[CIMC-work] Fw: [Imc-legal] why bogus and malicious imcs are a Bad Thing

[Chris Kaihatsu]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Guy Berliner" <guy at sdimc.org>
To: <imc-legal at lists.indymedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 3:20 PM
Subject: [Imc-legal] why bogus and malicious imcs are a Bad Thing


> What we have here is a fairly classical case of
> exactly what the trademark law is intended to
> prevent: Bad faith use of an organization's
> identifying marks for a malicious purpose. It
> bears no resemblance to such things as gatt.org,
> for example, which is a pretty clear satire.
> "Beach Cities IMC" is not a satire. It's a malicious
> attempt to sow confusion about what IMC is and stands
> for. That should be quite evident by now.
> 
> Why is it evident? Because we ourselves had to resolve
> the matter, and it took a considerable effort, including
> on the ground investigation by people like Chris Burnett
> in LA, to establish exactly what this thing was. And it wasn't,
> as in the case of gatt.org, say, a problem of "irony
> impairment" on our part. The legal standard is "could a
> a reasonable person be confused." And quite evidently, the
> answer is "Yes."
> 
> Why is this so bad? Why not view it as "flattering"?
> Of course, you could say any rightwing attack is
> "flattering" in the sense you're using the term. But
> in this case, it's actually dangerous and should
> be countered. Sowing disinformation by deliberately
> attempting to violate our rights of free association,
> appropriating our identifying marks and lieingly claiming
> to be in the process of affiliating with us is not only NOT
> political satire, but it could have the very real
> potential effect of confusing people and undermining us.
> 
> Have a little imagination and consider the
> possibilities. If the person who did this views it
> as successful because he faces no legal reprisals
> and starts to draw traffic to his site from people
> who are genuinely confused, how long will it be
> before more bogus imcs are created with the same
> motivations? How much more confusion will that
> sow? At what point will it start to seriously
> erode and dillute what IMC stands for in the minds of
> people in the general public? Can you really
> not foresee any such possibility? Whereas, if we take
> aggressive legal action now, we can probably
> foreclose such a possibility, and redflag any
> future such prank. I don't think we should
> necessarily be so blase about this.
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