to pressure the web site owner into closing up shop. If he doesn't have the cash for proper furniture, then he won't have the cash for lawyers.
For FedEx, "winning" consists of getting the site of the Internet. The legal battle is a means to an end.
Of course the result of all this is I'll be pressuring our shipping department to use UPS instead.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Is the server made out of fedex boxes.
Wired is running an article about a guy with no money making furniture out of FedEx boxes. If that weren't strange enough, FedEx is going after him, legally citing the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA.
Its common for homeless people or people without money to commit stupid crimes in order to get locked up for a while in order to get a free place to stay and food. This guy must have been clever to be able to first get temporary free furniture and then a temporary free place to stay and free food.
Very clever.
...and, erm, send him on his way.
My favorite part of the site, the footer:
/dev/null. By emailing us any questions or comments you give fedexfurniture.com the right to post any such message, and or replies on our site.
If any shipping corporations have problems with our site please feel free to forward requests to
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Here are the pics
l ?tw=wn_tophead_2
http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68492,00.htm
You have to love their claim that his building furniture with fedex boexes violates the terms of use at fedex.com.
"fedex.com is provided solely for the use of current and potential FedEx customers to interact with FedEx and may not be used by any other person or entity, or for any other purpose."
Fedex gave him warning, then posted a link to his site in a ./ article.
When I was in college my roommate and I made a couch out of cases of empty (beer) returnables. Can I sue somebody to get free beer?
I tell ya, we are rapidly approaching a time when anyone with money and power can attack anyone else, for any reason, under the guise of some byzantine law that no one understands, or agrees with, even the people who passed it.
In many countries like Brazil, it's completely impossible to run a business and abide by the labyrinthe of complicated and conflicting laws. Is this the kind of country we want in the U.S.?
Now, it's possible that FedEx has a case that this guy is abusing their trademark with the appropriately colored "Fed Ex" text on his site, but I can't see how he is harming them and the fact that they would... and could... cite the DMCA is just frightening. Is there no sense of perspective among these huge companies? All the guy is saying is that they make good boxes, but now they will generate not a small amount of bad will.
Now if the guy was selling the furniture, I also think they'd have a case. As it is, maybe he'll have to spray paint or otherwise obscure the company's logo. I thought these guys paid big bucks to plaster their names on anything they could like billboards, TV commercials, stadiums, people's foreheads...
I guess Mattel missed out by not using the DMCA when they pounded the crap out of that harmless little Barbie site several years ago. I guess the lawyers need someone to beat up or they start getting cranky.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Probably cheaper & safer than hiring "Luigi's take your stuff and jack up our rates while we hold your stuff for ransom movers".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Since a cardboard box isn't Digital, and he's not Copying anything, how is DMCA applicable?
Illegal use of their trademark maybe, since he's got a web-page up (allegedly, the site seems slashdotted) showing their boxes with their logo on it.
But he didn't do anything to circumvent anything resembling a copy-protection mechanism or otherwise infringe on the copyrights of FedEx.
How in heck could the DMCA even be applicable here?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Andy Warhol would be in a lot of trouble.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
He can afford to spend money on a laptop and orange hair dye but not necessities. Misplaced priorities? More likely a publicity stunt.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
He can't catch a break.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I remembered them going after a coffee shop dba Federal Espresso in my home town a while back... found this:
_ 98-9430.shtml
. html
http://www.lexnotes.com/sources/subs/cases/2ndCir
I believe they had to change their name, but funnily enough someone in San Fran is running a Federal Espresso now:
http://www.usrg.com/drg3/san_francisco/r/39/r3913
Maybe someone should warn them...
-- "the revolution will not be televised" -Gil Scott-Heron
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Shipping supplies from the USPS state very clearly that they're the property of the USPS. The first time you order a shipment of boxes from the USPS, they make you sign something saying that you acknowledge this fact and that those supplies are indeed only for the purpose of sending stuff by means of USPS.
I had thought Fedex and UPS did the same, but I just examined a couple Fedex medium boxes we had laying around here and they don't say anything of the sort.
I doubt FedEx really cares about the suit; they just wanted to do something crazy enough to pop up on the /. radar so we'd all go over and melt down his server.
:-/
We've been duped!!
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Hmm..
:)
1) Someone puts up a website that irritates your corporation
2) File a frivolous lawsuit against the website
3) Wait until Slashdot picks up the resulting story
4) Watch the site go down in flames due to the subsequent slashdotting.
5) Objective achived, site is offline!
Slashdot - greater threat to free speech than the DMCA?
It just goes to show the level of interest / level of readership both sites have. I saw this on Wired earlier, clicked the link and had a butchers, saw lots of nice photos of furniture made from cardboard and then got back to doing some proper work. Then this appears in my RSS reader and I go back to have another chortle and the damn thing is unreachable. Slashdot and aa419.org should team up and become the worlds largest manual instigated DDOS system
...I like the way he slipped Tux into the picture, obviously pandering to the /. crowd!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
And the reason he couldn't actually test his bed with two people on it obvious.... right?
I don't see how DMCA applies, since there was no digital rights management hardware or software installed on the boxes he received (unless you count the chemical bonding of the paint to paper), and he did nothing to circumvent that (non-existent) copy protection.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
The free boxes they send out are intended for customers. Instead of making money, they're subsidizing someone else's furniture needs.
I can understand them being upset about this, and I'm hard pressed to think of an appropriate response. Updating the terms under which they ship people free boxes so this behavior is banned, and then asking the web site owner to add a highly visible notice explaining this would have been far more reasonable, and just as effective.
Now, there will be a whole host of mirror sites. A web site that would have been a fun curiosity has now been made infamous. Many more people will now be directed to this site than would have otherwise seen it.
This is a backfiring legal strategy if I ever saw one.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
According to a letter sent by Fedex layers to Ms Granick, from the Cyberlaw clinic Fedex claims copyright infringement because, I quote:
* "Fedex owns the copyright of its packaging"
ergo:
* "Fedex has the exclusive right [...] to create derivative works, to distribute copies to the public by sale [...] rental, lease, or lending and to publicly display its copyrighted works".
* "By posting photographs of works derived from Fedex packaging materials [...] Mr Avila is inducing, causing or materially contributing to the infringement conduct of others, and could be held liable as a contributory infringement".
There are other issues, but not related to copyright (trademark, unlawful access to the packaging materials).
I believe the fedex lawyer has a very weak argument: that the copyright of the design on the box extends to the box as a physical object. This is non-sense. If this was the case, any built product that uses material that has a copyrighted logo printed on it will become a "derivative work". That will mean that we will require a "license" from the material supplier to be able to use it. Non sense
Yeah, and FedEx really pissed off Jose's lawyer too. They demanded that she take down her comments at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
There are dumber things to do than to tell a university lawyer that they can't print their opinions. But offhand, I can't think of any. And even better yet, she's not just some staff lawyer, she's the Executive Director for the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic.
"abuse" implies the DMCA wasn't created for this purpose.
But you can bet it was designed for exactly this purpose, and more. That's why it's so frequently used to beat into submission anyone who is hosting a website that a corporation might find embarassing or offensive.
Clearly FedEx shipping co. only has 'FedEx' and the 'FedEx' logo trademarked as it applies to shipping containers, and within the realm of package delivery. As we can clearly see, Jose is using the term FedEx (displayed prominently on his work), in reference to a Furniture line, which FedEx shipping co. has no trademark rights within. I move for dismissal :)
Your Ford comparison makes no reference to the fact that every person who attempts to produce their own FedEx furniture will be costing FedEx a few hundred dollars.
The boxes themselves aren't free. FedEx pays for them.
Shipping the boxes to the furniture maker isn't free. FedEx delivers them. Yes, it's not terribly expensive for FedEx, as they are already paying for tie delivery person, and the boxes are probably purchased at nice bulk discounts, but the fact remains that FedEx stands to lose a lot of cash in all of this.
Their methods of handling this are reprehensible. I won't argue that.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I'd give him our boxes, ask him to build furniture out of those, host his website and assign him a lawyer.
I think the goodwill I'd get would be worth many times the cost I'd incur.
I don't want to read
I guess that makes slashdot.org a "non-profit" organization...
...they are absolutely right on one thing. .com is for commercial entities. If you aren't commercial, you should be denied .com. If you aren't a non-profit, you should be denied .org. If you aren't an ISP or other infrastructure provider, you should be denied a .net.
.com because that's what people remember the most.
That's the way it once was, and that's the way it should be. The way it is now, there's no difference except that people prefer
Bring sanity back to DNS.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I saw this quite a while ago on treehugger.com check out http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/fedex_furn iture.php
This guy did not "take new" fedex boxes from fedex. He used previously discarded boxes. On other-words ultra-minimal impact on the environment.
For more info: http://freegan.info/
Written on the blog, dated July 22nd.
"Over two weeks ago, FedEx improperly used the DMCA notice and take-down provisions to get the website at www.fedexfurniture.com taken offline. The company claimed trademark infringement and conversion, neither of which allow it to take advantage of the powerful remedy provided under the DMCA."... http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
Hmmm ... I'm guessing that FedEx mostly has a problem with his domain "fedexfurniture.com".
If they get pushy (such as threatening to sue) I'd offer to change the domain name to something like "shippingboxfurniture" and otherwise tell them to go piss up a rope.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
But I don't care what agreement the shipper & shipping company may have, if its a box that's shipped to me, I consider it my property.
Because if they do think they still own the box after the delivery has been made, they'd better get over here and pick them up or I'm sending them the bill for expenses and labor used to properly dispose of their boxes.
Note I am talking about boxes that have been used for shipping something, not empty boxes the shipping company may have provided with the understanding that they be used in doing business with them. Its not entirely clear to me how he got his boxes.
Actualy, he says he ordered 300 boxes, because he ships frequently. And that his furniture was built from those boxes, and that if he needed a box for shipping he would take one out of his furniture to do it.
-Jason
I wonder what the ladies think of his bed :)
Heck, I just started buying a large coffee cup full of half and half at the corner gas station the other day because I figured out it was cheaper than buying a container of half and half.
I don't have a problem with that from a moral standpoint -- I figure we all have our little moral justifications that we use to save us a buck here and there at the expense of The Man. It all works out in the end. But from a time standpoint, I don't get it. How much is your time worth? How much time does that trip to the corner store take you that would've otherwise been saved had you just picked up the quart of half and half when you picked up the gallon of milk at the grocery store? And if you feel just the slightest twinge of guilt upon "cheating" the corner store out of $.60 worth of half and half, what is that worth to you?
From a financial standpoint it doesn't make sense.
It's kinda like the 3 hours I spent driving around town the other day looking for a single 7mm nut. $.23 plus tax, but 3 hours of my time plus gas.
Synergy is your friend
Next time, try Budget Truck Rental. Their trucks are far nicer than U-Hauls. They try to keep the trucks in their fleet no older than 4 years.
I'm looking to move to Montana in a few months, from the Los Angeles area. The one way truck rental from U-Haul was over $5,000 for a 24' truck. The slightly larger truck that Budget offers was a little over half that price. For under $3,000, I could get it will all the moving supplies I need, and an auto trailer so my wife doesn't have to drive behind me.
Not to mention that the customer service at U-Haul sucks. I've never been in there, and not have to wait nearly an hour for the 2-3 people in front of me to be taken care of before they even start renting me something. When I've rented from Budget in the past, I was completely done, and out of there within half an hour.
I don't know about you guys but I don't think the website is showing any signs of being Slashdotted. It's fast and zippy even after over 300 comments - must be heck of a server.
I'd pay this guy to replace all his furniture with UPS boxes and come out looking like a hero!
Oh yeah, I should go into PR!
If FedEx wants to start bitching about the way people use a TLD to denote whether or not they're a commercial entity, check out http://www.orangebowl.org/. If the Orange Bowl is a non-commercial event somebody should probably get back those "gift" SUVs the colleges are giving out to their star ball-players.
I would offer to help him and send him all of the packaging materials he needs..... You couldn't buy that kind of advertising.
New UPS Commercial: "What can Brown do for you? Help you stick it to FedEx and furnish your apartment...."
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
FedEx is clearly a not for profit organization because they have fedex.org!
/cry about it.
Hey, FedEx,
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Can't make a raft out of 'em, either, I'll bet.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
> you can easily evade this design with a few moments' patience and some duct tape: Simply tape up the box so that no design is visible.
Or if you get the ones that you have to fold/assemble yourself, just make them inside-out, giving you a nice plain brown or white box.
While offtopic, it's fun to talk about...
When I worked at Dell in the safety investigation labs, I would often inspect failed PCs via unusual means. Most of the time, it's because of smoke or "pop" sounds from a failed power supply (bad capacitor sounds like a fire cracker). At any rate, about 1/10 of those PCs failed due to ROACHS!!! That's right, roaches are attracted to the ionized air created by the power supply. They often find them steril and clean enough to lay eggs in. By the time we get those PCs, they eggs have already hatched.
Let me tell you something... I ALWAYS open the side case cover very very carefully. You never know when a swarm of 20+ roaches come crawling out the moment they see some light.
Life is not for the lazy.
I used to manage a distribution warehouse, so I was lucky enough to visit the local UPS operation here in town. Each day, we fill a feeder truck with anywhere from 300-500 packages on average. These feeder trucks are then picked up every day and driven back to our local UPS facility. Once the feeder arrives at UPS, the entire trailer is tipped at about a 30 angle and all of the packages on top literally come tumbling out of the truck onto a sort station at the docks.
It is not a delicate process at all. And when a couple hundred of your packages all start toppling over each other, it is very scary indeed. I'd rather them play football with the packages.
Where did you get that idea from?
...
.net domains:
According to RFC 920 -- Domain Requirements (1984):
"The initial top level domain names are:
COM = Commercial, any commercial related domains meeting the second level requirements..."
According to RFC1591 -- Domain Name System Structure and Delegation (1994) :
"COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is companies..."
Also, regarding
"NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network providers..."
The USPS is owned wholey owned by the US goverment. Therefore anyting that the USPS owns is goverment property. Since the USPS owns the boxes, misuse of said boxes is a misuse of goverment property and that my friend is illegal. The USPS does not need to be a branch of the goverment to make misuse of its goods a federal crime. PS - If you ever get the urge to rob the postman that is also a federal offense.
f*ck you mods for thinking the parent was 'informative'.
1) Our government has 3 branches, the post office is not one of them, however it is part of one of them.
2) Destruction of and misuse of federal government property, may be the offenses you are looking for. Oh and BTW, your mailbox is not yours either, the MAN owns it.
Time spent in the mail room can be instructive:
Prized for portability -- possessed illegally
From the article:
A good time to remind us of why RMS insists on having different opinions about the public policy questions raised by disparate laws (including trademark, copyright, and patent law) with different histories and purposes; the alternative he rejects is lumping these laws together into "intellectual property".
Digital Citizen
To specifically address this, here's a quote from "American Government and Politics Today" (published by Thomas/Wadsworth), under the Bureaucracy chapter (which is where the USPS falls... directly under the executive branch which is supposed to carry out laws passed by Congress):
If mail theft, mail fruad and tampering with mailboxes can be federal offenses, then so could using USPS packaging for something other than its intended purpose.
The PDF is a little confusing because it's posted upside down but it's a great read.
I will briefly paraphrase for those too lazy to read this themselves..
Grannick's response is:
1) There isn't a chance in hell someone would confuse the fedexfurniture site for a multinational shipping organization
2) Some guy sold artistic expression of Barbie doing naughty things once
2a) not only did a court find this OK but the company (Mattel) that tried to sue him ended up paying for all his attorneys fees (HINT: Fedex will pay lots of money to Avila if you pursue this)
3) The DMCA reference is Bullshit!
4) He complied with all your websites terms and conditions
5) BTW we put his website on Stanford's servers. Care to sue us both?
In just a page and a half she shredded their case and taunted them to try and sue one of the top legal institutions in the country. But it's all done so subtley.
I have a feeling a NEW terms and conditions will get posted to Fedex in the very near future. Just a gut feeling.
This is just wrong. Why on earth did people mod it up? I guess that's Slashdot for you.
RFC 920, back in 1984, says that "COM = Commercial, any commercial related domains meeting the second level requirements."