April 21, 2003

How about P2P?

What about if the musicians abroad have tried to spoil P2Pnets by flooding them with bogus files like Madonna's recent stunt, and as a result, have had courts rule that they deliberately diluted their trademark interests in their band-names? See my blog entry for more details:

I doubt Madonna has thought about the damage these planted spoofs could do by diluting her trademarks. Trademarks, after all, are intended to protect consumers by defending a source's association with quality goods and services. If the same name is increasingly found on deliberately poor quality music files or curses, with the authorization of the trademark holder, duped listeners might reasonably stop thinking favorably of the brand -- giving a plausible argument that the artist had diluted or abandoned her own mark.
(quote from Wendy Seltzer, an EFF staff atty)

Posted by Cory Doctorow at April 21, 2003 07:18 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Also, gotta work something into this about there being no "Last Mile" for the true Internet, only a series of "First Miles" -- Soylent Green is People, so's the Internet.

Posted by: Cory Doctorow at April 21, 2003 07:48 AM

Surely this will only force an evolution in protocols, specifically with regard to reputations and/or voting. (Presumably with some cryptographic integrity behind em.)

Posted by: Jeremy Bornstein at April 21, 2003 05:02 PM

Hmm. Spatchcock reputation servers glued together with Gnutella-type distributed p2p protocols, all over the air?

Posted by: Charlie Stross at April 22, 2003 02:55 AM
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