Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> More control over information...
>
> Microsoft's Attempt To Silence a Zune Critic Backfires
>
As strange as it may seem, there IS a precedent for abuse of Logos.
In the late 1960s or early 1970s, someone started making Tee-Shirts
where Donald Duck, Micky Mouse, and Goofy were sitting around a table,
smoking from a hooka, and looking very very stoned.
Parents were very concerned about this "endorsement of drugs" in a time
when too many kids weres using lots of drugs very young. Disney sued
the T-shirt company and refused to accept any settlement offers.
Disney won the case, and when the T-shirt company went Bankrupt, Disney
wrote-off the debt, so that the defendent wouldn't be tempted to
attempt to appeal the judgement.
There have been plenty of abuses of the Windows logo, my favorite being
the animation of the Windows logo, with the sound of broken glass, the
Windows shatter, and the penguin crashes through. But it is a
trademark violation.
Microsoft's goal however, is much as I have stated in earlier postings.
Let's say that a big magazine, like Byte, which, when Microsoft first
started this practice, had a circulation of about 10 million readers
(most widely read computer magazine at the time), but they kept doing
comparisons between other systems and Windows 3.1, and Windows 3.1 kept
losing. They compared it to OS/2 and OS/2 was better. They compared
it to Solaris and Solaris was better, they compared it to UnixWare, and
UnixWare was better. They even compared it to Linux, and Linux was
better. These are disparaging remarks about Windows and Microsoft.
The Logo usage agreement allows Microsoft to go to every OEM that uses
the Microsoft logo and tell them, "you can't put ads in Byte anymore,
because they make disparaging remarks about Microsoft".
Here we have a smoking gun. Yes, the guy has a strong opinion. After
doing the research, making substantial comparisons between systems, and
doing some hands-on testing, he posted his opinion, that Microsoft's
product was not as good as Apple's.
He made this statement without getting Microsoft's prior permission,
and without letting Microsoft review, and possibly rewrite, the
article. Net result, he can't use the logo.
Of course, this puts him on the "blacklist" as well. None of the other
Micrososft advertizers can put their logos in his site, or in his
publications, either.
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