Chamber of Commerce sues ‘Yes Men’ for commercial identity theft.

Frankly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give this ‘activist’ group any more free publicity for their movie than they’ve already gotten:

The U.S. Chamber filed a lawsuit yesterday against activists who last week staged a fake news conference announcing that the business trade group had changed its policy on climate legislation.

The suit filed in federal district court cites trademark and copyright infringement and said that the Yes Men group staged the press conference stunt for financial gain.

“The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment,” Steven Law, the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel, said in a statement. “Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.” The movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” opened Friday.

…but if you’re going to rip off an organization by using their logos and name for publicity purposes without paying for the privilege, well, it’s hard to do that without at least a little bit of publicity. The Chamber of Congress’ own post on the subject is here; they’re taking this lawsuit seriously – and given the current political climate, possibly so should the defendants.  I can think of about forty or so ruling-party Congressmen who would just love to do the Chamber of Commerce a favor right now.

Moe Lane

PS: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of course, thinks that this is a First Amendment issue.  They don’t mention the film at all, because, well… it’s much more convenient for the EFF if everybody keeps thinking of this as a First Amendment issue, and not as commercial identity theft.  I have a lot of sympathy for the EFF’s goals, but these guys that they’re defending shouldn’t have appropriated the CoC’s name and public identity to generate buzz for their film.

Crossposted to RedState.

EFF is *very alarmed* that Obama is… Obama, really.

When I read articles online, I sometimes play a game called How soon will it take me to say something aloud to the monitor? (yes, I have dumb names for some of the things that I do): doing it can give me an idea of how goofy the article is. In this one (“In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s“, via Instapundit), I didn’t make it past the first sentence:

We had hoped this would go differently.

Umm, why? Continue reading EFF is *very alarmed* that Obama is… Obama, really.

*Can* you give away a fully loaded iPod?

Why is this a hard question?

(Via Hot Air Headlines) A very interesting discussion here and here about whether President Obama’s gift of an iPod with preloaded MP3s to the Queen of England is, in point of fact, legal under current copyright law. Short version: yes, but only because of diplomatic immunity on the one hand and sovereign immunity on the other.  If we were talking about two private individuals… nobody apparently bloody knows, one way or the other.

On a personal note, I am forced to admit: I am waiting with some cruel joy to hearing an increasingly querulous tone come into the EFF‘s discussions of this particular administration. I shouldn’t: the EFF is one of the few critics of the last administration that I actually retain a basic respect for. But that’s going to be counterbalanced by the vicarious pleasure of watching them wake up from their unicorn dream.

Crossposted to RedState.

PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.