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Fark Seeks to Trademark NSFW
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The term NSFW is about to join the :( emoticon, going from a generic, oft-used internet abbreviation, to one company's exclusive trademark. Fark is seeking a trademark on the use of NSFW to describe naughty online content. Of course, they may face a bit of a battle because more than a few other people are already using the term NSFW to describe their products and services. Not that that's stopped anyone in the past." And, of course, the whole thing could be a big practical joke.
Guess nobody clicked on the story cause it's marked NSFW! :)
My blog
... wouldn't Fark want to at least consider seriously doing it before someone else manages it. This could really come back to bite Fark in the ass now that they've opened the pandora's box on the topic by bringing it up.
8==8 Bones 8==8
we should trademark IANAL... IMHO...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Whoever is really running Fark these days is trying to further entrench itself in the online market by means of government protection now. Remember when Fark was cool and fresh? (Hell, remember when Slashdot was cool and fresh?)
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Just for the record GNU do believe in 'imaginary' (intellectual) property. You must be thinking of this organisation.
/ this
no one is trademarking WTF!
can you trademark the word trademark or the sign trademark?
Go to Fark and read about it. It is just a joke.
Trademark WWJD, apparently
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
In retaliation, CmdrTaco has filed a trademark for "slashies"
// had to do it
/ sorry
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Meh. I stopped reading Fark when they went to their 'rainbow' color scheme over the objections of most of their users.
It's not news, it's Fark.
Seriously speaking, I'm betting Drew just wanted to see how many news outfits he could get to carry such a ridiculous story, and how much of an overreaction and outrage said coverage would generate in the blogosphere. An effective publicity stunt, really, considering the recent publication of his book and its subject matter.
NSFW??? What the Fark ???
i can't believe i'm the only slasdotter/farker.
funny as hell.
the posting on the comments there is twice as fun tho, the whole slashdot moderation system creates quite a elitest, bullshit stench that i won't normally join.
I got dibs on MILF.
First off, the original post is wrong. The guy is not trying to trademark NSFW to describe naughty online content. The application is for the provision of entertainment services. To complain about this application is very much like complaining about someone trying to trademark the word "Apple" for computers and electronics. Oh my, but who would do that? If the application is registered, it would not take NSFW out of the public domain of posts and the like. It will just prevent the COMMERCIAL use of NSFW for the provision of entertainment services. So, if one of you wanted to use NSFW to sell, say, a cologne, you still could. And you could prevent others from doing so by registering the trademark.
... are the new press releases. How easily you are all trolled.
NSFW = Not safe for work
It's :-(®
Please note the nose.
If the U.S. Trademark office (retardedly) allows this to go through, just use: NWS (not work safe). Done. Crisis averted.
Sure, and it was all fun and games until "The Daily WTF" was forced to rename by the World Trade Federation.
Drew will license it for beer. No worries.
"Who wants Jack Daniels?"
A friend told me that NSFW stood for "Now Show Friends and Workmates"... I'm now unemployed :(
nothing to see here, move along
I think this may be the finest job of trolling I've ever seen, as illustrated by the length and quality of this thread. Sometimes I just wake up filled with gratitude that I live in such exciting times. /obligatory //tribute ///slashies
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
I could make a joke about how this is stupid and they should go fark themselves. But, I won't, cuz I gots class.
They couldn't get the trademark for something they didn't invent. NSFW is a 4chan thing. Mootles would undoubtedly have evidence of significant prior art somewhere in his sperm-soaked basement apartment of his parents' tiny shack.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Because I'm at home today, and, yup, there is a nsfw.com [Note: Duh! Yes, it's NSFW] already. There are plenty of others with a similar theme. Won't the existence of such things make applying for a trademark rather challenging?
I never knew what NSFW was abbreviation for.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
You should be buying many, many Xboxs, but no games, since they're still not making any money off the hardware.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
...don't click on any of those links at work.
Now I'm all embarrassed. Why didn't someone warn me?!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If you thought RTBL editing was bad, at least your posts show up.
But it'd be quite nice to see that happen here for some of the obscured redirects.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Quick! I need to prepare my trademark application for the phrase, "In Soviet Russia,..." [trademark owns YOU]! Although this guy probably already did that back in the 80s,... oh well -- maybe they'll still let it slip by, with all the dupes around here already,... ;-)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
http://www.freemagenta.nl/
"Sounds like he's gone into damage control mode to me. He's trying to deflect critics by calling this a "prank." Baloney. What's so funny about this anyway? Nothing. Drew Curtis is a moron. Fuck him."
Sounds like you're bitter ... probably because you bit? Must bite to post on slashdot before you've had your morning coffee?
To help you, here's my contribution to the Aconmymica (TM) ... NSTRBMC (TM) - Not Safe To Reply Before Morning Coffee?
Seriously though, we all know that there are only a few outcomes, and all of them are good in the end.
If it gets denied, we've all (okay, *most* of us) had a good laugh, sort of like along the "OMFG the gubbermint wants to tax email!!!". jokes.
If it gets accepted, we get to trash-talk the gubbermint some more for stupid copyright laws, and in the end, the law hopefully gets changed once too many of these incidents occur.
So, where's the downside ...?
"* Acronymica - a totally made-up word that now actually means something"
Kevin Smith on Prince
"The stupid thing about this is how a few months ago fark went from being fairly open about NSFW imagery, to banning anyone that links to or posts it. Apparently they can make more money by being family(or workplace) friendly."
Time to fork fark!
Kevin Smith on Prince
NSFW? NSFW IP? BS! NIAFMY!
( Not Safe For Work? ) ( Bull Sh*t! Not Safe For Work Intellectual Property? Never In A F*ck*ng Million Years! (tm) )
i'm a farker, so i'm geting a kick out of this replies.
/slashies
THIS!
What ? Me, worry ?
Fitting... the "Quote of the Day" at the bottom of this article: "You will be the victim of a bizarre joke."
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
ctfoadoairl
:-(
:-(
:-(
:-(
this is my stand!
no power mad CEO has ever left me in such as state of ire and vehemence, not since I got hit by a chair when I was walking though Redmond!!!
"Neo, follow the white rabbit"
"Can i eat the white rabbit?"
"No, there is no spoon to eat it with"
I guess I'll trademark OMGWTFBBQ
This is probably just a gag. Stop being so serious. Fark's been trying to name stadiums and other landmarks "UFIA" for ages. (You can Google what UFIA stands for.)
Comment of the year
Despair.com (the people who supposedly TM'ed the frownie) is also a funny site though they sell real products. The frownie trademark is a joke.
Motherfarkers....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm really surprised that someone hasn't tried to start a registry of pet names, and extort money from pet owners wanting to give those names to their pets. Animal names represent valuable Intellectual Property, don'tcha know. That cat you've got, Enrico Agache Something Amelia Earhart*, I hear you've been calling him Chico for short? That'll be ..... what ..... £100 a year to name a cat Chico. Or you can go to court to argue it out ..... but it's cheaper to pay up right now .....
* Only Chico's mother Amy knows what the "something" should be, and she's not telling.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
From the article:
"[O]ur end goal couldn't possibly be suing everyone using NSFW out of existence."
Thank you Fark for making this about protecting the ass-hole disguise and not about suing assholes.
A lot of folks fled fark because of the crazy moderation disasters, shadowban's, and sometimes real consequences. I have talked to folks that have no idea why they were banned. They only found out after someone said their posts weren't showing. I have even talked to one individual that claims some of the moderators at fark have gone so far as to try and mark him as a pedophile stalker.
Since all these people are nice, well spoken, and seemingly intelligent, it's hard to ignore. More and more stories accumulate as the months go on.
I hear about it at bannination.com. It's community moderated, as to prevent issues of the past. The folks that make it work, and genuinely interested in everyone having fun, and you can have real discussions there.
The NSFW thing may be a joke, but it smacks of a trollish joke to cause more people to visit the site for ad revenue. I guess I would rather spend my time in a site that does not make trollish jokes, or where I can count on never being shadow banned for random reasons.
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
Not Suitable For Wanking?
Have gnu, will travel.
...if it works, hey, publicity and money. If it fails, "Ha ha it was all a joke! You fell for it!"
Then why do they have an essay in the philosophy section decrying the term "intellectual property"?
Or didn't you read it?
P.S. I am the submitter.
Work banned fark.com in SmartFilter, most likely because it was generally NSFW. I am the submitter, BTW.
I didn't realize that trademark applications were "jokes," but Ars didn't link to anything on Fark that I can recall, anyhow. I'll extend them a little credit, but what are they going to do if it's granted? Just not defend it until they lose it? That's about all they can do without abusing it, but if they want to make it a joke, more power to them.
In the mean time, stories like this help prove that the mark is generic, just in case the joke happens to be on us someday, for example, if Drew decides to cash out.
Just because I don't believe in imaginary property doesn't mean I don't know how it works.
Someone got caught with their hand in the cookie jar (again), and now they're trying to laugh it off.
This is a long-standing pet-peeve: why does everyone insist on using "NSFW" when "NWS" (Not Work Safe) is shorter and to the point? Seriously.
Seriously.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Not Suitable For Wife
I, the submitter, didn't get to see the "joke" bit on Fark. Fark is blocked here at work. I used to read it. Lovely.
That said, while I appreciate that they don't intend to go out and sue people, I can't even read their side of the story, and nothing adds up.
IANAL, so why would you need to file an actual trademark application for a joke (yes, the Ars story made it clear that there was an actual application)? Why would you pay money for a generic trademark? When you say that you don't intend to sue anyone, does that mean you intend to abandon the mark? Trademarks have to be defended to be valid; you have to at least go around threatening anyone who uses the mark to defend it, though at least one person sent a "Permit & Proceed" letter instead of a Cease & Desist. I have no idea if that's legally valid.
But you don't file for a trademark that's widely used unless you intend to enforce it. And what's the joke if you intend to abandon it? "Hahaha! Look at me! I wasted money buying a worthless, generic trademark!" The only people I see laughing at that joke are those you paid to register it.
Mind you, I have nothing against Fark. I used to read it back when I could. But if this is some kind of "joke," I'm just not laughing. And I usually appreciate absurd humor.
I touched a Solaris 10 system for the first time about a month ago. Some non-Sun external software (MySQL, samba, gcc, ncftp etc) was installed in the directory /usr/sfw/bin.
I was confident using these third party programs, knowing they
were Safe For Work.
My take on "property" is that it's rivalrous, which pretty strongly implies tangible. Rights (including "property rights") are the intangibles, generally.
Rivalrous means we can't both use it without stepping on each other's toes. You can share a meal, but you can't both eat it. You can share a car, but you can't both drive it at the same time. You can share an MP3, though, and you and 8,000,000 other people can all listen to it at the same time.
Now, I might have the right of ownership for my car, MP3 player, or whatever. I might also have the right of "ownership" over some imaginary property. But only due to the creation of these rights is the imaginary property in any sense rivalrous. So I can't consider it to be "property" outside of a sort of arbitrary, legal sense. Thus the "imaginary" in imaginary property.
I don't consider it any more infallible, sacred or meaningful than, say, the income tax rate, which is also a legal creation. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, IP should be adjusted to whatever best serves the people as a whole, not any one group in particular. But current lawmakers are only concerned with making money from IP and completely ignoring the stated constitutional purpose ("to promote the useful arts and sciences") of it, so we might as well just throw it away and start over.
The alternative, making the law actually enforceable by creating third parties who control all computer activity, is simply not a reasonable option in my mind. Nor is selectively punishing randomly selected scapegoats with obscenely large punishments as a "deterrent," any more reasonable to me, for that matter.
The cost to file a trademark is like $25. You don't even need to hire an attorney. *shrug*
As far as Fark being blocked at work -- there are plenty of ways around that.
My blog
The cost to file a trademark is like $25.
Oops. Look like you mistyped that. The cost to file for a federal trademark is $275 (or more, depending on the details).
You can see the PTO's current fee schedule here: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2007september30.htm
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I thought you had to do trademark searches, which cost $$$. Or are those finally computerized?
My take on "property" is that it's rivalrous, which pretty strongly implies tangible.
No, not at all.
For example, suppose that you deposit a $100 bill in the bank. You still own the $100, but the bill itself won't remain in the bank; it will move around where it is needed. What you own is a debt of the bank, to you, in the amount of $100. That's intangible. When you go to the ATM to collect on that debt, you'll probably get five $20's. Until that point though, all you owned was their obligation, not anything tangible. Nevertheless, the debt is rivalrous. You can, for example, give the debt to a third party, in which case the bank owes the money to him instead. But you cannot give the debt in full to someone else while keeping it in full for yourself, and expect the bank to pay out a total of $200, which would be possible were it nonrivalrous.
Just because not all intangibles are rivalrous doesn't mean that none of them are.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.