#trademark

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/#roast-in-piss-sonny-bono

In 1976, Congress set fire to the country's libraries; in 1998, they did it again. Today, in 2024, the flames have died down, and out of the ashes a new public domain is growing. Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate!

For most of US history, copyright was something you had to ask for. To copyright a work, you'd send a copy to the Library of Congress and they'd issue you a copyright. Not only did that let you display a copyright mark on your work – so people would know they weren't allowed to copy it without your permission – but if anyone wanted to figure out who to ask in order to get permission to copy or adapt a work, they could just go look up the paperwork at the LoC.

In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act to eliminate the "formality" of copyright registration. Now, all creative works of human authorship were copyrighted "at the moment of fixation" – the instant you drew, typed, wrote, filmed, or recorded them. From a toddler's nursery-school finger-painting to a graffiti mural on a subway car, every creative act suddenly became an article of property.

But whose property? That was on you to figure out, before you could copy, publish, perform, or preserve the work, because without registration, permissions had to start with a scavenger hunt for the person who could grant it. Congress simultaneously enacted a massive expansion of property rights, while abolishing the title registry that spelled out who owned what. As though this wasn't enough, Congress reached back in time and plopped an extra 20 years' onto the copyrights of existing works, even ones whose authors were unknown and unlocatable.

For the next 20 years, creative workers, archivists, educators and fans struggled in the face of this regime of unknowable property rights. After decades of well-documented problems, Congress acted again: they made it worse.

In 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act, AKA the Copyright Term Extension Act. The 1998 Act tacked another 20 years onto copyright terms, but not just for works that were still in copyright. At the insistence of Disney, Congress actually yanked works out of the public domain – works that had been anthologized, adapted and re-issued – and put them back into copyright for two more decades. Copyright stretched to the century-plus "life plus 70 years" term. Nothing entered the public domain for the next 20 years.

So many of my comrades in the fight for the public domain were certain that this would happen again in 2018. In 2010, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart and I got into a friendly email argument because he was positive that in 2018, Congress would set fire to the public domain again. When I insisted that there was no way this could happen given the public bitterness over the 1998 Act, he told me I was being naive, but said he hoped that I was right.

Michael didn't live to see it, but in 2019, the public domain opened again. It was an incredible day:

https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive

No one has done a better job of chronicling the fortunes of our fragile, beautiful, bounteous public domain than Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Every year from 2010-2019, Boyle and Jenkins chronicled the works that weren't entering the public domain because of the 1998 Act, making sure we knew what had been stolen from our cultural commons. In so many cases, these works disappeared before their copyrights expired, for example, the majority of silent films are lost forever.

Then, in 2019, Jenkins and Boyle got to start cataloging the works that were entering the public domain, most of them from 1923 (copyright is complicated, so not everything that entered the public domain in 2019 was from that year):

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

Every year since, they've celebrated a new bumper crop. Last year, we got Mickey Mouse!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

In addition to numerous other works – by Woolf, Hemingway, Doyle, Christie, Proust, Hesse, Milne, DuBois, Frost, Chaplin, Escher, and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

Now, 2024 was a fantastic year for the public domain, but – as you'll see in the 2025 edition of the Public Domain Day post – 2025 is even better:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

So what's entering the public domain this year? Well, for one thing, there's more of the stuff from last year, which makes sense: if Hemingway's first books entered the PD last year, then this year, we'll the books he wrote next (and this will continue every year until we catch up with Hemingway's tragic death).

The sad story of what happened to a married team of creators who lost millions - and their names - to a corporate takeover.

Hold on to those trademarks, kids.

"The decision from Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier is meant to fulfill a $2.8 million default judgment entered against the Proud Boys by a different judge in DC in 2023 to get back damages incurred by the church during the December 2020 attack.

The two-page ruling says that all the group’s interests in the “Proud Boys” trademark will be transferred to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church and that the organization and people associated with it must first get consent from the DC church to use the mark or sell any merchandise containing it."

CNN

Associated Press

I was browsing aimlessly the indescribable Temu website, a couple of days ago, looking for the predictable kitschy expressions of the OL paraphernalia, part of which usually cost an arm and a leg at any given fan event stand.

As expected, there is a deluge of S pics and Sassenach declinations, on any given material one could think of and for any given activity one could think of. From sleeping in Mackenzie tartaned polyester sheets, to drinking from JAMMF cups, to cooking in one of those questionable JAMMF aprons Lasagna Lady once made famous across the fandom, Temu got you covered.

However, I was not expecting this particular product assortment, which immediately made me stop in my tracks:

A Sassenach Spirits wall tapestry (LOL?), priced between 6 and 16 euros, according to size.

A flannel (a girl can dream, this being Temu, after all) 'high quality Sassenach Spirits blanket', priced between 7 and 10 euros.

A 'soft and durable' polyester 'Sassenach Spirits kitchen towel', pretty steeply priced, at 5.25 euros apiece.

The seller?

A Chinese (hungry) ghost who is, however, able to deliver to Bucharest.

I wonder what the hell SS's marketing and legal teams are busying themselves with, on a daily basis, and I am very serious. These are clearly cheap, low quality, pirated derivate products of their brand. The very fact they are cheap, low quality, pirated and available on a Chinese sales hub of questionable repute is very toxic and damaging to SS's brand storytelling and product benchmark. For obvious reasons, like this cruel farce being at complete odds with the entire personal passion project and high-level crafting concepts, that define Sassenach Spirits for its potential target clientele and markets.

To be honest, this is not the entry I had imagined for them, as far as the Asian market is concerned.

And yes, I cannot unsee the irony of a brand still in legal crosshairs over trademark issues being shamelessly stolen by petty, anonymous Chinese scammers. Who clearly try to make a quick buck out of the Mommies' perpetual adoration.

But fear not. If we are to believe the OG troll's threats, their legal team seems more concerned about what is being currently discussed on Tumblr. And soon enough, I predict Norouzi will show off another motorbike, at that ride or die event.

To paraphrase Alpahville's old and corny one trick pony summer hit - 🎵China can wait, they're only watching the skies.🎵 Due diligence was never their forte, was it?

Ended by choosing their other half-forgettable hit. Seemed more appropriate: