Concern

So, I got a trademark takedown notice over the Interwebs this week. It was from the Foley Hoag LLP attorneys at law, on the behalf of WANT AD Publications, Inc.

They took issue with me hosting a page, on my personal website, that used the phrase “Want Advertiser.” The page (which I did remove, so you have no frame of reference, sorry) was a half-jokey list of items that I had for sale, or items that I was looking to buy. A personal classified sort of thing.

I haven’t updated that page in years. I thought it was neat at the time to put a little list on my personal website of things that I was selling or wanted to buy, but yeah, I don’t buy or sell anything that often, and if I do, there are better places for that kind of thing. So the page has been there, for ages, static and (for the most part) un-viewed. Then lawyers come around in their lawyery way, and ruffle feathers about taking it down.

It’s not really worth fighting for, so I went ahead and took the page down. Mostly I’m bemused and astounded by this, that these people would go to such an effort for a web page. Not just any web page, not some revenue-generating web site, not even anything that had advertisements. A single, short web page, on a personal web site, that hasn’t been updated in years. They spend money and time fighting that.

I’m not sure if it’s kosher for me to post the PDF they sent. They slap on “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION” notices on emails they send out, but I never agreed to receive confidential information. So, can I post the content of their nastygram, here in public?

Yeah, I’m not afraid:

From:	Weinstein, Charles <CEW@foleyhoag.com>
Subject:	WANT AD Publications Inc./Metastatic.org–Infringement of Registered Trademark THE WANT ADVERTISER
Date:	August 16, 2007 07:33:33 AM PDT
To:	Casey Marshall
CC:	Smith, Jim <JAS@foleyhoag.com>
	1 attachment, 113.0 KB Casey S. Marshall.pdf (113.0KB)

Please see the attached PDF file.

Charles E Weinstein, Esq.
Foley Hoag LLP
Seaport World Trade Center West
155 Seaport Boulevard
Boston MA 02210
617.832.1238 (phone)
617.832.7000 (fax)
cweinste@foleyhoag.com

<<Casey S. Marshall.pdf>>

United States Treasury Regulations require us to disclose the following: Any tax advice included in this document and its attachments was not intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code.

This email message and any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Foley Hoag LLP immediately — by replying to this message or by sending an email to postmaster@foleyhoag.com — and destroy all copies of this message and any attachments without reading or disclosing their contents. Thank you.

For more information about Foley Hoag LLP, please visit us at www.foleyhoag.com.

Most of the time I buy music on CD, partly because I find DRM and intellectual “property” rights an asinine topic, and partly because I can’t stand AAC files encoded at 128kbps (I’ll rip each CD at 256kbps). I bought a few songs on iTunes, and a few albums (I used to buy whole albums sometimes; now I just go a la carte if there’s one specific song I want, not necessarily caring about the freedom or quality), and always disliked the quality, and even bumped into DRM issues when just trying to use stuff I bought.

So, Apple’s new “iTunes Plus,” where songs are DRM-free AAC encoded at 256kbps, sounds like the perfect solution. It only took $30 to update the parts of my library that I could, and though it still hasn’t finished downloading all the songs (it is stuck on some Brian Eno songs, one of which is 56MB (!) — it looks like the ITS is under some heavy load at the moment), I have to say that I like it so far.

The higher bit-rate makes a difference. A big difference. It’s hard to elucidate how they differ, but the higher bit-rate sounds a lot better. I haven’t done any A/B comparisons yet, but I can’t see myself ever buying music at a low bit-rate again. Double the size be damned; disk space is plentiful and cheap.

I don’t have any practical use for DRM-free tracks (I still just use iTunes or my iPod), but it’s a nice feeling to know that none of that lunacy is present in those files, and that Apple trusts me as adult enough that I’m not going to go right out and send these files to thousands of people on the Internet.