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Courts and the META Tag
tomreagan writes "The San Francisco Ninth Court of Appeals has ruled that it is illegal to use someone else's trademarks in your META tags. A company called Brookfield Entertainment sued West Coast Video for putting "moviebuff" in their META tags, a term which it Brookfield has copyrighted. The court ruled that WestCoast video had to remove the word from its pages META tags. The really scary thing is that West Coast Video and Brookfield are in totally different businesses - it would seem that this means anyone can be sued for any infringement.
Webmasters everywhere should be quaking in their boots on this one.
The original story can be found here on the NYTimes website and the judgment can be found here on a Villanova website.
Well if this applies to meta tags the step is not far to the browsers themselfs. Howabout MSIE that sends Mozilla in every single request? Isn't Mozilla (tm)ed?
Submit a screen saver which flashes "Al Gore Sucks" across the screen. If yours is the only entry, you'll have to win the contest by default.
I don't think the situation you describe falls
within the scope of this decision. From what I
read, it seems that you can't use trademarked
Meta Tags if you intend somehow to profit from it,
possibily in a way that might take business from
the owner of the trademark.
This being the case, it seems that you would be
free to use 'Braveheart' in a Meta Tag on a fan site.
As a practical matter, even if this use is
a violation, it doesn't seem as though the owners
of the 'Braveheart' trademark would be
particularly upset about your use, as you would be
generating publicity for their product.
There is a problem with this argument, though, and
that is that trademark owners might selectively
litigate to crack down on uses of their trademarks
in Meta Tags for sites which are critical of their
products.
O.K., if I do a taste comparison between
Slash-dot cola and Coca-Cola, how do I
alert potential customers that Slash-dot is
prefered by four-out-of-five hackers? Now I
can't put "Coca-Cola" in the meta-tags even
though it's a completely relevant use. It's very
simplely a case of eliminating your competition
(or potential competition) by litigation, not
competition and bottom line- it sucks, hard.
The cost the court referred to was not to the
consumer, but rather to the trademark owner.
If I am looking to buy a book, run a search on "amazon" and am directed by a search engine to barnes & noble instead of amazon (because of a Meta Tag including "Amazon", I am more likely to simply buy from barnes and noble, in spite of the fact that I know I am not at amazon. This costs
amazon money.
You may think this is an unreasonable way to look
at online consumers, but I think this is clearly
the point the court was trying to make with the
analogy.
So then, may I safely assume that you support the use of 'Linux' in a META tag on a microsoft.com page that sells NT and does not mention Linux?
People (and corporations) can own your genes, why not your words?
I was reading this and had an interesting idea, all hinging on the "mind the space" quote...
:-). And if the hacker covered his/her tracks well enough, this would look like a clear case of contempt and cause for another lawsuit.
Suppose I'm a hacker with a beef against West Coast. Further, suppose I hack their site, and have root/whatever on their Web server. What's the best way to get back at them for whatever they did?
In WCV's current legal situation, deleting one space - the one between "movie" and "buff" in the META tag - would probably get them way more trouble than some lame "I own you" replacement of the page. It would also likely be harder to find (at least until Brookfield found it
I wonder - what does this do to the legal status of META tags? It's a heck of a lot easier for something like this to happen than for Blockbuster to get in trouble for some jokester who paints over their highway sign with "West Coast Video".
OTOH, if this creates plausible deniability, then is this decision rendered unenforceable? "Uh, yeah, Judge, them hackers are awful thick around our site. It's funny, but they keep putting the tag back within seconds of when we remove it. Sorry again..."
Not to mention what this does to the liability of the hacker should they catch him/her...
(Disclaimers: I'm not a hacker, I don't have a beef with WCV, and I don't advocate doing any of this.)
...has a trademark on the letter "i". Quick, everyone remove that letter from your META tags!
As long as you refer to "X is a copyright of the X corporation. All Rights reserved" or some legal mumbo jumbo, then you can use it.
Came across this the other day..
www.veronica.org
It says Archie Comic Publications, Inc. wants them to surrender the domain.
No, it's a trademark, not a copyright. Considering how much flaming on slashdot (both from the people who write the stories and those who comment on them) is directed at mainstream press reporters when they misuse technical terms relating to computers, I'm amazed at how little care goes into getting legal terms right when slashdot reports on legal matters.
I too finally slogged my way through this ruling. Quite an interesting read. I would like to add to what you wrote by pointing out several additional key points that were made:
1) Registering a domain name does not equate to registering a trademark.
2) Meta tags are analogous to billboards. Misinformation (for instance, directions) on a billboard used to steer ppl away from your competitor is a no no. Hence, the use of meta tags for the same purpose is also a no no.
3) The reasonable possibility that you might be competitors in the future is important.
4) The use of a trademark as a Meta tag is okay if done for legitimate purposes. Wells can use the meta tag Playmate because she was a Playboy Playmate.
5) The fact that the legitimate site is only a few clicks away does not matter.
I'm afraid you got this wrong: what the decision says is that if you are a competitng movie company with a film a lot like bravehart, you can't put braveheart in your meta tags (but can put "brave heart" in them, and can compare your film to Braveheart in the text of your web page). It doesn't say anything about a non-commercial fan site. There are TM issues there too, but they are not the ones discussed in this opinion.
Note that the court held that the two firms WERE in the same business (both had similar database services). Many posters on this topic have missed this key point because it is buried in para [17] of the opinion. I found this very persuasive.
Bottom line: you can't put a competitor's trademark in your metatag in any way that might falsely suggest the page belongs to the competitor, just as you can't create a fake web page with the competitor's trademark in an attempt to cause competitive harm.
-Michael Froomkin.
(Worse than a lawyer: a law professor.)
I actually found this ruling rather shockingly clueful, and am a bit suprised by all the negative reactions.
Some points:
1. This isn't going to kill search engines, and might go some way towards making them usable again when searching for companies online. I don't object to putting something in your metas if you actually have some content about it, but it's pretty annoying to end up at someone else's site when you're looking for a specific brand when that site bears no relation to or content regarding that brand.
2. This ruling doesn't affect fan sites or taste tests or real content in any way. Allows use of competitors trademarks in meta tags if they're descriptive of content (i.e., Terry Allen can call herself a playmate 'cause she was, or Coke can put Pepsi in their metatags as long as they've got a taste test going.) It didn't seem to be in any way generally forbidding the use of trademarks in metas.
I find it appropriate, and the analogy about the exits useful-- you aren't allowed to use metas for fraudulent purposes.
Frumious B.
Heh, volunteers making a Linux screen saver. I wonder if they'd actually had anyone sign up for it?
Obviously though, Algore's trying for our vote which is interesting. Politicians never go for the geek vote, just mainstream, generalized crap. Not that I would vote for him or anything.
I actually read the NY Times story AND the court decision. The judge did not prohibit use of a trademarked word in a meta tag, just FRAUDULENT or MISLEADING use.
:)
Example: If, on TechSightings (a tech-oriented site review site I edit), I use "slashdot" as a keyword, I'm fine, because I've reviewed slashdot (favorably) in the past, and have referenced comments here more than a few times. This is "fair use," under copyright law.
BUT if I put up a porn site or one selling real estate or anything else irrelevant to slashdot, or created a site competitive to slashdot called "backslashdot" and THEN used "slashdot" as a key word, Rob would have every right to sue, and would probably win, because I'd be using HIS trademark to draw traffic to MY unrelated or competitive site in a fraudulent manner.
All the court decision mentioned in the above story did was re-affirm this. Statements like, "this is going to kill search engines" are nothing but FUD, and should be ignored.
From what I read in the decision, the judge had a fine grasp of what was going on online. Far better than, say, Al Gore.
--Robin Miller
Cheap Computing columnist
Posted by Morpheus2000:
One may use a copyrighted meta tag in their site if the site is non-comercial or a parady. Intellectual property law permits the use of such items under what is known as the "Fair Use Doctrine." The Fair Use Doctrine is a priviledge to someone other than the owner of copyrighted material to use the material without the owner's consent. Whether a use is a permited fair use is a complex mix of factors, including the purpose and character of the use, especially whether or not it is commercial, the nature of the copyrighted work, the proportion that was taken, and the economic impact of the taking. 17 USCA 107. The use of a meta tag in a personal page would probably be held by the courts to be a fair use. The judicial ruling cited in this case involves a commercial site using another commercial party's meta tag. As long as your not motivated to make money off the meta tag, you should be OK.
My web site has info on Motorola ColdFire processors both of which are trademarks... If I have to remove all of the trademarks in my META tags then the search engines will slowly start to ignore me... Not good for anyone, especially Motorola as they like what I do ;)
"They can take away our META tags.. but they can't take away our websites!!!"
(A Scot paraphrasing another Scot who was played by an Australian...)
Would this affect generator tags that some editors add also? It would be silly if someone got sued for not removing a generator tag from the html doc they just made using the suer's product!
-Ben
Note that the original complaint came up because ..
the person that had trademarked "moviebuff" wanted
to get the "moviebuff.com" domain that the West
Coast company had already. The trademark owner
took this to court, and as the end result,
the West Coast company is prohibited from using
the word "moviebuff" as applicable to e-commerce
namely, they had to give up the moviebuff.com
domain, and they could not use the word in META tags that are used by search engines to place
their site higher up on the lists.
This, IMO, is a very isolated case that might have
some precident when there is a problem with
a gross trademark violation (read: domain name.com)
The end result of the above case would make
sense as to distance the violating company
from the trademarked word.
But in the case of general web usage, where
a window-frame making company might use "windows"
in their META tags, but at no other time
violates MS's trademark, I don't think this
case applies. If anything, if such a case should
come up, I would think that the search engine that
put the window-maker's site up above MS's site
would be the one at fault.
But, as always, IANAL.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
In the opinion, the ninth circuit compared the use of the meta tag to a street sign, falsely directing motorists to a competitor. The analogy is flawed.
The problem is that for all of the silly arguments comparing the internet to a road (as in Internet Superhighway), the internet remains a computer network where the cost of traversing links is not as significant as taking the wrong exit.
For example, if I knew that a certain book was either in Timbuktoo, or in Kyoto, but not in both cities, going to the wrong city would be extremely costly. If I used the internet, the cost of a wrong choice would be substantially smaller.
Traversal of http links is not significantly bond by geography, and users have become inured to the fact thet search engines often do not give the right answer. I can search through a list of 50-200 links in a very short period of time. In addition, most search engines provide a short desrciption and a title. It's not as though the Altavista engine reports them as Link 1 -- Link 200. I can scan the list until I see something about "Moviebuff Software".
Thanks to this ruling, the courts have effectivly KILLED the search engine. Because of this ruling, if I wanted to put up a fan page for Star Trek (perhaps even being a member of an official fan club), I could be sued for using Star Trek in the meta tags. If I was setting up a collectors page for the Dodge Shadow (which a friend of mine has) I could not use "Dodge", "Shadow", or "Chrysler". Without the ability to have descriptive words in the meta tags, you have totally screwed up the search engines ability to guide you to a revelant page.
To use the analogy they gave, The courts solution to "mislabeled signs" seems to be remove the signs all together. Now, neither Blockbuster nor West Coast Video get any business because with out the signs, the driver just keeps on driving.
Whatever happened to "Fair Use Laws"?
Phoenix
If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
This exact situation was addressed in the decision, and is outlined in the NYT article. Under fair use you would be allowed to have Coca-Cola in your meta-tag, because on your web page you are comparing Slashdot-Cola to Coca-Cola.
Would ALT+255 work ?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Would ALT+255 work ?
If this shows up twice it's cause my POTS connection to my ISP keeps getting broken.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I wonder if they added this just today?
You may not, unless written permission has been previously granted, embed Metatags (hidden text used by web search engines to find
websites) into your website using any of the registered or unregistered trademarks of Pez Candy, Inc. or its affiliates, in particular the
PEZ® mark. Any such use of Metatags will be considered trademark infringement and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If anything good can come out of this, it will be that people think twice before putting irrelevant terms in the Meta Tags to get search engine hits.
It would be nice to do an Altavista search where at least a simple majority of the pages are on topic for your search!
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Does this mean Mozilla.org can now sue Micorosoft for putting "Mozilla" in the user agent string of I.E.? Does this mean Netscape can sue Microsoft for putting "Netscape" in their IE pages?
No gods, no masters
African or european swallow? :)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Check out www.google.com Much better IMHO.
Erik
Check out gore's web site at www.algore2000.com Then view the source. Besides a really corny and patranizing message, he blatently infringes of the copyrights of ColdFusion, Java, Linux, OpenSource, and I'm sure some others. Gues "trademark" isn't a hip buzzword :)
Erik
This is just crazy. So now if I want to make a website for ... oh ... lets say the movie Braveheart. I can't put the word 'Braveheart' in the meta tag, because it is trademarked ...
... but not in the Meta Tags to describe what the body talks about ...
Same goes for anything. There goes the functionality of any search engine that relies on Meta Tags. Now a Fan site isn't allowed to say what they are a fan of!
Now of course they can use those trademarked terms in the body of the document
*sigh*
At the risk of infringing someone's copyright:
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visit the seemingly-innocent Pez website, click on the apparently-friendly cop dispenser, and you end up reading the frighteningly-scary legal notice about the Pez copyrights and trademarks. They mention META tag references, as well as plenty of other equally absurd material.
Hmph, according to their site, I'm probably violating copyright laws just posting this. Screw fair-use laws, they don't give a hoot. Boycott Pez!
OK. So this judge thinks that I'm going to be confused if I see a site come up in my Altavista search because it has someone else's brand name in the META tag. Hmm. Why else would I use a search engine if I didn't want to find all the sites that have some reference to the brand name. Just think of the uselessness of the WWW if, when I do a search on my favorite search engine, I type in "Compaq" and all it returns is "www.compaq.com".
The judge likens this META tag use to putting another company's brand name or logo in a store window. Guess Nike will want to sue all those shoe stores that have the Nike swoosh in the window. Consumers might accidently think they're walking into Nike headquarters. Or perhaps Budweiser should be sueing all those taverns that have the "Bud" and "Busch" neon lights in the window. You certaintly wouldn't want any poor consumers thinking that they were actually entering the Anheiser Busch company now would you.
And let's not forget the card catalogs in the thousands of libraries around the world. Imagine how many violations of this new legal finding are hiding in the keyword listings on all those card in the catalog.
This ruling is only beneficial to lawyers looking for someone to sue. They can now just fire up a search engine and get a list of people they can threaten with lawsuits. Wonder if Yahoo, AltaVista, et. al., are looking for someone to appeal this.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Using a trademark in a meta tag should be legitimate if there is text in the visible part of the web page that refers to the trademark. For example, if the text is an article about a Microsoft product, you could use the relevant Microsoft trademarks in the meta tag.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The reason the 9th circuit is the most overturned is that it has the most liberals... and the supreme court happens to be fairly conservative right now.
However, protecting "trademarks" and "copyrights" and such seems to be in vogue with judges and politicians of all types these days, so I doubt the supreme court would overturn this one.
This ruling isn't as bad as some people think. According to the NYTimes, you can still use a competitor's trademark in your META tag if you are comparing your product to theirs. So you can still use Coca-Cola in your page which compares it to Slashdot Cola (apologies to another poster).
Apparently you can also use someone's trademark in a META tag if that is used to "fairly index" your site (according to the Times, although they said litigation was ongoing in that case). So you can still put up a fan page for whatever and include the corresponding META tag. These are both fair use.
The only thing this ruling seems to prevent is using a trademark in your META tags to deliberately confuse someone into thinking that your site is something it's not. That seems like a good idea to me - truth in advertising and so on.
Of course, you could always set up your web site in a country that doesn't abide by U.S. trademark and copyright law. As the Internet becomes more regulated in the U.S., people will just set up their servers overseas and sidestep the whole issue.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
---
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
And some of try not to use meta tags..
point-in-case:
Jackleg Inc. Records and Zine.
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Ah, but everything has it's back asswards catch to it.. They will moderate and just toss that out.. It's not a contest in the real sense.. Like everything on that page state.
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Al Gore is an alien, so he will naturally pick a screensaver depicting him and aliens. So get to work people and you're guaranteed to win!
Of course, the ninth circuit court of appeals is notoriously looney.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
I wouldn't worry about this one too much. I've heard that 9th circuit court rulings are overturned so often that they have almost no value as precedence.
Information is not Knowledge
It is referred to as the "Queen's English", so I suppose she owns it.
--
E_NOSIG
Trademark law, in a nutshell, goes like this: If I use "Quality" as the trade name for my dog food,
- it doesn't mean that people can no longer use the word "quality",
- it doesn't mean that people can't simply talk about "Quality Dog Food" in a non-advertising context, and
- at least in the case of regular words like "quality" -- as opposed to made-up words like "Xerox" or "Slashdot" -- it doesn't mean you can't use the same exact word to sell a different product (e.g., "Quality Dry Cleaning").
All the trademark means is that there are restrictions on the way you can use the word when you advertise for some other product: In particular, you have to make clear that the product you're advertising is made by someone other than the manufacturer who uses that trade name.I'd agree that these META-tag cases are harder than the typical trademark case, but not by much. If I put "Slashdot Cola tastes better than Coca-Cola" in the text of my web page advertising /.-brand beverages, there's no confusion -- it's clear to everyone that I'm selling something else. But the whole point of META tags is to work in the background (i.e., so you don't have to put "delicious carbonated presweetened cola flavored beverage" in the text of the page, but you can still pick up people looking for such things with search engines). If I look for "Coca-Cola" and find the /. Cola page without any explanation of why I got that result, I might assume that this was a new brand of Coke, or that Coke was now calling itself something different. That's trading on Coke's goodwill, and that's what the trademark laws prohibit. There may be some harder cases, but I think the general rule is sound.
(Come to think of it, I could go for an ice-cold Slashdot Cola right now. I wonder if there are any left in the fridge. (glug glug glug) Aaaah, so refreshing.)
It doesn't say anything about a non-commercial fan site. There are TM issues there too, but they are not the ones discussed in this opinion.
:)
I don't imagine there would be any likelihood of confusion for a fan site. Even the most clueless of internet newbies can usually grasp the concept of a "fan site".
Many browsers identify themselves as Mozilla, including IE...
Can microsoft be stopped from pretending to BE a competitors product?
"Suppose Blockbuster Video put up a billboard on a highway reading 'West Coast Video: 2 miles ahead at Exit 7,' he wrote. 'Suppose, further, that Blockbuster Video is really located at Exit 7, and another video store, say West Coast Video, is located at Exit 8.'"
But what if there is a PrimeTime Video at Exit 6 which is only 1 mile away? Furthermore, what if neither PrimeTime nor Blockbuster have the aforementioned Terri Welles Playboy Playmate video, but West Coast Video does, in fact, maintain a "Playboy Playmate" section which contains said video. Is West Coast video in violation of a Playboy trademark which nullifies their cause of action against either Blockbuster or PrimeTime? Furthermore, if a train leaves New Jersey at Exit 9 at 6:00pm traveling towards the West Coast to pick up Playboy Playmates at PrimeTime, what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
/* I have a headache */
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
there was an embarrasing situation for a major australian web developer [ Spike] when it was found that they had keywords in their meta tags for other competing design houses in the country. Ouch! Of course they blamed one of their "young and overly enthusiastic" web designers [who coincidentally had left the week before].
you want my prediction to the next trend in 'sneaky passing-off behaviour to nab hits away from your competitors'?
image names!
that's right. say i'm intel -- i'm going to call all my images "amd_####.gif" or "cyrix_####.gif". it'd take a while before anyone noticed!
OK, so maybe a little implausable. maybe i'm Microsoft and i'm going to call all my javascript variables "apple_####" and "java_####".
i mean where do you draw the line on this one?
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Quoted from the New York Times article:
The court's ruling on the meta tag question was not absolute, however. In a broadly worded section of the opinion, the panel declared that not all uses of another's trademarks in a meta tag were taboo. For example, if a Web site in its visual textual portion compared its goods or services to a competitor's, the Web site operator could include in its meta tag the competitor's trademark as a "fair use," the court said.
Seems like a good ruling to me. You can still have a fan site/comparison article/whatever with the tag, you just can't blatantly lift it from someone else. Darn.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the most overturned appeals court in the US. (According
to a radio personality I listen to).
If there is an appeal in progress, who knows how
this will stand?
It's pretty ignorant if you ask me.
What now? Can people own the English Language?
But in the case of general web usage, where a window-frame making company might use "windows"
in their META tags, but at no other time
violates MS's trademark, I don't think this
case applies.
Seriously, look it up. Do you think they'd be using "tm" instead of (c) if they actually had a registered trademark?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
They stated that since West Coast Video was using the trademarked name of a movie database software, and that they had similar database on the site, people could be reasonably confused as to if the database was actually the "MovieBuff" database. You can use the "Dodge" and the "Shadow", but don't pass yourself off as the real ChryCo (Sorry, DamilerChrysler).
The analogy, albeit a poor one, is akin to labeling a restaraunt "Burger King" and all the similar look, and actually serving McDonalds.
Fair use is still in effect. Just not when you are selling a product similar to another.
RB
Many sites out there are dedicated to raising customers awareness: Bekins and the ever popular Untied.com and NWA.
Bekinsbeware got bekins attention so much that they resolved their differences with the consumer.
The others frequently voice the complaints. What they do not do is use the logos and symbols of the target company. The court has ruled time and time again that people are free to advertise their disgust with corporations. This does include using the name of the corporation to do the advertising.
You just can't pass yourself off as the corp or use the name to sell something similar without telling the people you are not actually the corp.
RB
I don't see everyday things named pez. However, I think they are going overboard with all the legal crap. I think Illiad from userfriendly put it best:
"Don't do bad things. We have lawyers."
Works on many subtle levels.
RB
I found out why the judge decided to rule the way he did. This case was more than meta tags, but was West Coast Video's use of the term "moviebuff" in the meta tag AND in moviebuff.com
Brookfield entertainment had for awhile a product that was a database of movies called MovieBuff and trademarked the term right around the same time the domain name was registered by WCV in 1996. Just about 1999/99, Brookfield sent a letter to WCV stating intentions of filing a lawsuit over the use of "moviebuff.com" Next day, WCV "went live" with the site, and the actual opening of the site in 99. WCV argued since it was "The Movie Buff's Movie Store", it could use the domain and the META tag.
The court ruled, that by using the term "moviebuff" and not "movie buff" (Space included), they were infringing on the the federal trade mark held by Brookfield. They stated that they are competitors since on the WCV site at moviebuff.com, they had a serchable internet database similar to the one used by Brookfield. This is why the courts ruled that way. If they didn't have that database, then the courts probably would have ruled the other way.
(This is not the first time the Meta tags have come up in court. Playboy seems to have gone apeshit about the terms Playboy and playmate.)
McDonalds cannot use "Burger King" in their meta tags because they are competitors, so this is a similar analogy to the case at hand. This doesn't restrict the use of everyday terms in your site such as blockbuster or movie buff if you sell movies, but the use of the term moviebuff is now considered off limits.
Just make sure you aren't using a competitor's trademark to lure people to your site.
IANAL.
RB
"If 50 million people say something foolish, then it is still foolish" - French
Corrolary:
"If 90% of the world uses a crappy OS, it is still a crappy OS." - Pryde
But I want to patent it ;^)
Gore probly couldn't give a $#!% about the geek vote. The terms "Open Source", "Java" and "Linux have been sensationalized by the media, causing these terms to be fashionable in the rest of society.
He's using these words because they are buzzwords - the use of these words connotes intelligent and contemporary ideas. (at least to those who don't know what the words mean) Gore is simply trying to distance himself from those staid (Internet is bad! Save the children! censor, censor, censor!) old GOP candidates.
That said, is this an entirely bad thing? Yes, Gore is coopting our phrases inappropriately. Yes, Gore would appear to have little to no understanding of computers or computer culuture.
But he wants to know - he appears to understand that tech issues will cause the most important societal changes in the next millenium. He may not understand all the issues, he may not be drenched in the culture - but at least he understands the importance of the issues.
So what happens when someone buys a FOOBAR(tm) product and fines it horrible. The company refuses to honor any warranty (in the customer's view), refuses to refund the cost, etc.
So the customer puts up a web page saying how horrid FOOBAR(tm) products are... and uses a META tag intending search engines to show how FOOBAR(tm) products differ from what the sales droids would have you believe.
The company doesn't want that, of course, and sues for trademark infringement. The customer says that he has a clear First Amendment right to tell other people about the problems he had with that product. After all, he bought it in a store and signed no non-disclosure agreements (and refuses to honor any shrink-wrapped "NDA" since the company refuses to honor the same document's promise of a full refund if the terms are unacceptable.)
The customer would win, right? After all, the intent of trademark law is to prevent another party from diluting the market recognition of a product, not to suppress dissent Except the proposed UCC 2B appears to contain language that *does* allow a company to suppress criticism of its products.
This specfic case doesn't involve consumers, but it also illustrates risks in suppressing META tag content. It's one thing for to ban (for instance) another company from selling "kleenex tissues"; it's another thing entirely to essentially tell them that not only can't they call their product "kleenex", they can't even put it on the same aisle in the store!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Just a thought... but since the ruling said that "Movie Buff" would be OK, but not "moviebuff", I'm just wondering one thing. How in the world do you get the domain "movie buff.com", complete with the space? ;-)
-Aaron