[Despite my invitation to send an unedited reply to Politech, I have not heard back from Mastercard. Nor, for that matter, has Key West replied. --Declan] --- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavittat_private> To: declanat_private Cc: Jeanne.Hamburgat_private, jerichoat_private, theresa.melodyat_private, staffat_private, sgamsinat_private, ayde_ayalaat_private Subject: Re: FC: Mastercard lawyers threaten Attrition.org over satire site Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 20:17:19 -0700 Declan, I wonder if the MasterCard people realize how completely idiotic they appear? Do they not bother to research the nature of the sites they launch these volley's against? It constantly amazes me that large companies sick lawyers on people without any thought to the PR consequences... harassing a site with the grassroots reach of attrition.org is nothing short of criminally stupid. Are they aware of the hundreds of different "parody" versions of their commercials floating around the internet, exchanged in hundreds of thousands of emails daily, the vast majority of them obscene or scatalogical or otherwise referring to something offensive or humiliating relative to the person involved? I'm not sure how this plays out in the legal field, but it seems to me that a very strong case could be made that "priceless" mark is already substantially diluted, and has come to represent a generic situation or use - ala "Kleenex" or "Xerox". Take a look at this, for example: A search on Google.Com in their "image" search section (off Advanced Search screen) for "priceless". http://images.google.com/images?q=priceless&btnG=Search&site=images This yields, let me count: 1, 2, 3, of the top four images are MC parodies - two with *NO* reference at all to MasterCard, a third with a "meta" reference "MasterRace". Two of these could be considered "obscene". Of the next four images, three are MC parodies, 3 of which use the MC symbol trade dress, 2 of which do so in a parodic fashion "TurkeyNecks.Com" and "MasterHard" (which is at least indecent, if not obscence). Of the several remaining four duplicate images which make us of this pattern (several of which are no longer public), two of them are clearly obscene, and I suspect the rest are. Three make no reference at all to MasterCard. On the next page returned, there are four non-duplicate images, none of which refer to MasterCard, all of which are obscene or scatalogical. And, I suspect any person with a fair amount of Internet experience has been exposed to numerous examples of this generic pattern over the past few years... I recognize almost every image returned by this search from emails and URLs sent me by friends and associates. Not once is anything returned referring to MasterCard financial services. Not once has anyone ever sent me anything referring to MasterCard's financial services. In short, MasterCard's mark can be demonstrably proven to have already experienced substantial dilution and damage due to association with obsenity, separate from and prior to attrition.org's activities and the items enumerated demonstrate it to have transitioned into "folk" usage in a context where the meaning is commonly understood, with no reference to MasterCard's at all in many situations. I would suspect that there are many people accross the world who have no idea that this pattern of usage originated with MasterCard. In short, I suggest that MasterCard's lawyers go crawl back in the hole they came from, and that corporate America get a clue, and reign in the sharks before they wind up getting savaged themselves. Regards, Thomas Leavitt Internet Citizen since 1990 --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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