This is trademark— not copyright. And yes, you do have to actively protect your trademark. It’s not made-up. Lostaccountagain summarized it tidily above:
I wasn’t sure either! But it sure sounds like what this guy was driving at was “Waah waah waah, they’re massive and I’m small, and Big=Evil, therefore they suck and I should get to do whatever I want to their trademark.” Which is, yes, silly.
Oh my god yes. His original stuff is amazing!!
You have to protect your brand BY actively seeking out infringement, otherwise it’s hard to make any complaints stick later on.
Except he’s using the logo & letters “TED”, that’s stolen directly. If he made it “FRED” or “NED” it wouldn’t be. All he needs to do is change the look or change a letter.
Totally. He has Crohn’s, though, so I’m betting the benefits of weed outweigh quitting it entirely for him.
It’s possible he was self-medicating in other ways. Let’s be real - it was probably heroin or cocaine, not weed, though obviously you CAN be addicted to weed, no matter how harmless people make it out to be. Weed is HELLA effective at treating stomach pain, in my experience. Doubt he would be discontinuing using a…
They aren’t saying it’s a violation of copyright, but of trademark.
This is not clearly protected. It might be but it isn’t obvious. It was obvious satire when it was just a podcast. But when they do events at bars, as they do, in cities like NYC it’s not at all obvious that this isn’t TED making a winking refernce to location. Especially when they have vaguely well known people do…
Copyright isn’t the issue; trademark is. Parody is not a complete defense for trademark infringement, although it is considered as a factor. Copyright is passive—once you have it, it’s yours and you don’t need to defend it. Trademark isn’t. If you don’t act to protect your brand, you can lose it. That’s why we get all…
He said himself he doesn’t have the wherewithal to go to court to protest them under the fair use/parody thing— it’d just be easier for him to change one letter of his logo so that it’s not confusable with TED anymore. And it’s really a non-issue, c’mon, dude, you knew you were stealing the name & that they’d…
Yes— remember, people are stupid and they don’t read fine print, even when the fine print is 48-point bold! Of COURSE there are x-hundred-thousand people right now who think those drunk talks are the real thing.
“I didn’t expect that it would get to this point, so I guess this is a good problem to have, but it’s also funny to me that they care about this enough to take action,” Thurm said.
It’s weird... nominally it should fall under fair use as obvious parody, but I can also see the argument that someone would mistake it as being sponsored/hosted by the TED organization itself.
Well, yes, kind of a no-brainer here. What’s the problem? If TED didn’t snap to it & start going after people who were infringing on their trademarks, they’d lose the right to do so later on. You have to be seen making the effort. IP law is funny like that. They probably thought they didn’t need to, for awhile, and…
It’s the Welfare Queen thing all over again, really. If a system is not 100% perfect in using taxpayer money and there are non-virtuous individuals using government programs, the programs themselves are clearly not worth it and should be scrapped. I mean, who cares if a program is 99% successful; if that 1% is wasting …
Or to put it another way,
It will be a glorious day when we can attribute a former comedy writer with taking down the WORST and most despotic President we’ve seen in a modern era.