Comments on: AS if…? [now with edits]

By: velmalikevelvet

velmalikevelvet — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 00:43:39 +0000

in grad school (for counseling psychology) all my cohort and members of the preceding one pushed me to go on to law school, citing my (to them) incomprehensible fascination w/ the legal wranglings we were subjected to in our law and ethics for mental health professionals course; our instructor went so far as to suggest that i should “browse the stacks” in our library’s legal wing, a tactic i believe he employed to engage my extra energy and dissuade me from asking my esoteric legal questions, thereby driving the class freakin’ nuts each week. anyway, i’m enjoying beyond measure your laying-out of the legal picture of the whole SFSE debacle, so my thanks to you! cheers, velma

By: LissaKay

LissaKay — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:13:45 +0000

Take a look at Airset.com as an alternative group site.

By: j.

j. — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:47:50 +0000

Google Groups has been suggested at freetostitchfreetobitch.org (in the forums).

I’m not certain about LiveJournal — I just saw a post about someone being required by LJ to rename a community containing a “stitch and bitch” variant in the title.

Those are all free services, so you get what you pay for, and you have to take the TOS as they come.

There’s also the option that requires funding — finding an ISP that will resist threats, and setting up a board. That’s actually what happened in the case of the Knitting Beyond the Hebrides mailing list. It started as a Yahoo group, got shut down by AS twice, and was then moved to a server run by a member. No more shutdowns or threats from trademark owners.

By: mamaloo

mamaloo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:30:00 +0000

So, where might be a good alternative to Yahoo’s Groups services? Google’s Groups? (Or is that Gmail’s Groups?)

By: j.

j. — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:29:42 +0000

I’d need some clarification of “competes with their brand.”

In a broad sense, not only do Pepsi’s products compete with Coca-Cola’s products, but their brands compete as well since consumers may align themselves with one or the other as an expression of their personal style. Maybe that’s not a great example. Um… Rickard’s Red and Wellington County. Guess and Parasuco. Jasmine and Alesse. Anyway, the point is that business competitors engage in branding because they are in competition. In this case, with whom is SFSE competing? Who’s the business competitor?

I’m about to edit the post in view of the info above (and by e-mail).

By: LissaKay

LissaKay — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:35:44 +0000

Erin: How does the presence of Yahoo groups for knitters to organize and schedule meeting compete with their brand? Their brand being not the sewing store or lessons, but an online discussion board focused on sewing? Further, their claim to first use of the phrase is totally false. It would be like trying to trademark “quilting bee” or something like that.

Everyone: I finally got SFSE to point out to me exactly what was “infringing” about our site. It turns out that it is Yahoo at fault mostly … I had edited our group description back in January during the last round of this nonsense, but when you search the Yahoo group directory, our group comes up in the old form, with the SnB phrase still on there. I wrote back to SFSE and told them to yell at Yahoo, and leave us the hell alone. I haven’t heard back from them on this yet. But they were still really pushing the “List your group on our forum and all will be well!” thing. I called the store again today, and the girl that answered said she was supposed to make that suggestion to anyone that called in regards to this, as well as direct them to the email address on the notice.

They have some sort of agenda that goes beyond protecting their trademark …

By: Stephanie Earp

Stephanie Earp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:33:31 +0000

I love the “You would do the same” line in the response letter from SFSE. No, doll, no sane business person would do what you’re doing. I wonder if this is actually about getting rid of the evidence of their massive mistake – delete old board and discussion threads that reference SnB, delete groups who discussed it, eventually they can scrub the whole internet clean of this debate and one day a new generation of knitters WILL NEVER KNOW that Meyrich didn’t coin the term.

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:44:49 +0000

They can not claim SNB but they can prevent anything on a website that competes with their brand. This is the trademark law in the US and as a lawyer I would recommend them do the same. Please do not shoot the messenger.

By: Elisabeth

Elisabeth — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:38:37 +0000

From what I last heard, the letters SnB are NOT the problem (this information came down from “on high” so I’m pretty sure it’s accurate). However, people are having a helluva time figuring out why they are in violation of the trademark.

By: LissaKay

LissaKay — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:25:16 +0000

I am wondering if SFSE isn’t trying to stake a claim for trademark on the concept of online organization of IRL needle crafting social groups. In their knee-jerk form letter reply, they try to push us to their site to list our SnB groups.

I have emailed and called both SFSE and Yahoo (be nice if you call SFSE, the person who answers the phone is just a clerk in their store). But I have not gotten any further response than the form letter from SFSE.