AmEx vs. rec.humor.funny 423
An anonymous reader writes "I worried that Brad Templeton's humorous reply in rec.humour.funny to the MasterCard threat might put an end to my daily read. I never heard the outcome, but since the column continues and he is using the same response to a suit from American Express, it must have been OK. This guy has more b*lls than I."
Brad needs a lawyer (Score:4, Insightful)
Preferably in those exact words.
B*lls?? (Score:5, Insightful)
What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?
Oh, maybe he means bills, as in dollaz. Meaning, he can afford the law suit?
Either way...
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need a lawyer when your common sense is enough to protect you... or at least you shouldn't need it.
Regards,
jdif
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
All he has to do is demonstrate knowledge/awareness of the law, his rights, etc. and they'll back off. He's done nothing wrong and they know it - so their threats are empty and he calls them on it.
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
You're probably right, but think there's something wrong when you're compelled to spend money on a lawyer every time somebody makes a stupid threat.
If he's confidident enough about his position to write the response himself then more power to him.
Larry Flynt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He's safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
You'll note that after the Mastercard incident, nothing more was heard from the lawyers, as will happen here.
Why waste money paying your own whores, when simply rubbing their face in it accomplishes the same thing.
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
This presumes that the aforementioned pinheads really don't know that his parody is constitutionally protected, which is somewhat unlikely. They know that the charges in their C&D are groundless, but figure that he will be cowed just because he got a letter from a lawyer. He's disabusing them of that notion.
Now, if they're dumb enough to actually bring suit on these charges, I'm sure he'll get himself a lawyer. Hell, there will probably be a pro-bono line outside his house -- who wouldn't want to get a slam-dunk against American Express on their resume?
Did the lawyers actually look at the website? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that he's not running a business, claiming to run a business, or using these terms for advertising a business, these statements seem rather curious. Did they just use a search engine and automatically send out a nastigram based on the results? Would my writing "American expression, Membership has its Privileges" in this post result in Slashdot getting a letter? (If so, sorry guys)
Re:you're right! (Score:1, Insightful)
"I think the point is he has not been sued yet, only threatened. There is no basis for a case."
The current climate leads people to assume the threats alone are sufficient cause to take action, and many people do, out of fear of the legal process itself.
This translates of course, to "might makes right" and it threatens to alter our society in fundamental ways.
Re:Brad needs a lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they look for a mega-response. If they get a response from a company written by a big law firm it tells a lot about what the company has to lose, and how big their bank account is.
IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?
Re:He's safe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He's safe (Score:1, Insightful)
I really hate self-censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Either have the balls to use the word balls or pick a different word. Writing b*lls is just stupid. Allow me to demonstrate:
On slashdot I can say: I thought that anonymous coward was a fucktard.
Relaying the same information to my mother in an email I would say: I thought that anonymous coward was an idiot. Not I thought that anonymous coward was a f*cktard.
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
They have to do this (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:PLEASE LEARN TO USE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:B*lls?? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it weren't for the porno mags under my Dad's filing cabinet, I wouldn't even know what this "sex" things was! I mean heck, June and Ward still sleep in seperate beds!
Oh crap, I said heck, I'm going to hell...
Uh-oh...
Re:Both sites already slow, here they are (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't we go after the lawyers? (Score:3, Insightful)
As an aside... (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which? I have to figure out whether you were from the U.S. and meant January 4, 2003, or from somewhere else and meant April 1st, 2003.
(If you don't think that this is a problem, consider that many restaurant kitchens employ large numbers of people from Spanish-speaking countries. Consider that food has expiration dates.)
I see many people still writing dates like this, too. I guess they saw "Y2k" as just some buzzword that the Morlocks were supposed to fix for them, and it didn't have anything to do with what they did personally.
Really, if you want a short date, you could at least use the 3-letter abbreviation for the month so that it was less confusing. Asking everyone to write ISO dates is probably too much, but dd/dd/dd is just evil. YY/mmm isn't all that much better, although if you're looking at it as a directory structure, it should be obvious that the directories would have to be in descending order. I mean, who would group things by the first day of the month, then the month?
Re:I really hate self-censorship. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Both sites already slow, here they are (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate executives are often lawyers themselves, and if they caught their legal staff billing hours for unnecessary actions and destroying the company's public relations for no tangible or intangible benefit, it'd be open season on trussed-up corporate shysters for the ivory-tower clan.
Too many companies have been burned by this for it to be something they don't know will burn them.
So either they're plug stupid, or there's a purely CYA legal reason.
And that can go either way in a big corporation.
Re:Both sites already slow, here they are (Score:2, Insightful)
Protect in this instance means - to maintain the status or integrity of
While police in this case means - detect and prosecute violations of rules and regulations
Do you understand the distinction?
A joke can never be construed as being used in commerce. You are not selling the joke. If the comedian took the joke and wrote it down and called it a "MasterCard joke" and sold it then it would be using it is commerce and even then it might not be infringement because MasterCard doesn't hold a trademark on jokes.
If MasterCard and AmEx have registered trademarks, they need to assert trademark infringement as much as they would need to assert copyright infringement related to the style and structure of the ads.
Now that seems to me like you said that they have to pursue copyright infringers in order to keep their copyright much like they have to with Trademarks. This is not true. A copyright never loses his copyright even if he never sues anybody.
This case has absolutely no weight and arguing about it is silly. You will never see this case even get close to court. It was a C&D letter to cover their ass in case of fallout of being associated with a joke told in bad taste.