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Pam is a Board Member of the Open Source Initiative and the principal of Chestek Legal in Raleigh, North Carolina. She works with creative communities, giving practical legal advice on branding, marketing, and protecting and sharing content. Pam has authored several scholarly articles, has a legal blog at Property, Intangible, and was formerly an adjunct professor at Western New England College School of Law.
Authored Comments
Stuart, I think you make an interesting point - that the content industry also has trademarks and a counterfeiting problem, distinct from an infringement problem. Many consumers don't want unauthentic goods, although they may be willing to accept goods that they know are a copy. It's just two different questions.
My belief is that copyright infringement and trademark infringement are two different animals and shouldn't be shoehorned together, but rather dealt with separately so there can be more refined approaches. GDF, I agree that the bill was mostly about copyright infringement, but the content industry included counterfeiting so it could then blur the line between true counterfeiting and copyright infringement in its advocacy of the bill. The manufacturing industry thought it was getting a free ride, but instead wound up losing because it got caught up in the firestorm around SOPA and PIPA.
I think it's interesting that the woman probably has righteous indignation about "plagarism" but, because she is fully aware the DVD's aren't what they purport to be, she doesn't have a problem with them. Compare this to the person in Brazil who was fooled. I think it still comes back to the fact that our moral compass is more about deception, not copying. Sorry, to a trademark lawyer everything looks like a reputation problem. :-)