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Dear 50 Cent: Did I Just Violate Your Trademark?Today

A bunch of readers submitted the story about the ongoing lawsuit between the rapper 50 Cent and Taco Bell. Taco Bell started running an ad campaign, where they jokingly sent a public letter to 50 Cent asking him to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent to help publicize a Taco Bell promotional menu. 50 Cent then sued, claiming a trademark violation. This case fascinates me for a few reasons, as it raises some interesting issues. First, you can sort of see where 50 Cent is coming from -- as Taco Bell is using his brand in commerce without his permission -- but I'd argue that it's pretty clear that 50 Cent isn't involved and hasn't endorsed the product (and, yes, even a "moron in a hurry" would hopefully recognize that). Since it's just an "open letter" to the rapper, rather than anything involving him, it should be clear that he's not necessarily involved. If any commercial website (say, a blog) wrote an "open letter" to a celebrity, would that be a violation of publicity rights or trademark? Unlikely. So why would it be so in this case? Even more interesting, of course, is that the lawsuit only served to draw a lot more attention to this whole thing, meaning that Taco Bell is probably pretty pleased about it. Of course, if I were Taco Bell, I might think about adding a single item to the menu that actually costs 50 cents... After all, you can't protect a price.

Companies Sued For Not Paying For Time Spent Booting Up A ComputerToday

Gizmodo points us to the fascinating news that there is a growing number of lawsuits from hourly employees suing employers for not paying them for the time they sit waiting for their computers to boot up in the morning. The article also mentions time waiting for a computer to shut down, but I'm not sure how that should matter. Once you start that process, can't you just leave? I can certainly sympathize that the bootup process can take quite some time -- especially on older Windows machines, but this hardly seems like lawsuit material. As some have pointed out, for many of these employees, they're unlikely to be doing work while the machine is booting up in the first place. The lawyers filing these lawsuits claim that many workers do get started before the computer boots up, but if the employees really are upset about this issue, why not just decide to not start working until the computer has booted up. Problem solved.

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Three Strikes Rule May Sneak Into EU Law, Despite Earlier RejectionToday

We've talked in the past about how the entertainment industry never gives up trying to push through its legislative agenda -- even after it is dealt setbacks. You may recall that the EU Parliament rejected a proposal to institute a "three strikes" law favored by the entertainment industry, that would kick people off the internet if they're accused (not found guilty, just accused) of unauthorized file sharing three times. The EU Parliament correctly noted that such a law would interfere with individuals privacy and civil rights. However, some academics have noted that another set of laws focusing on telco reform may backdoor in nearly identical three strikes language, requiring telcos to adopt such policies. The fear, obviously, is that this issue, buried in a big telco bill may not get very much attention and may be put into law without much debate, despite the EU Parliament's earlier rejection of such an idea.

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Dark Knight... Both Most Pirated And Highest Earning MovieToday

You may recall when The Dark Knight opened, we pointed out that its record breaking opening was because movie makers created a movie that people wanted to see in a theater. The fact that parts of the movie were designed for IMAX theaters drove many people to pay even more (or even see the movie multiple times) in order to experience the IMAX version, which simply can't be replicated at home. As we pointed out, this was a perfect example of how the movie studios could compete with free. In fact, in such a scenario, you could even make the argument that the more people saw the movie in download format, the more willing they would be to go pay to see the IMAX version, to get the full experience.

However, it was stunning to hear movie industry execs then claim that the reason the movie was so successful was because of their anti-piracy efforts. That was clearly untrue at the time, and now Parker Mason alerts us to the fact that The Dark Knight was not just the biggest grossing film, but also the most pirated film of the year. Of course, if you believed the studio execs, that would be impossible. After all, if so many people are downloading the movie, then clearly they're "stealing" from t

As Internet Usage Grows, Sexual Offenses Against Kids Have DecreasedToday

We've been pointing out for a while that the supposed "threat" of online sexual predators has been blown way out of proportion, thanks to the press and politicians' desire to create moral panics that allow politicians to make themselves look good while passing useless laws. The Berkman Center, at Harvard, is about to come out with a new study that shows just how big a myth this has been. As the internet and things like social networks became more popular, the number of incidents of sexual offenses against children has dropped. Of course, if you only listen to politicians or read the sensationalistic press on these things, you'd think that was impossible. This isn't to say that there aren't sexual predators out there, or that kids shouldn't be taught to be careful, but just to make it clear that the actual risk is pretty remote.

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