':-(' Trademarked, Lawsuits Imminent

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 26 Jan 2001 13:00:00 GMT
The server for "editthispage" went down yesterday morning and was out for the rest of the day. It's back up this morning. I don't think I lost anything. Good work, Userland!
Thank you, Dave!!!
for creating "manila" and making it available for us to use.

According to the logs, somebody at the Marines' Camp Pendleton visited my Millennium Marijuana March page yesterday. Hehe.

gate3.cpp.usmc.mil - - [24/Jan/2001:17:22:37 -0500]
"GET /mmm2000/ HTTP/1.0" 200 10041
"http://www.google.com/search?
q=marijuana+pictures&btnG=Google+Search"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT)"

Despair, Inc. - Despair, Inc. Secures Official Trademark Registration for ':-(', Announces Plans to Sue Millions for Trademark Registration: I think this is a joke, but just in case, I have this to say about it: :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( [picks]

From pournelle. More good commentary here (after this week, it will move here):

Q: How do you tell the difference between a liberal and a conservative?

A: Easy. Watch a man drowning fifty feet offshore. The conservative will throw out 25 feet of rope and shout "swim for it!" The liberal will toss out 50 feet of rope, drop his own end, and go off to do another good deed.

AP via the Nashua New Hampshire Telegraph - Board OKs letter urging legalization of marijuana: The Select Board of Amherst, MA has drafted a letter to state and federal regulators urging the repeal of laws against marijuana. Good for them. [unknown]

The letter said in part: "The misplaced focus of the drug war is eroding the civil rights association with the Fourth Amendment, creating injustice in the legal system and impairing the well being of society by denying the educational opportunities of an entire class of individuals," it continued.

...

On Beacon Hill, some lawmakers are calling for legalization of marijuana used for medical purposes and making possession of a small amount of marijuana a civil violation, punishable by a fine rather than prison. But the bills face an uphill fight.

Lisa M. Bowman of ZDNet News - Web war rages over DVD-cracking site: John Young's ISP, Verio, which hosts his Cryptome site, received in Novemember a notice from the MPAA to remove DeCSS materials from Mr. Young's site. They wrote him a letter on January 23 informing him of this action and told him that they would do nothing if he counter-notified. He did so on on the same day. My guess is that MPAA will now bring a lawsuit. The likely source of this article is at Cryptome entitled MPAA DMCA Verio and Cryptome. Verio management, I applaud you. Many other ISPs would have simply yanked the site. [unknown]

Mike Whybark at Independent Media Center - Assassination to be Legalized by House Bill in process: rants about a new bill in the house from Bob Barr. H.R.19, the "Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001", would nullify executive orders that make it illegal for the U.S. to assasinate foreign leaders. Mr. Barr introduced this in April, 1999, as H.R.1403. It got no cosponsors and died in committee then. The new version also has no cosponsors, making it a virtual certainty that it will also die in committee. Hence, this bill tells us more about Mr. Barr than it does about U.S. government policy. It's generally a bad idea to have a policy of assasinating other countries' leaders. They tend to return the favor. Hmm... maybe it's not such a bad idea after all. :)

Add comment Edit post Add post