This just popped up today and is currently +1, interesting. Just thought I'd repost it on an old story to immortalise it.
Fuck you karma whore. Well, looks like ol' slashdot is biting the big one, but good. Total server melt-down, just like its father, cmdr "I fuck baby pigs" taco. What a lame-assed piece of pretentious shit our tacoboy is. Just think of it: there he sits in his roach-infested apartment swilling Old Duke, puking his guts out yet again on the pile of trash and shit-stained underwear that covers the floor, dreaming of paying little boys to suck his limp dick with stock options while his pride and joy, slashdot, jerks and sputters to a creaking death due to his inept supervison, or whatever it is he does there.
Makes you want to break out in a big smile just to think of his sorry-ass going downhill fast, doesn't it?
Ah, well, tacoboy had his fifteen minutes in the spotlight - and for sure fucked it up royally; what can you expect from an illiterate college drop-out with the mental capacity of a little yellow crayon. Good luck, tacoboy, in your next career move to Burger King! And, yes, I'll take a large fries with my Whopper, you ignorant butt-fucker.
Thank you for making my day by being such a clueless Shagg and failing to get a good joke when it ejaculates in your very face. For some reason I find sincerity in the face of absurdity particularly fun.
Now I will admit in some cases the Enforcement of trademarks has gone to far.
A good example of this is McDonalds, who seem to think they own the prefix "Mc". They are very budy sueing anyone who runs a successful business whose name starts with "Mc", even in Scotland.
You're right to say "think before posting" because Taco posted this under the patents topic instead of humour. (Taco, please do not add to the desperate confusion on/. over the difference between patents and trademarks)
However, it's not entirely a hoax. They have been granted the trademark on ":-)" for Printed matter namely, greeting cards, posters and art prints
. You could argue that because emoticons have been such an electronic phenomenon, they are not currently in the public domain for printed media. Either way, despair.com is going to have to prosecute if it wants to retain its trademark.
False. There is no such thing as fair use in trademark law. If they want to retain the trademark, they have to pursue anyone who uses it as though it is an everyday word and get them to either remove the reference or put a little (tm) symbol by it.
With the current state of the US legal system nothing would surprise me. Why would suing 7 million e-mail users be more unbelievable than some of the utterly stupid lawsuits we have come to see as natural in the last few years?
Well, there are several clues.
'Despair filed suit yesterday in a U.S. District Court in Dallas, alleging trademark infringement against over 7 million individual Internet users. The company has requested separate injunctions granted against each.
Seven million separate injunctions is a good joke.
the company has, through the use of the FBI's controversial new "Carnivore" Internet wiretapping system, surreptitiously monitored unencrypted Internet email and compiled a list of over 7,000,000 individuals who have used the ":-(" emoticon in email
They are claiming that not only is carnivore deployed, but that they are the first commercial entity with access to it. That's quite a good joke.
The article then goes on to quote several IP lawyers as thinking the trademark is ridiculous, even though this is an article on despair.com's own website.
It continues in the same vein, going so far as to claim that the CEO is changing his name to ":-(".
Oh yeah, then there is the disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying
Articles and items appearing in our "Recent Spin" are satirical and are not intended to be an accurate portrayal of the persons, companies or events depicted within them.
In short, only the severely humour impaired could possibly take this seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, please, stop, my sides are splitting.
You're not rich, you're a gay.
Fuck you karma whore. Well, looks like ol' slashdot is biting the big one, but good. Total server melt-down, just like its father, cmdr "I fuck baby pigs" taco. What a lame-assed piece of pretentious shit our tacoboy is. Just think of it: there he sits in his roach-infested apartment swilling Old Duke, puking his guts out yet again on the pile of trash and shit-stained underwear that covers the floor, dreaming of paying little boys to suck his limp dick with stock options while his pride and joy, slashdot, jerks and sputters to a creaking death due to his inept supervison, or whatever it is he does there.
Makes you want to break out in a big smile just to think of his sorry-ass going downhill fast, doesn't it?
Ah, well, tacoboy had his fifteen minutes in the spotlight - and for sure fucked it up royally; what can you expect from an illiterate college drop-out with the mental capacity of a little yellow crayon. Good luck, tacoboy, in your next career move to Burger King! And, yes, I'll take a large fries with my Whopper, you ignorant butt-fucker.
Thank you for making my day by being such a clueless Shagg and failing to get a good joke when it ejaculates in your very face. For some reason I find sincerity in the face of absurdity particularly fun.
A good example of this is McDonalds, who seem to think they own the prefix "Mc". They are very budy sueing anyone who runs a successful business whose name starts with "Mc", even in Scotland.
I see you lack any sense of humour whatsoever. Congratulations.
However, it's not entirely a hoax. They have been granted the trademark on ":-)" for Printed matter namely, greeting cards, posters and art prints . You could argue that because emoticons have been such an electronic phenomenon, they are not currently in the public domain for printed media. Either way, despair.com is going to have to prosecute if it wants to retain its trademark.
False. There is no such thing as fair use in trademark law. If they want to retain the trademark, they have to pursue anyone who uses it as though it is an everyday word and get them to either remove the reference or put a little (tm) symbol by it.
'Despair filed suit yesterday in a U.S. District Court in Dallas, alleging trademark infringement against over 7 million individual Internet users. The company has requested separate injunctions granted against each.
Seven million separate injunctions is a good joke.
the company has, through the use of the FBI's controversial new "Carnivore" Internet wiretapping system, surreptitiously monitored unencrypted Internet email and compiled a list of over 7,000,000 individuals who have used the ":-(" emoticon in email
They are claiming that not only is carnivore deployed, but that they are the first commercial entity with access to it. That's quite a good joke.
The article then goes on to quote several IP lawyers as thinking the trademark is ridiculous, even though this is an article on despair.com's own website.
It continues in the same vein, going so far as to claim that the CEO is changing his name to ":-(".
Oh yeah, then there is the disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying
Articles and items appearing in our "Recent Spin" are satirical and are not intended to be an accurate portrayal of the persons, companies or events depicted within them.
In short, only the severely humour impaired could possibly take this seriously.
Please try and understand the distinction between patents and trademarks. It's really quite simple.
"I say, nice to have a sense of humour, isn't it?" - Victor Lewis Smith, 1992.
The Register carried this story several days ago. There have been numerous references to it in slashdot posts over the last few days. Yawn.