Eat More Kale! Eat Less Chick-fil-A!

Used properly, trademarks are a good thing. They help us identify the source of goods and services so that we can rely on brand and reputation when we buy products. McDonald's is known for being cheap, easy, and fast. The Ritz is known for being expensive and luxurious. This is beneficial for both the producer and the consumer.

However grasping for too much of a good thing results in an evil outcome. Many corporations use their considerable money power to do the wrong thing with trademarks and try to control too much. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Luckily trademarks are dependent on people power (as well as trademark law) and people power can be used as a check and balance against corporate money power by decreasing its ability to earn money. If a company does wrong, its trademark can then be associated with its misdeeds, and those associations can then cause the producer to lose business rather than gain business. Think Enron.

It behooves corporations to use their power wisely or suffer natural consequences.

Chick-fil-A has done wrong and has become a corporation that deserves some natural consequences. Chick-fil-A supports discrimination when it funds anti-gay groups (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/Chick-fil-A-donated-anti-gay-groups-2009_n_1069429.html). and it is trying to control too much when it tries to block others from using the phrase "Eat More..." (see http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1128/Eat-more-kale-A-David-vs.-Golaith-fight-with-Chick-fil-A).

Here is what you can do to correct these wrongs. Ask everyone to "Eat More Kale! Eat Less Chick-fil-A!"

Email it. Twitter it. Facebook it. Paper-mail it. Leave it behind at Chick-fil-A restaurants. Just do it. It's easy. Hopefully Chick-fil-A and others will get the point and change their position when their business loses millions of dollars now and in the future because they made these bad business decisions. Eating more kale and less Chick-fil-A will make our world a healthier and happier place.

Eat More Kale! Eat Less Chick-fil-A!

Truth

Getting to the real truth of a matter can take a HUGE amount of work. Both science and our legal system endeavor to do this in a methodical fashion.

Here is a recounting of a 5 year legal adventure I undertook to defend truth, justice, and the American Way -- and protect some innocents and free speech:

History -- Freecycle Forever

Hurray for Stephanie Lenz and EFF

Corporations and other large moneyed interests want to control as much as they can. Their goal is to maximize profit and not watch out for the rights of regular folks unless it makes them more money. (That's just the nature of the beast, although every now and then there are exceptions like Ben and Jerry's.)

Luckily there are some brave souls who stand up for their rights and in so doing protecting those rights for the rest of us. People like Stephanie Lenz. Universal Music was a bully and forced YouTube to take down a short 29 second baby video just because it happened to include a snippet of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy".

Universal Music should have applied a reasonableness test to this before making the request. Likewise, Google and YouTube should have used better common sense in reviewing the situation before taking the content down as well. But it is usually cheaper and easier to stick it to the little people rather than push back on other corporations. Money talks.

Thankfully EFF (whom I support) stepped into help Stephanie and they have taken the fight back to Universal Music. Hopefully this will make corporations more careful about respecting the rights of others rather than trampling them willy-nilly.

For more information on Stephanie's case, please see:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/07/mom-sues-universal-music-dmca-abuse
and
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9932068
and
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9994345-93.html

Basically corporations will do whatever they can get away with, even if it is not right or legal.

For more information on EFF and their work to protect free speech from copyright and trademark abuses, please see:
http://www.eff.org/issues/ip-and-free-speech

Take Me Out© to the Ballgame®

"The biggest fantasy was Major League Baseball’s claim that its fans should pay to talk about fantasy baseball."

"In recent years, corporations have been aggressively pushing the bounds of intellectual property — extending the length of copyrights to unreasonable lengths, for example, and patenting seeds."

Although not mentioned in this article, corporations have also gone to great lengths to use trademark claims to bludgeon free speech as well. For instance, here are some words in popular use that the "owner" would like to have exclusive use of: freecycle, bakeoff, captcha, bandaid, rollerblade, frisbee.

Here are some older examples that I think don't matter as much as there are popular alternatives: xerox (photocopy), kleenex (tissue), hoover (vacuum).

And finally, here are some that lost trademark rights due to genericide: escalator, yo-yo, zipper, aspirin, and linoleum.

Unfortunately for most regular people, corporations with lots of money can often buy the legal outcome they want. Thankfully in the case of Major League Baseball, free speech won out.

I myself was involved in a case where a corporation claimed it was trademark infringement to use the word freecycle. Luckily the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that using the word freecycle generically is not trademark infringement, that saying freecycle is generic is not trademark infringement, and that encouraging others to use the word freecycle generically is not trademark infringement.

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freecycle, let me count the ways...

Why should freecycle be free? Let me count the ways...

1) freecycle is a great new word that accurately describes a popular activity (to reuse/recycle by giving trash away to someone who actually wants it and can use it rather than putting it in a landfill)
2) freecycle is either a compound word combining "free" and "cycle" or it is a portmanteau combining "free" and "recycle"
3) no other word accurately describes the act of freecycling and words by their very nature must be free for all to use
4) giving, is just giving and has no connotation of environmentalism or recycling, freecycling is a specialized form of giving
5) recycling is recycling -- reusing materials, freecycling is a variation on recycling
6) reusing is reusing -- and does not necessarily mean giving away for reuse
7) gifting is usually associated with purchasing and giving something valuable to someone special, it has no connotations regarding recycling or environmentalism or that you have trash you will dump if no one wants it
8) regiving is not a regular "official" word and also implies giving again -- when you have purchased something you could then freecycle it but regiving makes less sense
9) regifting is a popular well known activity -- after you've received a gift you don't need or don't like -- but this does not capture what freecycling is really about
10) freesharing, freeusing, etc are all new constructs that do not have the same ring or popularity as freecycling and also do not as naturally capture the nature and spirit of freecycling
11) freecycle was freely given away hundreds of thousands of times by the people who created it and popularized it and when you give something away, you should be generous and allow people to keep the gift, right?
12) the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, San Jose Mercury News, Grist, and many other news organizations have all used "freecycle" as a word and if they can, why not everyone else?
13) Goodwill Industries feels no need to corner the market on goodwill, so why should The Freecycle Network be the only group that can engage in freecycling?
14) the very nature of freecycling encourages the word to be freely freecycled too, right? does it hurt if there are as many freecyclers in the world as possible? isn't that the whole point of the freecycling grassroots movement?

(A word to the wise: If you want to trademark something, don't invent a new word and expect to control it. Rather invent a new word and let it be free. Then pick a separate mark that can be protected by being a trademark. This is why drug companies ALWAYS have a generic name in addition to a brand name for their medications. Otherwise your "mark" will just go the way of yo-yo, escalator, etc)


How many ways are there to freecycle stuff? Let me count the ways...

1) leave stuff on the curb with/or without a "free" sign -- this is a classic method.
2) give stuff away to neighbors or relatives (although you usually don't give them the really trashy stuff)
3) freecycle with a free post on Craigslist
4) freecycle with a free post in the local freetrader (paper or electronic)
5) freecycle by dropping stuff off at Goodwill or Salvation Army and not bother with a tax receipt
6) freecycle by dropping off at your favorite local charity who can use it
7) freecycle by leaving something in the freecycle zone at a dump
8) freecycle by posting to a neighborhood or city email list
9) freecycle through the groups or services listed at http://freesharing.org
10) and http://sharingisgiving.org/
11) and http://fullcircles.org/
12) and http://freecycle.org.au/
13) and http://freecycling.com
14) and http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldwideFreeShare/
15) and http://freesourcesrn.org/
16) and http://freeuse.org/
17) and http://reuses.com/
18) and http://aroundagain.org/
19) and http://recycle4free.com/
20) and http://reuseitnetwork.org/
21) and http://freemesa.org/
22) and http://freecycleamerica.org/
23) and http://free.localdataplace.com/
24) and http://realcycle.co.uk/
25) and http://freecycleearth.org/
26) and http://giftofgiving.net/
27) and http://grrn.org/
28) and http://dontdumpthat.com/
29) and http://free2collect.co.uk/
30) and http://freeuse.co.uk/
31) and http://giveortake.org/
32) and http://texasrecyclenetwork.org/
33) and http://freedomcycle.org/
34) and http://iwastenot.com/


Wow! There sure are a lot of ways, aren't there?

Enjoy!
Tim