HR683-Creepy bill creeping through congress limits artistic expression

[liveoaktx]

"HR 683 has just passed the US House of Representatives, and is now being considered in subcommittee hearings prior to presentation to the Senate Judiciary Committee. This new law, if enacted, will severely restrict the rights of your readers to portray trademarked items and phrases in their work. Quite literally, if someone paints a picture of flowers in a Coke(r) bottle, they may be liable for damages under the proposed statute.

"I encourage you to educate your readers regarding this pending legislation, and ask them to contact their Senators in anticipation of these rule changes." (Fortunately, Warhol created Brillo in 1964, before this foolishness arose. -- Mark) Link

[FormerDittoHead]

1. They started doing this under Clinton...

with the Digital Rights Millenium Act, and they keep plugging away...

Most recently has been the "broadcast flag" change in the FCC rules that the big media players want to have all media players to support.

The broadcast flag would basically enable providers (read: big corporations) to "flag" a broadcast (I hope I'm not losing anyone here with this complicated, technical jargon) and make it otherwise impossible for you to say, record it on a VCR to view it later. (timeshifting, another technical jargon)

The point is that these things ARE complicated and many people just can't get up enough energy to care with what, hundreds of billions being wasted while we're fueling terrorism, destroying schools, heathcare, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

The fact is, however, if these things go through our culture will end up looking like one big Disney store...

[dusmcj]

2. they should patent their asses

Since that's where they keep their intellect, their intellectual property must be there too.

[punpirate]

3. What's most interesting about this is...

... how corporations themselves treat their trademarks. They will pay for product and logo placement in films and television series, since imprinting the brand on the public mind is important to their marketing strategy. That undermines the "dilution" aspect of the legislation.

This legislation is designed to prevent any adverse visual association in the public mind between the corporation's actions and its logo. If, say, another incident such as Coca-Cola's discrimination against minorities comes to the fore, this legislation would prevent any news story from running a photo of, for example, the company's headquarters with its logo prominently displayed.

Very insidious.