What's this? A
chance to write about something non-Trinitron related
that I don't have to lock? Could it be? It's
about time...figures it's the friggin' law
again.
So
Amazon is a little irked at me. And oddly
enough it isn't so much what Adamazon
looks like, but the fact that I registered
a name, Adamazon, that has their company
name in it. So because I just added
an "AD" to Amazon - they now want to
own that name. A bit of a strange
predicament here. This goes back to all
the "fair use" copyright laws I looked up
when Fox got all medieval on me for the
Seacrest show (which was just cancelled on
Fox btw).
dv
Back then if you
recall, I received a cease and desist for posting
screenshots of the show, in which I was in the
background. As you can see here:
That my friends is
absolute horseshit. It shows the one big hurdle people
have yet to understand about the internet. Uploading
your personal journal in no way is the equivalent to
publishing a magazine. Period. Especially if you have
no banner ads, and are simply chronicling your life.
It's truly to the scale of a church newsletter that
you hand out for free to the 50 people in your
congregation. So to sue said newsletter is outrageous.
With the "net" however it gets all friggin'
murky. There seems to be no precedent for intent and
size. Whereas say Fox taking the church to court would
get thrown out, Fox taking me to court over the
screenshots seems a little more likely because no one
can put their finger on "the net". It's all crap
anyway because there's no intent to "use" fox for
profit. Hey I was on TV, here's a picture, isn't in
the same boat as publishing the picture - hell it's
not even in the same ocean.
In the case of
Adamazon however, it's even blurrier. I put that site
up for one reason: to show off everything I've done in
the past ten years as a pardoy in itself. Thought it
would be creative as a guy who is known to many people
as a parody guy - to parody a popular site to show my
own things. I set it up like a store, and made it a
joke - it's ADAM-azon!
Wahaha. It is by no means an e-commerce site, and
although it is "working", meaning someone could by
something, I've sold ONE CD in 8 months. If Amazon
would like my $8.88, they can have it. LOL. The point
of the site is to creatively/comically and
impressively parody Amazon's site with all me. Nothin'
but me me me me me. It's a joke.
Granted, it is
incredibly convincing, and could be perceived as
something in conjunction with Amazon. And this is
where there are some precedence in the internet world.
Many people have piggy-backed domain names and gotten
NAILED. Foogle comes to mind. They basically
registered the "typo" of google to get added hits and
have people use their search engine. Basically trying
to deceive people for profit. They eventually got
bought out by google. Which I'm thinking is trying to
happen here. Check out the letter:
...oh no,
wait - you can't. Because I fuggin deleted it.
(sigh). My adam@4tvs.com email account gets about
500 emails a day - and I screwed up and erased
it. It basically said they want to avoid the court
so they wrote this letter to offer to give me what
I paid for the name and they won't pursue this. All
I had to do was reply to the email I just
friggin' erased by August 8th. Wonderful.
LOL.
Anyway, it had to
be one of the nicest legal letters I've ever seen, but
the fact that they're so willing to pay me for the
rights to the name really intrigues me. What purpose
could they possibly have for it? No one is mistakenly
going to Adamazon instead of their site...so why
aren't they giving me the normal run of the mill cease
and desist? Not real sure about this to be honest. I
really want to fight for the freedom of the little
guy. To be able to draw a mustache on the mona lisa
and post it on his personal site and not get
SUED for it. Infringing on a copyright has
to have a better definition, and has to take
into account the hits on the site and the intent.
I mean if I have 50 hits in 8 months, is
this reasonable? If I take the "store" part out
and give them the $8.88 I've made is there really any
problem here?
Do they not have
to prove that I am somehow infringing on their
copyright for personal gain? I mean we've all
heard of "Lindows" and how Microsoft is barely getting
the judgement on them...how does this stack up? It
doesn't. I'm just showing all my projects in a parody
form.
And parodies of
websites...is that not covered under fair use? Is
there a precedent for it? What if it was a consumer
advocate website about how a company SCAMS people and
they registered the name "dontusepaypal.com" and they
mocked their site layout? I wish I had the
money to push this to a certain ruling, because there
has to be some sort of protection for "bloggers". If
you write about your life - and you're on TV, and you
show a picture of it...that is in NO way infringing on
the rights of the original broadcaster. And that's the
other problem. The law now states websites in the same
category as a broadcaster of content - and that's just
way out of line. You should be able to register your
site as "personal" and as long as you don't have
banner ads, and you don't get more than so many hits a
month, your safe from things like this. Because Adam
the person cannot fight Amazon the company without
Wells Fargo the bank.
So what do
I do? I don't know. I don't want to do the whole
press thing again, because the last thing I want is to
be seen as an unoriginal bastard who keeps getting
slapped with copyright suits. Expecially when
I consider myself so friggin' unique. On the
other hand, there is a happy medium here. And all I
really want? Is to be able to show my projects the way
I have. It is OBVIOUSLY a parody - and you
can't STUMBLE on the site unless you go through 4tvs,
so I'm find it very difficult to see where anyone
would be deceived. If it's the money aspect for
Amazon, fine - store will be gone, but from the letter
I gather it's more of them owning the "name" Amazon
and that because Adamazon has that within it, they own
it. That's very hard to swallow when my intent was
parody not profit. And honestly if I can keep my pages
up they can have the name. Could there be a happy
medium? Could I maybe have some section with Amazon?
Could they maybe find it so well done they spotlight
the initiative? Seems like a longshot - but if I was
in their shoes, I hardly see what it hurts. So
we'll see what happens. I know I should milk it,
but I'm just not in the mood to send out press
releases again for something this stupid. Maybe I'll
incorporate it into the press releases for the T3
premiere in Columbus.
In other
non-Trinitron unlockable news I'm having lunch
tomorrow with one of my contacts at G4. Basically just
getting a feel of the level they want their pitches to
be. I have the skill to pull off an entire pilot
episode, but most of the time that's just a waste of
time. However, in the case of G4 lack of a big budget
is their #1 concern right now. So something tells me a
completely fleshed out idea would bode well. Either
way, my passion for the topic - and my ability to
gauge what's missing on their network right now has to
shine through in any meeting. I just know I'm gonna be
working for that network in the very near future,
I just have to present the information the right
way. Luckily, with this meeting, I should get a bit of
insight and then we'll go from there. Still not
computing how I'm gonna pull all this off with the
Trinitrons and the "locked" issue over my head.
So much to do in the smallest amounts of
time.
Should have an
update Sunday on what happened with G4. Thankfully,
that's August 1st so it won't be buried anymore. 14
entries. Good lord.
