Such a Bad Idea

Okay, someone got a little over zealous. Apparently, in the rush to protect the embattled trademarks of poor, embattled companies like Coca Cola and Chevrolet, there's a new bill making its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee (heads up, all you who live in Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Utah, whose senators are on the committee), which would make it actionable for a writer to use brand names. So, for example, a YA story about a kid who hangs with his buddies and works on cars could not contain a sentence like "Joe and Mac sat on the back porch drinking Cokes and talking about the Chevy." And I gotta say "Joe and Mac sat on the back porch drinking cola and talking about the car" isn't as rich. I don't use much trademarked stuff in my writing (hey, set in the Regency, not too much in trademark) but when I do it's to establish things about the place and the characters, socio-economic status, aspirations, time-and-place. Taking that away simply strips away another tool for creating richness in fiction and non-fiction.

Basically, the bill (H.R. 683) drops express protection for "noncommercial use" of a trademark. It also weakens protections for those who use trademarks in news commentary. Fixing the hole wouldn't take much--tweaks to one section (revising section 43(c)(3) of the bill so that it reads "43(c)(3) EXCLUSIONS- The
following shall not be actionable under this section:") and reinstatement of the existing noncommercial exclusion from liability by simply adding "43(c)(3)(D) Noncommercial use of a mark."

So this morning I fired off a letter to Dianne Feinstein asking her to fix this hole before it becomes a stupid law. Then I dabbed away my tears with a Kleenex, put on my Levis, and hopped into my Honda for a day of work. While I still could.

Noted in passing...

Happy birthday, Alan Rickman. Sigh. If I thought he'd come fetch it himself I'd bake a cake.