Fedex calls DMCA on man who made furnature out of boxes

Well Im certainly glad I used unbranded boxes to build my coffee table, Ill be damned if Ill pay £20 for something to place things on! :P

You would think Fedex would see this as a great marketing opportunity - I'm picturing a gorilla jumping up & down on the boxes and throwing them around or something and the stuff in side is still perfectly fine.

But no. Instead we have the typical big faceless corporation response of threatening people.

This really could have been such a great thing for Fedex, if they wern't being so ... well... this way about it.

Why the hell are corporations so damn stupid? This kind of thing would make a great commercial for them, plus it's free positive advertisement. Instead they turn it into negative advertisement, and make themselves look like lawsuit-grubbing weasels. How do companies stay in business with such negative attitudes towards the people that use their products?

WTF

This dude screams "photoshop contest"

Quote:

Original post by cyric74 Why the hell are corporations so damn stupid? This kind of thing would make a great commercial for them, plus it's free positive advertisement. Instead they turn it into negative advertisement, and make themselves look like lawsuit-grubbing weasels. How do companies stay in business with such negative attitudes towards the people that use their products?

not only were they stupid but they were ignorant and instead of thinking with their head they thought with their pocketbooks, only to realize(maybe just maybe) that they would have made more money with this? imagine a commercial with college students using fed-ex to send their parents things and their parents to send them things and vice versa. and how the college students used the boxes in their apartments or dorm rooms to use since most college students are poor. imagine the publicity. No, not everyone will do this but the positive light that would have come out of this would have spread and the mentality of people would have been, "hey lets go to fed ex to ship this.. they are cool.. remember those cool commercials that are on tv"?

they could have turned a lemon into a neverending lemonade stand. now their company name is starting to look pretty sour on it own.

Quote:

Original post by cyric74 How do companies stay in business with such negative attitudes towards the people that use their products?

Tell me: Are YOU going to change the frequency with which you use FedEx as a result of reading about this?

From a liability stand point, this is a serious issue. If other, dumber people started making their own fedex furniture, it is very likely that one of them would sue fedex if their furniture fails and causes a serious (or even minor) injury.

Fedex Furniture + spilled soda == soggy mass on floor.

well, did he STEAL the boxes? or did he actually pay for them?

If I take the side panel off my computer, replacing it with clear plastics, and then hang up the old one with a nice Dell logo or something on the wall calling it 'art' does Dell have any right to tell me to stop?


And are they telling him to stop with the boxes? or just the webpage?

Quote:

Original post by Talroth well, did he STEAL the boxes? or did he actually pay for them? If I take the side panel off my computer, replacing it with clear plastics, and then hang up the old one with a nice Dell logo or something on the wall calling it 'art' does Dell have any right to tell me to stop? And are they telling him to stop with the boxes? or just the webpage?

the Boxes are free from their website(or were anyway) and there is nothing binding once you have them. however this menas that they are yours so if something happened to you, you couldnt sue them..

Quote:

Original post by OpenGL_Guru Quote: Original post by Talroth well, did he STEAL the boxes? or did he actually pay for them? If I take the side panel off my computer, replacing it with clear plastics, and then hang up the old one with a nice Dell logo or something on the wall calling it 'art' does Dell have any right to tell me to stop? And are they telling him to stop with the boxes? or just the webpage? the Boxes are free from their website(or were anyway) and there is nothing binding once you have them. however this menas that they are yours so if something happened to you, you couldnt sue them..

a cup of coffee that I buy from McDonalds is mine...
cigarettes that I buy from the store are mine...
cars that I buy from a dealer that explode are mine...

i.e. ownership is in no way a criteria for who may or may not sue someone.

Their arguments seem a bit petulant. "Going to operate a business because he used the .com domain"?
BZZZ.

He used the .com domain which obviously means he plans on opening a business selling FedEx box furniture.

shmoove

But it doesnt obviously mean that. That was the intention of the naming convention, but how many .coms do you visit every day that dont sell anything?

Quote:

Original post by krikkit But it doesnt obviously mean that. That was the intention of the naming convention, but how many .coms do you visit every day that dont sell anything?

A forum I go to, boards.icb2.com

Hell, MY site is .com... and I don't sell anything. Don't even have banners.

(it is down atm)

Quote:

Original post by Talroth well, did he STEAL the boxes? or did he actually pay for them? If I take the side panel off my computer, replacing it with clear plastics, and then hang up the old one with a nice Dell logo or something on the wall calling it 'art' does Dell have any right to tell me to stop?

Well, Andy Warhol had a lot of success with Campbells soup cans.

Quote:

And are they telling him to stop with the boxes? or just the webpage?

I think the big thing is with the website, hence their attempting to bring in the DMCA. However, as was previously mentioned in the article, the DMCA covers copyrighted material, and this is a trademark issue. So, while one could argue that he is not using their trademarked logo to make money, others would say that he is associating himself with Fedex through his use of it. But, to that I say bullshit. I have a number of friends who work for Fedex, and from one of them I could obtain a Fedex t-shirt. I could wear it every day and get known as the guy who's always wearing a Fedex t-shirt with people drawing their own conclusions from that and there's not a damn thing Fedex could do about it.

However, I did just try to visit the guys website (couldn't get it to load) and the address is apparently www.fedexfurniture.com. That could be a problem.

The guy deserves any trouble that comes his way. He tried to promote his site by having cards and stuff printed at FedEx/Kinkos. That illustrates a level of intelligence that I can't even fathom.

CM

Your disdain for his attempts would only be well placed if he was executing an act of willfull disregard for infringement..which is what we are debating, if he is actually infringing anything at all.