this was meant to be a linguistics blog @thirrith - Tumblr Blog

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i'm ethirrith there

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fresh-bag-of-ham

Copyright governs who has the "right" to produce and distribute "copies" of books/music/movies/creative works. This is where fair use doctrine applies, because most creative works are referential by nature.

Weird Al is allowed to parody everything because he's operating under copyright law, not trademark law.

Trademark governs who can "trade" under what "mark" i.e. the brand identity of a company. Companies don't own their trademarked word forever, but they maintain the exclusive right to sell things under that brand in their specific market sector. Patagonia doesn't own the name of a geographical region, they just own the right to be the only company using that name to sell clothing and outdoor gear.

A drag queen name can be a parody of a clothing and outdoor gear company.

A company's trademarked logo can be used in parody creative works, with more leeway if it's not for commercial purposes. Trademark parody is allowed! Patagonia has been aware of and allowed Pattie Gonia's trademark parody for years.

Trademarks are specific to market sector. Actress Chase Infiniti could start a makeup line named after herself and her trademark would not infringe on the Infiniti car brand because they are different markets and there is no risk of confusion. Pattie Gonia could probably trademark her name to sell frozen veggie burgers and Patagonia would not care.

Drag queen Jan Sport did a collab with JanSport bags. What Jan Sport almost certainly did not do is independently apply to register "Jan Sport" as a trademark in order to sell bags on her own, because that would infringe on JanSport's own trademark in the bag market sector.

What Pattie Gonia is not allowed to do -- the thing that Pattie Gonia actually did do and is being sued for -- is apply to register "Pattie Gonia" as a trademark to sell clothing, because apparently Pattie is in talks with North Face and HydroFlask to sell "Pattie Gonia"-branded gear. These companies probably won't finalize anything unless Pattie shows that she actually owns the trademark. Unfortunately, "Patagonia" is already a registered trademark in the clothing market sector, and these two names are too similar to exist in the same sector (see: "likelihood of confusion" legal standard).

Your drag queen name can parody a clothing company. You can parody the trademarked logo of a clothing company. But you cannot use the same name to then go on to also become a clothing company.

In order to maintain their own trademark, Patagonia must sue for trademark infringement. If they don't sue, and Pattie Gonia gets her own trademark, Pattie could sue Patagonia for infringement on her trademark. You can see why Patagonia won't be dropping this suit no matter how much you harass them.

Yes, Pattie's legal fees to fight this will cost more than the $1 she's being sued for. Pattie could also not fight this, withdraw her trademark application, not spend any money, and carry on being an environmental activist drag queen named Pattie Gonia. She would probably be better off making nice with Patagonia in the hopes of a Jan Sport-esque deal where Pattie designs an exclusive fabric and Patagonia maintains the trademark, but apparently Pattie's legal team has been sassing off to Patagonia in their communications for years, has applied for a trademark they should 100% know they'll never get, and has now decided to play the victim on social media just in time for Pride month, so I don't know how likely that is. I guess we'll see!

sexshopshenanigans

This is mostly correct, but I’d like to offer a small correction. The product deal with Hydroflask and North Face apparently occurred in 2022, and HydroFlask got Patagonia involved to make sure everything was in the clear. It seems like Patagonia was very agreeable about everything at the time, and only asked that Pattie Gonia and her partners avoid using the Patagonia logo and font or similar images, and to avoid putting the words “Pattie Gonia” on any products. This is the email exchange from 2022, from the recent Patagonia trademark complaint, including Pattie Gonia apparently agreeing to the limitations.

The new conflict is from Pattie Gonia using the Patagonia imagery and the Pattie Gonia name on her own merchandise. This is the email Patagonia sent, with the images they feel conflict with the 2022 agreement.

Pattie responded to that by disagreeing that she had broken any agreement, and also obliquely threatening to expose Patagonia for making tactical gear for the US military?

It’s possible that Patagonia understood the terms from 2022 to be a good-faith ongoing agreement about keeping the brands separate, and Pattie interpreted it as an agreement limited to the now-ended North Face and Hydroflask collaboration. It’s also possible that Pattie Gonia didn’t believe she was actually agreeing to anything at all, since her responses were very neutral, though positive in tone, up until 2025. The email chain does, however, show what I think is a very clear effort on Patagonia’s part to protect their trademark while also showing support and goodwill towards Pattie in her use of the Pattie Gonia stage persona.

scarlet-rosepetals

Reblogging this because I think it provides an interesting explanation of the legal side of this whole mess, but to be clear the Only Correct Reaction here is to understand that copyright and trademark are Fucking Stupid, not to get out your torches and pitchforks to defend teh poor innocent cowpowation from a scawy yucky-wucky dwag queen.

Pattie selling shit with her stage name on it Really Obviously isn’t going to have any negative effect on the continued lining of Patagonia CEO pockets, as if that even fucking matters, and no amount of waxing poetic about “well they have to 🥺🥺🥺” is going to make me say anything other than “fucking stupid if true then”.

Y’all gotta stop jumping to defend corpos just because blah blah trademarks blah blah copyrights. As the famous post implies y’all are not temporarily embarrassed vivzipops.

fresh-bag-of-ham

You will struggle to defend Pattie Gonia with the argument that "trademarks are fucking stupid" when this all started because Pattie applied for a trademark of her own.

In terms of whose pockets are being lined:

Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

The unusual move comes at a moment of growing scrutiny for billionaires and corporations, whose rhetoric about making the world a better place is often overshadowed by their contributions to the very problems they claim to want to solve.

At the same time, Mr. Chouinard’s relinquishment of the family fortune is in keeping with his longstanding disregard for business norms, and his lifelong love for the environment.

(NYT Gift Link)

Since 2022, 100% of Patagonia's profits have gone to climate and environmental causes. They have completely restructured the ownership of the company so that this will continue in perpetuity.

I like Pattie Gonia and I admire her environmental activism, but Patagonia's $100 million toward climate causes every year forever has orders of magnitude more impact. I support Patagonia maintaining its trademark however necessary to continue this work, and it is actually deeply distasteful to me that Pattie is willing to spin this routine trademark suit as "a corporation trying to erase an activist" when there is very obviously no path to legal victory and the only possible outcome is reputational damage to the only major corporation literally ever that has been singularly, intentionally, innovatively, and against all odds structured to give a fuck. Patagonia is a unicorn among corporations and we are starting a smear campaign against it for what. Selling slightly different t-shirts? Crab bucket ass activism.

youcanstillwhistle

I think the "pre" and "post" parts in "preposterous" should cancel each other out but everyone else seems to find my idea completely erous

icecream-noodle

Australia's latest Federal Anti-trans bill

On Monday Nationals MP Alison Penfold introduce this private bill to federal parliament in an attempt to reshape the Sex Discrimination Act to target trans people while claiming not to target trans people

Helpful information Text of bill First reading: Text of the bill as introduced into the Parliament Third reading: Prepared if the

Transcript of second reading

icecream-noodle

Please help spread this petition far and wide for visibility The above reactionary bill was made in retaliation towards a trans woman winning a case in federal court against transphobes so now they're accellerating to hurt us all (Giggle Vs Tickle)

Hands off our Protections Our communities are facing some of the most serious attacks on our rights and protections in many years. Right no

cerisery

Please sign that petition if you can, this bill is worse than it seems. Its primary purpose is to exclude trans women from women's spaces, including bathrooms, prisons, homeless shelters, and sports. It also cements transphobic, intersexist, and acephobic beliefs that are already somewhat present in Australia's law.

It is worth noting that this bill is being pushed by the National party, one of Australia's main right-wing parties. The party currently in power is the Labour party, our biggest left-wing/centrist party. The party pushing for this bill does not have the votes needed to pass it, and thus either needs to convince centrists to agree with them or are doing this to curry favour for the next election or some other goal.

When it comes to the bill itself, they are defining anything relating to one's sex in terms of the sex binary in a way which excludes intersex people in many ways. They also are changing the definition of sexual attraction, and the main change this makes is an exclusion of non-binary people in attraction. However, it is also worded so a trans woman lesbian is considered straight, and their definition also doesn't properly include asexual people. Those wording issues are already present in the original law, however.

They are also explicitly stating that it's okay to discriminate against transfems in women's spaces of any kind, including prisons, bathrooms, homeless shelters, and sports. That is the main change being pushed for.

icecream-noodle

(Source) and (Source) ^ This

icecream-noodle

Keep reblogging this please to help gain attention to the issue! Labor, the majority government, have been especially quiet about this issue while right wing media has pumped out tons of anti-trans political puff pieces while only one Greens member and one Independant member have spoken up!

Email or call your local MP if you can and tell them they need to publically push back and press them on the harm this bills mere existence is causing! Lately Labors silence on issues is not a good one and they are far from being functional enough for the people since doubling down on right wing policy. A simple reminder: Labor is not your friend, they're bought out and working for someone else

justmaghookit

You can also email and call your state member, not just your federal one as if they get enough complaints they may additionally bother the federal MP on your behalf! Make noise at all levels of government!

If you don't know who your member is you can use this link to look up both state and federal members, just use your postcode or suburb to check.

https://www.reignitedemocracyaustralia.com.au/findmymp/

#call to action

elfgirlcraftworks

Finally had time to film a GRWM in the "A Ball With The Fae" ensemble from the Balticon Masquerade. All pieces made by me including crown and earrings.

I ended up winning Best in Class for Workmanship and second for Presentation

#ohhhhh #sewing

first day of pride month suddenly craving yaoi

#mur

packpack-killkill

Winter in Yellowstone can be harsh at times. The circle of life is cruel but necessary for survival. A bison had a “miscarriage” and dropped her calf in the snow. The opportunistic coyote happened upon the fetus and made a meal of it. While cruel, it is nature and the pure untamed wild.

Mountain Coyote | Brian Howard

bluebelly-sun-serpentine

These are absolutely amazing photos but man do I have problems with the caption. Violence is a part of life - a big part of the lives of most animals - but characterizing an opportunistic coyote taking advantage of a bison miscarriage as cruel is so loaded. That foetus was never going anywhere but in somebody else’s belly the moment it left its mother’s too early. Is the cruelty lodged somewhere in the coyote itself, or is cruelty somehow canid? If crows had found it first, would that be more or less cruel? Is the cruelty just hanging around invisible in the universe, concentrated more heavily around carnivores? Is it an aura?

This is maybe unlucky for the bison mother and lucky for the coyote, but there’s nothing cruel about a sometimes-scavenger cleaning up after a ranging herbivore’s miscarriage. It’s not like the bison mom was planning to drag her miscarriage through the snow, ceremonially wailing, to a common place of burial. Somebody was going to eat that thing, and good for them - food is harder to come by in the winter.

And one cannot start a caption telling me this takes place in Yellowstone - one of the most carefully managed parks in the world - and end the caption telling me this is “the pure untamed wild.” People are so invested in this fantasy of a nature that does not include us, a “wilderness” whose violence is somehow more truthful than our own, or which somehow confers authority on (professes the inescapability of) our own violent impulses. Men in particular seem to love to take photos of larger carnivores and caption them with this kind of sensationalized language. But is it cruel when a chickadee goes through an oak tree hunting every spider it can find? Is a family of chickadees massacring arthropods in a pine forest “the pure and untamed wild?” You’re never going to hear some guy talk about a cute little bird like that, even though chickadees are more active predators than coyotes. Why is there an attraction in labeling canids and other charismatic carnivores with this kind of language, and why do we use totally different language to describe smaller hunters of primarily non-mammalian prey?

I want people to think about what biases and projections are implicit in language like this. What do captions say about the worldviews of their authors, and what information might they be withholding or simply not observing about the scenes they purport to describe?

slowlikehoney1996

If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

#i was literally thinking about this quote the other day!#james baldwin

mothyknits

I forgot to post these finished Memento Mori Socks I knit a few months ago! I finally sewed in the ends and am ready to gift them to who they’re made for

#knitting

morphmaker

the silmarillion bride

#silmarillion

cuarthol

Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien i'm begging of you please don't kill my man

cuarthol

His beauty is beyond compare His stature tall, and long his hair Like every other man you wrote has been I know the more you speak his praise The fewer his remaining days How easily you break my heart, Tolkien

a-tehta

I think this song is made of lies Your fave's your fave because he dies Or 'cause his pain gets worse in every scene. If what it took to make us care Was fairness, wisdom and great hair We'd all be on here stanning Finarfin.

general-illyrin

Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien I'm begging of you please go kill my man

Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Please kill him with all the angst you can

#silmarillion

campsis

Eden Kalif, Good Cats

#art

estro-boi

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

estro-boi

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

taylortut

the “sexy lamp test” but for disabled folks: if you can replace your disabled character with a beloved pet dog that needs an expensive surgery to survive then you have to throw out your manuscript