Re: Certificate / CPS issues

On Sat, 07 Jun 2003 00:45:37 +0200, Anthony Atkielski 
<anthony(_at_)atkielski(_dot_)com>  said:

> Incidentally, the name of my domain is a service mark, and so any e-mail
> coming to me from Habeas is an infringement on my service mark, since it
> will contain the name of my domain.  You can't argue with this, since it is
> no less stupid than the premise conjured up by Habeas.
I hereby request the list management to remove Anthony's email address from
the subscriber list, so as to not expose the IETF to liability.  Hmm.. maybe
that's not the right attitude, Anthony. ;)

It's pretty clear that there's a fair-use exemption if you actually want to
USE that domain name for anything.

> Copyright law was intended to protect real, creative, original, non-trivial
> works of the mind for the benefit of their creators--and not as a
Given that the song "Happy Birthday" was/is copyrighted ( don't know when it
expires, especially after the whole Sonny Bono thing), I'd say that any haiku
that the Habeas crew comes up with qualifies.  And although you may find the
creative use of the law distasteful, to state that their claims are 'invalid
prima facie', you need to be able to show that they are in fact invalid.
Let's see... are the haiku original?  Do they meet the Bern Convention
requirements for copyrightability? Note that "total doggerel" is NOT a factor,
as Sturgeon's Law would put 90% of everything in the public domain then.

Note that major companies have had *no* trouble enforcing copyright/trademark
on slogans as short as "it's the real thing" or "you deserve a break today".
It may not be what the founding fathers had in mind in 1790, and it may not
match what you *wish* it was, but it's how the *current* laws are held to read
as of today.  Barring a major judicial reversal (such as was attempted in
Eldred), we're all stuck with the current laws as currently interpreted.

IANAL, but it looks to me like the Habeas crew is on fairly strong legal
footing.  Also, they're not trying to stop spam directly.  They're providing
two services:  (a) a header tag that you can use to filter your inbound
mail for *NON*-spam, and (b) the chance for any spammers to spend enough
money on legal fees to render it unprofitable.

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