Matthew Revell

Patrick Finch – OpenSolaris marketing chap – has an interesting post about why open source companies need to protect their trademarks.

He touches on something that annoys me almost every day: that a vocal minority of, often ill-informed, people think commercial == bad. I think Patrick has a point in laying part of the blame at Naomi Klein’s door.

Patrick’s main point is that trademarks are an important way for people to know what to expect. He quotes Richard Stallman:

“Trademark law … was not intended to promote any particular way of acting, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying.”

As an aside, Stallman’s next sentence, in the source article, doesn’t make so much sense, to me at least:

“Legislators under the influence of “intellectual property”, however, have turned it into a scheme that provides incentives for advertising.”

I’d like to add one thing to Patrick’s post: a trademark can be revoked if the holder doesn’t defend it (yeah, I’m not a lawyer, etc).

We should expect to see open source companies defending their trademarks. We should judge them on how they defend their trademarks. Linden Labs showed sense of humour when they granted permission to use their Second Life trademarks on the Get a First Life parody site.

As Patrick sums it up:

“Open source is not a free-for-all: it is fair-for-all”.

LugRadio listener, Munk3h, has created a Wikipedia page about me. I mention it only because of this fantastic phrase:

“LugRadio podcast presenter providing a joe bloggs approach to topics of conversation”

Thanks Munk3h

Update 31.03.07: As I suspected, I’m not notable enough to have a Wikipedia page It’s gone now.

The people at MySociety have, once again, stepped into the gaping communications void left by local government in the UK. An encouraging point, though, is that central government funded it.

Neighbourhood Fix-It is simple:

1. Something’s broken in your local area, so you visit www.neighbourhoodfixit.com
2. Enter your post-code, press Go.
3. The site shows a detailed map of the street in question. Click the location of the problem.
4. Describe the problem (e.g. sunken man hole), enter your details and click Submit.
5. The site sends your report to the relevant local authority.

Brilliant! Inevitably, a good number of local councils will fail to see why Neighbourhood Fix-It is important and many will ignore the reports, at first. Conversations with other people suggest that my experience of contacting local councils, particularly by email, is typical: i.e. they’re slow, overly formal and slapdash.

Of course, WriteToThem is now taken seriously by many Members of Parliament and Neighbourhood Fix-It is likely to gain similar acceptance by local authorities, within time.

Well done to all at MySociety, not least Chris Lightfoot who, sadly, died recently.

I bought a set top box at Christmas. The shop (Argos) wanted my name, address and postcode to pass to the TV licensing authorities.

Initially, I refused. I have a TV licence, I believe the TV licence is the least bad way to fund the BBC. Out of principle, though, I don’t see why Capita – the private firm that runs TV Licensing – or Argos should be able to demand my details for buying a piece of entertainment equipment.

In a rush, and with a hundred other Chrismas-related things to do, I gave my address and forgot about it.

Today, I received a warning from Capita/TV Licensing. They tell me when and where I bought the “television receiving equipment” and that, unless I ring to tell them that I already have a licence, their enforcement officers will visit me.

In the UK, each address at which TV receiving equipment is used must have a TV licence. Ours is in my wife’s name. Capita appear to check their retailer-provided information on both the name and address, so haven’t found that we are actually licensed.

The tone of the letter is threatening whilst, somehow, managing to weave out of accusing me directly. They tell me it’s illegal to watch or record TV without a licence. They say that, if I need to, I should buy a licence.

Why are they being so vague, when all they need to do is check their database? They even want me to phone them (on an 0870 number) to say that this address is already licensed.

I want to be awkward. If they can’t use their own database properly, yet still want to threaten me with fines and court appearances, I want to put them to the trouble of sending their heavies over, so I can show them our licence. I’ve done nothing wrong.