Canon Tries To Shut Down "Fake" Canon Blog 125
Thomas Hawk writes "An interesting twist over at the Fake Chuck Westfall Blog. Fake Chuck (like Fake Steve before him) has a blog out parodying Canon's real Technical Information Advisor Chuck Westfall. It seems that Canon and their lawyers over at Loeb & Loeb are none too fond of all the fun that Fake Chuck and DSLR geeks everywhere have been having at their expense and have sent Fake Chuck's blog hosting company, WordPress, a notice to take the blog down. Canon's lawyers cite that Fake Chuck's blog is 'calculated to mislead recipients,' even though the blog has 'fake' in the title, 'fake' in the URL and 'fake' just about everywhere else in the blog. What in the heck is wrong with Canon? Do they really think that trying to shut down a parody blog is going to make their new 5D Mark II ship any faster?" After Fake Chuck removed the Canon logo from his site, WordPress is standing behind him and has rebuffed Canon's demand.
Fake First Post (Score:5, Funny)
This post has fake all over it, so you can't mod it down.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Fake First Post (Score:5, Funny)
I only have fake mod points today, so I fake modded you down.
MS fakery (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MS fakery (Score:5, Interesting)
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5D Mk II (Score:1, Insightful)
I dont't have one, but it seems the 5D Mk II is already out. On Geizhals [geizhals.at], an Austrian price comparison website (Google translation [google.com]), numerous retailers list it as available. At €2380 (the cheapest one that actually has it in stock) it's not exactly cheap, but then again, most professional DSLRs aren't.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:5D Mk II (Score:5, Insightful)
[......] already over 50 customer reviews posted.
Looks like Canon's marketing dept have been busy then!
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It's been available in limited stock since late November/early December. Can still be a chore to get a hold of many places.
Guess business is kinda slow (Score:5, Insightful)
More free press for Canon. The real intention all along. Good job.
Re:Guess business is kinda slow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Slower now (Score:2)
I'm about to buy a new camera. It was between Canon and someone else. Seeing this, the someone else wins. Boycott the morons.
You'd think by now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Funny)
In this case, though, the views expressed are decidedly noncanonical.
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You, sir, win the pun-of-the-year award (at least so far).
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Yeah, but there's no prohibition against making lots of noise and getting on the front page when you have a product you need to push.
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Absolutely! Canon are hurting as they've had nothing but immense quality problems with almost every major model released in the last 2 years. Canon just cannot stand being called out as making 'fake' cameras and watch their user base walk over to real Nikon.
FACT: On a Luminous Landscapes trip to Antarctica, ZERO Nikon D700 failures, 6(six) Canon 5Dii failures of which 3 recovered and 3 were bricked.
Can you smell the PANIC back at Canon HQ?
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Personally if they'd just learn the ancient and mystical art of autofocus calibration, that would help... My last two DSLR bodies (20D, 40D) have needed to go back for re-adjustment (which made a world of difference).
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In contrast to that, I haven't had any problems with my 40D at all, and the 350D I had before that only occasionally had issues with dirty contacts on the lens throwing that nasty "error 99" every once in a while.
I guess with DSLRs (or SLRs, really) you buy into whichever brand of dog food you are interested in, since lens cost will eventually eclipse camera body cost as you build a collection of lenses. We can bicker and argue about one brand being better than another, but as long as they take pretty faith
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Just want to add that with the same two cameras, the 350D and my current 40D, I also haven't had problems.
I *have* had minor problems with lenses, especially third-party ones. That is where calibration/quality control is a major problem, even with Canon lenses (though I haven't had a problem with my Canon lenses, I know many others have.)
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As someone who had a blast with the Fake Chuck Westfall blog, even going so far as to make suggestions for stories the author could cover, I would like to chime in on my experiences with the same two cameras the above posters mentioned: Canon's 350D (Rebel XT) and 40D.
I shot for two years with the 350D with no problems, going as far as China and New Zealand and once even over the handlebars of my bike to land on my face with the camera strapped to my back, and yet I never had any problems. I am a recent con
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I agree about these fakes. They aren't there to needlessly harass, they're there to show a better way. FakeChuck may not even care who gets the message, Nikon, Canon, or whoever, just that someone does.
More important, imho, than any product defects is how a company responds to them. I haven't looked into it, but if Canon swaps a bricked camera without hassle, even with modded firmware and such, then I'll be more apt to take the risk than if they had better quality but were hard to get to fix something that
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You forget to mention that on the Antarctica trip you mentioned, of 77 total 70% of photographers were using Canon, and 30% Nikon. Fifty percent of Canon users, so 35% of the total, were using 5D IIs, or 26 people.
They don't mention specifically how many people were using D700s, only "lots". I have no idea of course, but let's say for arguments sake that 50% of Nikon users had the D700 - though their wording lends me to believe it's probably less. That's approximately 12 D700s. Three dead 5D IIs out of 26 i
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By definition, a company can't censor a person.
-b
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, wrong. [merriam-webster.com]
By definition, a company very much can censor.
It is just legal if it is the context of forums under that companies control, or using copyright/trademark laws.
Fake MWoody says... (Score:5, Funny)
...I'm a complete moron!
--Fake MWoody
Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that the above poster would have noticed the 'fake' in the author's pseudonym.
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Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Risking being off-topic, but seeing these all the time since the new "Web 2.0" upgrades to the slashcode has now drawn out the 'troll'.
Please! Put the 'moderate' *button* back. Simply putting taking action on an index change on the drop down list makes it so that people can accidentally mod the wrong way. It's only by good fortune that there are some people who decided to post something in response to remove the moderation. By putting the button back to confirm the selection, you avoid the mess of people posting to remove moderation and posts like these to beg for that simple piece of functionality be put back.
The Karma Whores will love you for it.
Re: (Score:2)
But I guess that just wouldn't be slick enough - buttons are SOOOO 'Web 1.0.'
</offtopic>
Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Funny)
I tried to mod you offtopic but I ended up modding you insightful.
Re: (Score:1)
I'd also like a way to just undo moderation without posting something.
And a pony of course.
Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Informative)
"Also, but I'm not sure if it's because of my browser's ineptitude, posting something to undo moderation doesn't give you the modpoints back."
That is intentional, check the moderation FAQ. The stated reason is that it allows an abusive mod to mod up/down a post in a new article, then post once it comes off the front page (making it a lot less important) and get the points back to use again.
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That is intentional, check the moderation FAQ. The stated reason is that it allows an abusive mod to mod up/down a post in a new article, then post once it comes off the front page (making it a lot less important) and get the points back to use again.
I can't believe people care that much.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone wrote (and posted) a greasemonkey script a while back. Very useful and slick..
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/37311 [userscripts.org]
Re:You'd think by now... (Score:5, Informative)
He's not pretending to be a real person other than himself, he's pretending to be a fake person other than himself
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What about everyone that has a character on World of Warcraft?
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Yes, because after all, people are illiterates and who don't see the word "fake".
I think we should alter the legal system for when an obvious nuisance suit is lodged, the company in question is fined 50% of their balance sheet assets, payable to the person they tried to sue within twenty minutes or the companies legal team or consultants go to jail for the rest of their lives.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
Canon [luminous-landscape.com]
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
You know, I went to that link and was dismayed that so much emphasis was placed on what was owned. I shot a lot back in the Stone Age and always deflected equipment questions because they are of no merit. What is of merit is the quality of the work produced and the few pictures I saw on that page look no better than PHO-202 student work. The technical aspects might be bang on, but I'll thank the hardware for that, not the photographer. Those images provided no engagement, no questions. They were pretty, lik
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I agree with your assessment of the pictures on the linked page, but I wouldn't, in any way, blame the tech. Maybe it encourages people to take some rather bland pictures because it's cheap to do so, as you don't have to care about film and development cost at all, but there's always been postcard photography.
While shooting analog on old, high quality cameras can produce superior pictures compare to what digital can do (at least it could last time I checked), that's only achievable when you also develop and
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They're not yet met, but getting there. You're after a 25MP+ full frame. There is the Canon EOS 5D mk II, which is 21 MP, and the Nikon D3X, which is 24.5 MP. (That's the top of the line from Nikon, and one-shade-from-top for Canon.)
However, generally the lens is less sharp than the current generation of sensors anyway.
Plus, you can usually not print anywhere near these megapixel ratings unless you're printing very large format or very small crops, it's not really that useful or as important as you might
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Would you read a bit more on the site I linked to you'd see them gushing about the picture qualities of the 12.7 MP Nikon D700, because it shows so little noise.
Form my own digital experience I can say some old 3-5 MP camera's give a performance present yet cheaper 10-12 MP camera's can't match.
But luckily with the advent of full-frame 35mm SLR camera's we can again use our old 'super' lenses to get the best of the higher resolutions.
Years ago Kodak was the only supplier
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The art of composing a brilliant picture is something hard to quantify, this site does not comment on the artistic aspects of photography, it just helps people decide on the products available.
Whether a picture was made via chemical processes, digital imaging or a brush and paint is irrelevant for the beauty and even the message it conveys.
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I agree that it has been performing sub-par for many people, but I don't think the failure rate on that Antarctica trip is the right thing to point to. See my earlier comment at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128757&cid=26869539 [slashdot.org] for my analysis.
There are reports of earlier Antarctica trips on that site from previous years, with similar tallies of failed cameras. It doesn't tell you a whole lot other than that if you use your camera in extreme conditions it wasn't necessarily designed for, you
Thanks to Canon and Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wha says that's not what they were going for? These are sneaky bastards these corporate types. It's difficult tfor us straight thinking peeps to get a handle on them.
Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)
The take down letter asked for 4 things:
1. Stop using the Canon logo.
2. Remove references to violence.
3. Remove references to Chuck's family.
4. Changes to the look and feel of the blog so it would not be
confused with actual Canon corporate sites.
It wasn't a totally unreasonable blanket take-down demand, and as such Fake Chuck will easily be able to comply and continue as a source of satire and humor.
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I'm not so sure that requests 1. and 4. are unreasonable. After all, Canon's logo is a registered trademark. Besides, if you're going to parody the company and its employees, it's not a huge leap to parody the company logo as well.
Look at it as an opportunity to further lampoon Canon by coming up with a hilarious reworking of their logo.
As for requests 2. and 3., there's no need or justification for bringing Mr. Westfall's wife and daughter into the fray and certainly no call for references to violent act
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)
I looked at the PDF of the takedown. Yes, it mentioned those four things as "particularly egregious" but it was a blanket take-down demand. Let's examine the basis they list for their complaint and their demand:
(emphasis mine)
If Wordpress hadn't exhibited some common sense, Fake Chuck would have had to find a new home.
Bad lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
I had to issue a takedown notice last year when I discovered that a fake business had stolen the identity of our legitimate business. As a result, we could have been raided by the police and had our equipment taken by them, which could have driven us out of business. The initial response of the website host was to go away. Before I could respond to this, which would have involved a High Court injunction, they obviously took legal advice and I suddenly got a grovel. So I am sympathetic to legitimate takedowns. As you say, part of this one was legitimate. But L&L should have done better than have it drafted by a paralegal, and simply insisted that the genuinely infringing material be removed or fixed, and requested as a matter of courtesy that the blog confine itself to technical matters. Despite their claims to the contrary, lawyers are frequently not the shiniest apples in the barrel.
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You're absolutely correct. It's too bad that large companies hire poor Law Firms. Just because you have a lot of money to through around doesn't mean that you should. Maybe Canon should dump L&L and hire a firm that would have acted responsibly and then take the extra cash and put into Q&A or maybe hire someone to actually read the complaints from consumers.
Sadly for Canon, now I know about their poor Customer Service and dedication to quality. They won't be on my list.
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#20178 wrote:
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1. Stop using the Canon logo.
2. Remove references to violence.
3. Remove references to Chuck's family.
4. Changes to the look and feel of the blog so it would not be confused with actual Canon corporate sites.
5. ???
6. Profit.
There. Fixed it for you.
Fwd: Thanks for the heads up about your blog! (Score:3, Interesting)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sam Johnston <samj-at-".net>
Date: Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 9:31 PM
Subject: Thanks for the heads up about your blog!
To: Chuck Westfall <cwestfall@cusa.canon.com>
Cc: Toni Scheinder <toni@automattic.com>, "Douglas E. Mirell" <dmirell@loeb.com>
G'day Chuck,
It's not every day that something truly entertaining comes to my
attention but thanks to my mates at Slashdot[1] and your mates at Loeb
& Loeb with their (surely fake?) letter[2] I was drawn attention to
your refreshingly entertaining fake blog[3]. Anyway I'm sure I'm one
of many who have immediately added your blog to my reader - it's truly
amazing what a bit of viral marketing can do for you!
Kodos to the guys at Automattic too for identifying the letter for
what it was so quickly and taking appropriate action - those guys
rock!
Eagerly awaiting your next post,
Your [virtual] friend,
Sam
1. http://fakechuckwestfall.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/982873542.pdf [wordpress.com]
2. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/15/1830217 [slashdot.org]
3. http://fakechuckwestfall.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
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What? (Score:2)
Who is fake canon, or chuck for that matter and why should I give a shit? If DSLR wasn't mentioned I wouldn't have a clue this is something to do with photography.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
The story's not about photography. It's about a major multinational corporation using its lawyers and money to bully into silence bloggers who point out its failures.
You didn't get that?
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So writes "Anonymous Coward".
Can you spell, "irony"? I knew you could.
I would not even have removed the logo (Score:5, Informative)
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Protected fair use" applies to copyright, but AFAIK not to trademarks. The Canon logo is a trademark.
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I just sent them the following:
---
May I provide some information to the moron who sent a letter off to Wordpress about Fake Chuck Westfall? Maybe you guys should research what you proclaim to have degrees in, namely THE LAW, before you send out frivolous complaints.
1. Parody.
---
A parody, in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, or author, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda
Fake chuck of fake canon receives a letter (Score:1)
the biggest threat to Canon profits (Score:3, Insightful)
My experience with Canon printers has been good. They are very well constructed, using actual metal parts where it makes sense, they aren't the typical plastic shells surrounding mostly air one sees in the great majority of consumer printers.
I will not buy a new Canon printer.
Canon's PIXMA IP3000/4000/5000/6000 printers had the easiest to refill cartridges around. I've got an IP3000, which I bought for $60 with a $20 rebate when new. (and yes, Canon did actually send me the rebate money) Well, it's aging and developing enough signs of wear that I'm thinking of replacing it.
There are a few IP3000s left that were never sold in sealed retail boxes. The price at Amazon starts at $209. The cheapest used IP3000 available at Amazon starts at $110. People in the know would rather chance a used printer than buy a new Canon printer.
How often do you see computer peripherals go up in price years after they are manufactured to the point where they are far more expensive than comparable new ones? The demand for the old ones comes down to drastically reduced cost of ownership. I've been printing for the last year on $30 worth of high-quality fourmilabs bulk ink, and my printed photos have never looked better.
If Canon were to make a new line of printers with chipless cartridges, I'd be happy to pay $100+ for one. If they made one that could be used directly with bulk ink, I'd be delighted to pay $150.
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Is there any manufacturer of inkjet printers that allows for chipless refilling nowadays?
I stopped caring about inkjets when I had an epson that I couldn't change out the print heads on. Bought a 50$ brother 2040 - to be honest, I don't print much in color. My wife bought a Samsung 300 something laser that does color; I haven't done any photos on it, but honestly if I'm gonna do photos, I've had good luck in the past via the internet.
I know that certain printers you could buy add-ons (3rd party) to basica
Re:the biggest threat to Canon profits (Score:4, Insightful)
When Canon started chipping their cartridges I finally took the plunge and bought a Xerox color laser printer. I haven't looked back since.
FUCK the whole cheap printer/expensive ink business model.
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Actually PIXMA was the start down the dark road of proprietary inks. Before that, the inks were just a plastic box with a sponge, they had a separate tank for each color, and the inks and print heads were separately removable.
I really couldn't guess what they're doing now, though. I haven't bothered with color inkjet printers since my i550 died and I noticed that CVS had decent photo prints for a fraction of the cost per m^2 I'd have paid for printer ink.
I'm all about the cheap black laser printers now.
"before that"? (Score:2)
That's a pretty good description of what I like about my PIXMA IP3000. I think what you're talking about started the model year after the x000 seriies.
threat to HP profits too (Score:1)
HP too. I have a Hewlett-Packard CP1700 Color Ink Jet Printer. The refilled cartridges are 1/3 the price of new ones. I bought a 100baseT JetDirect card for it on eBay for $20, and now I have a great printer that is economical to use - up to 13x19 sized paper. If I see another one on eBay or Craigslist, I'm going to buy it also.
After I took the "watch battery" out of the printer, it no longer told me that there was "a problem" with the refilled cartridges. They now last for what seems like forever, and this
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There are a few IP3000s left that were never sold in sealed retail boxes.
They were never sold in retail boxes? That seems a bit weird, as I've seen plenty of IP3000s in sealed retail boxes.
How often do you see computer peripherals go up in price years after they are manufactured to the point where they are far more expensive than comparable new ones?
Frequently.
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I welcome a fake Cannon website, if it organizes their drivers in a logical manner.
3 words... (Score:3, Insightful)
His lawyers letter may constitute mail /wire fraud (Score:2)
Since the site is marked 'fake' it clearly is a parody. There may be grounds to argue that references to his wife and child are unacceptable because they might not be public figures, but the guy he's parodying clearly is. His own lawyers in the letter have conceded he is a public figure. Thus the standard for defamation is much higher than with a private party. While I'm not a lawyer, based on supreme court decisions such as New York Times v. Sullivan and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, no reasonable perso
Loeb? (Score:2)
Isn't that the name of that evil gollum-attorney in Cryptonomicon? :P
The problem-- like soylent green --is people. (Score:3, Insightful)
People think stupid stuff. All it takes is that x% of people too stupid to grasp the concept, to then pass the 'information' on to their friends. Give it another iteration or two, and it starts to become a problem. Human beings readily accept the easiest to digest and most palatable information available to them. Canon is just trying to head that shit off.
Think about it this way; you have someone like Jack Thompson, devoting his every waking hour to convincing people that videogames are solely responsible for the breakdown of society. Bullshit, of course. But a percentage of people take it seriously enough to tell someone else, whether or not these people have any idea what in the hell they're talking about is irrelevant, with only a little help, such ideas can silently seep into common knowledge until a majority of people believe-- or at the very least, take seriously --such things.
To put it another way, if you're subjected to someone yelling about something loud enough, long enough, sooner or later it's going to have an effect.
I'm not saying Canon took the right tact, I mean the blog looks fairly harmless, I'm just saying I can think of a few reasons they'd want to do something about someone taking pokes at them in such a way.
For the record, I'm fairly brand-agnostic. Though I haven't used a Nikon SLR since the days of film.
Viral (Score:1)
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