FEDERAL RAID ON DERRY FLEA MARKET

[KBCraig]

+1 for the use of the word "curmudgeon."

Have you met Lloyd?

[J’raxis 270145]

You can't promote a product as being endorsed or manufactured by another group without its consent.

Indeed, I don't believe in "intellectual property," but in addition to violating those nonsense laws, this is also fraud.

Not intellectual property... reputation.
I could make an exact duplicate of the product minus the label, or with my own label... and it would not be a crime.
Intellectual property would be the design of the bag itself... which likely would be civil, not criminal.

Intellectual property is comprised of patent, copyright, and trademark. Making "counterfeit" products usually involves copyright violations (e.g., copied software), and/or trademark violations (e.g., putting the other company's name on your fake). Violating trademarks—which are essentially legal protections for one's reputation—are the acts that potentially rise to the level of an actual crime, fraud.

Intellectual property violations are most certainly criminal nowadays. Just like how the U.K. government made industrial sabotage a capital offense in the 1800s, and how California makes it a felony to steal a single avocado from a field, the government exists not to protect people from actual harm but to protect the powerful economic interests of the day.

[Pat McCotter]

You can check the spelling of curmudgeon on this thread's title:
http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=2917.0

[Lloyd Danforth]

+1 for the use of the word "curmudgeon."

Have you met Lloyd?

Hey!  I resemble resent that!

[Lloyd Danforth]

You can check the spelling of curmudgeon on this thread's title:
http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=2917.0

Hey! again!

[John Edward Mercier]

You can't promote a product as being endorsed or manufactured by another group without its consent.

Indeed, I don't believe in "intellectual property," but in addition to violating those nonsense laws, this is also fraud.

Not intellectual property... reputation.
I could make an exact duplicate of the product minus the label, or with my own label... and it would not be a crime.
Intellectual property would be the design of the bag itself... which likely would be civil, not criminal.

Intellectual property is comprised of patent, copyright, and trademark. Making "counterfeit" products usually involves copyright violations (e.g., copied software), and/or trademark violations (e.g., putting the other company's name on your fake). Violating trademarks—which are essentially legal protections for one's reputation—are the acts that potentially rise to the level of an actual crime, fraud.

Intellectual property violations are most certainly criminal nowadays. Just like how the U.K. government made industrial sabotage a capital offense in the 1800s, and how California makes it a felony to steal a single avocado from a field, the government exists not to protect people from actual harm but to protect the powerful economic interests of the day.

Did you mean sabotage, or espionage?

[J’raxis 270145]

You can't promote a product as being endorsed or manufactured by another group without its consent.

Indeed, I don't believe in "intellectual property," but in addition to violating those nonsense laws, this is also fraud.

Not intellectual property... reputation.
I could make an exact duplicate of the product minus the label, or with my own label... and it would not be a crime.
Intellectual property would be the design of the bag itself... which likely would be civil, not criminal.

Intellectual property is comprised of patent, copyright, and trademark. Making "counterfeit" products usually involves copyright violations (e.g., copied software), and/or trademark violations (e.g., putting the other company's name on your fake). Violating trademarks—which are essentially legal protections for one's reputation—are the acts that potentially rise to the level of an actual crime, fraud.

Intellectual property violations are most certainly criminal nowadays. Just like how the U.K. government made industrial sabotage a capital offense in the 1800s, and how California makes it a felony to steal a single avocado from a field, the government exists not to protect people from actual harm but to protect the powerful economic interests of the day.

Did you mean sabotage, or espionage?

No, sabotage. It was called the Frame Breaking Act.

[neggy]

The deal is that when you invest your time and money in a product and trademark it, you have a legal right to protect your trademark. If you fail to take action to protect it, you loose it.

I was at that flea market on Sunday, 24 hours after the raid, and there were tens of thousands of counterfeit bags there, all in boxes from China, a country that is notorious for ignoring copyrights, and flat out stealing intellectual property.

Say for example Dalebert started a clothing line with artwork from his strip on it, and it becomes popular enough for someone else to want to cash in on his hard work, they contract with a Chinese company ( run by a communist government and using slave or prison labor) for exact duplicates of the shirts Dale is making in his garage. It won't be long before Daleberts work becomes worthless since his 25 dollar shirts are not going to move off the shelf when there are 5 dollar shirts at the flea market.

[Mike Barskey]

"Your" reputation is not your own. It is about you, but it is the opinions of others. If you can legally control your reputation, then you can legally control the thoughts of others. And you can't physically control your reputation because you can't control the thoughts of others.

Selling an item made by Joe and claiming it's made by Jane could be fraud, but attacking it because it's hurting Joe's or Jane's reputation doesn't make sense to me. In fact, it's really only hurting the seller's own reputation (which isn't their own ).

[thinkliberty]

Say for example Dalebert started a clothing line with artwork from his strip on it, and it becomes popular enough for someone else to want to cash in on his hard work, they contract with a Chinese company ( run by a communist government and using slave or prison labor) for exact duplicates of the shirts Dale is making in his garage. It won't be long before Daleberts work becomes worthless since his 25 dollar shirts are not going to move off the shelf when there are 5 dollar shirts at the flea market.

If people are buying shirts to support dalebert then no one will buy the counterfeiters work. If people are buying other peoples shirts with AIYH on them because dalebert only sells his for 10k a piece, those people would never buy one of dalebert's shirts to begin with, because they cost to much money. He is still not losing any money from his real customers. Because people buying the counterfeit are not going to spend a months  paycheck on a t-shirt or a handbag.

Most of those people will all still want a real one. If they hit the powerball lottery for millions of dollars or sue the state for civil rights violations they might have enough money to buy a real one at that time. And because the counterfeiters have kept his tshirts popular dalebert gets a sale. (look at guitars for instance there are lots of people buying les paul copies, but gibson has no problem selling the american made real deal.)

Or you could hire thugs from the state to steal everything from people that are selling tshirts like yours for a reasonable price. That way you can corner the market. I think the name for that kind of system is Fascism.

Are you a fascist neggy? Because it sounds like you are a fascist to me.

[dalebert]

Someone recently wrote me and politely asked if they could make a t-shirt from one of my comics. I told them they are certainly welcome to, but that if they wanted a t-shirt of that design, perhaps others do as well and I would make it available in my own store within 24 hours and I did.

I told her I have no problem if she does, but I also told her what I tell everyone else when I want them to buy from me rather than "steal" one of my designs. I point out that I'm using a vector graphics program that allows me to generate my images at any resolution with no loss of quality and that my comics on my website are usually about 660 pixels high and 600 wide. Cafepress recommends a resolution of between 2000 x 2000 to 3000 x 3000 for quality purposes depending on the product and I follow their suggested guidelines. Otherwise it may look pixelated and crappy. I also may modify the design to be more suited for a t-shirt or a mug or whatever product it is. In this case, I replaced the background with transparency and got rid of the boxed-in border, which I thought looked better for a t-shirt. I also arranged the image to wrap around with a big AiYH logo for mugs. You can see what I mean in the section linked below (click the image).

I make roughly $2 commission when someone buys a t-shirt. She can certainly go to the trouble to download the comic, perhaps tweak the image though it's much harder for her since it's not vector graphics, and she can then upload that image to CP and customize her own shirt. So maybe I'll miss out on $2 so she can save that $2 and wear a crappier version of my product. She might even have found some even cheaper way to make that shirt locally, but if so, she probably wasn't willing to pay all that extra for my higher-quality version anyway. Maybe she just didn't want it THAT badly. Meanwhile she'll still be walking around with a conversation piece about AiYH on, which is possibly even more valuable to me than the $2 in potential promotion and possibly gaining new hardcore fans.



By contractual agreement, Cafe Press only shows preview images often with a big "sample" stamped across it in a way that makes it extremely difficult to remove. Meanwhile, I keep my vector graphics files on my own computer encrypted. In short, I realize it's my own responsibility to protect my own property, and that includes intellectual property. I don't have any sort of contract with the billions of people in the world not to copy or distribute it. I have an explicit contract with the company with whom I have specifically shared a high-res version for their distribution services. That's the only contract that has any logical validity. As a rational and civilized human being, I certainly cannot justify violence over someone merely copying something. I would have a case for arbitration with Cafe Press if they violated our terms, but frankly, it's very much not in their best interests to violate the contract and that's my best protection.

[dalebert]

I'd also like to point out that when the Olympics was in Atlanta and there were lots of vendors of Olympics t-shirts, with many not "authorized" in t-shits stands in various places, having the very official little special tag on the t-shirt that showed it WAS an authorized version was a huge selling point. The unauthorized ones were noticeably cheaper but lots of people were big on supporting the authorized vendors. This was another case of a free market protection that didn't require violence that seemed quite effective.

[neggy]

fascist?  I'm kind of a conservative with a strong libertarian leaning. I think the less government involvement we have in our daily life the better off we all are. Now that being said I do work for a government agency providing services to the elderly.

Counterfeiting goes way beyond handbags.  There have been cases where counterfeit electronic components (chips) have made it into military aircraft. The last thing I want is some F-15 dropping out of the sky because the avionics failed.

[EthanLeeVita]

The last thing I want is for an F-15 to be flying a bombing mission.

[dalebert]

The last thing I want is some F-15 dropping out of the sky because the avionics failed.

True. It could fall on some innocent people.