It’s Nipple Lickin’ Good
As I said last week, copyrights and trademarks are legitimate restrictions on speech because they protect the intellectual property of an idea’s originators without preventing the expression of any point of view.
Organisations need to vigorously protect their trademarks or else risk them falling into general use and becoming unprotectable. “Petrol” was once a trade name, “Coke” has come to mean any sweet, brown, fizzy drink - although their lawyers will still come after you, and we are seeing the verb “to google” coming into common use.
The U.S. National Pork Board did not see the funny side when breastfeeding advocate The Lactivist started selling a t-shirt with the slogan “Breastmilk: The Other White Milk”. The Cafe Press site that sells the t-shirts also features other items that play on trademarks - how about “Nip/Suck” or “It’s Nipple Lickin’ Good”.
Whilst passing off your product as another brand is forbidden, parody is protected as a fair use. It’s extremely unlikely that even the slowest of people would think that the Pork Board was endorsing the product, or that the product would damage the Pork Board’s brand. Some companies actually go to great lengths to make a gratuitous link between their products and the female form.
When the lawyer’s letter came, the Lactivist blog didn’t give in but rallied its readership to harass the Pork Board into taking back its threat to sue. (Cafe Press had already removed the offending t-shirt however.)
Once again, slowly: Just because someone says something you don’t like, or you’ve a had a humour bypass, don’t have a hissy fit and start throwing lawyers around. You will look like an idiot and generate publicity for the very thing you don’t want anyone to see.
Hat tip: EFF, via Boing Boing.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Parody products can actually help get more recognition for a product sometimes. I wonder why companies often forget that. It certainly doesn’t do any harm. As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
February 20th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
copyrights and trademarks are legitimate restrictions on speech
Just out of curiousity, I assume there’s a good number of information-wants-to-be-free libertarians out there?
February 21st, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I think we see a very polarised debate about intellectual property when, in fact, very few people take absolute positions.
Very few people really think that copyrights should last forever or that there should be no protection for fair use. Likewise, very few people really think that the people who create value from ideas should have no protection at all.
No one who can really be called a libertarian will be found at either extreme. A total copyright is an infringment of my right to express myself. I must be able to quote a work I am criticising. Most creative works borrow fragments from previous works without reducing their value. No copyright means that people are not entitled to the fruits of their intellectual labour.
The record companies have got it wrong when they sue anyone who samples a few bars of music and the file-sharers have got it wrong when they justify their parasitism by saying it’s OK to rip off big companies.
It’s an interesting and active question. What constitutes fair use? And how do the rules change when the cost of duplicating and transmitting information drops to zero? And if you ask ten libertarians those questions, you’re liable to get twelve different answers.