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Comment by blakewatson | Hacker News Reader

I may be misunderstanding, but I was thinking the commenter meant "ripping" as in ripping a DVD, as opposed to "ripping off of." So "immediately ripped and given away for free" meaning someone shouldn't be able to immediately distribute the recording outside of Netflix.

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Agreed, and my comment to that end was:

> Pure ripping is easy

As in, that's easy to distinguish. But, take a single step away from image-for-image or byte-for-byte copy and it gets hard real fast.

That's where all the problem lies, right? That when is something not-a-direct-copy but still infringes-on-the-original?

And that's what I'm trying to highlight. My "space fastener" from earlier is unique because it does novel things (for arguments sake). But once I add "it works in 1G" well it's going up against a whole bunch of other nuts/bolts.

I'm hoping to help convince you that it's more than surface deep - is all.

I agree it’s not black and white. I think trademarks are important to protect consumers and legitimate businesses of all sizes - if Bob’s Burger’s builds up a reputation in Fooville, someone shouldn’t be able to completely copy their name+menu+corporate facade and open a shop right across the street. I also think that expensive fda trials need to be incentivized by a temporary monopoly (or some other payout) at the end, and you shouldn’t be able to inject some noise to be able to claim your rip of a just-released, expensive to produce show is something else. So the 3 forms of IP I take issue with all have legitimate applications in my eyes, and it’s ultimately going to require inherently flawed human judgment to tell when they’re infringed.

That said, I can easily point to bad outcomes that need to be handled better (mostly related to abusing litigation of IP), and I also think we can do better than the current pattern of securitizing the commons with low payment back to the commons. We’re incentivizing much more than what we’re actually attempting to incentivize with our IP system.

> I think trademarks are important to protect consumers

I agree. But did you see that the loser in the Wagatha Christie lawsuit has now trademarked the term "Wagatha Christie", even though she didn't coin the phrase?

You get a trademark to prevent "passing off" - other people making a product like yours, and using your marque to deceive consumers. When you register a trademark, you specify what classes of products you are asking protection for. Have a look at the list of goods and services Vardy claims protection for:

https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00...

It lists hundreds of product categories that Vardy is never going to make or sell, where the risk of consumer confusion is zero.

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