Federal Reserve is threatening to sue Bitcoin Mag over parody product
bitcoinmagazine.com
bitcoinmagazine.com
Apparel: https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/products/fednow-shirt-1?_p...
Not a trademark attourney, but the styling is distinct enough. The use of identical name could be problematic I would think?
However, I don't see how this is a "parody" -- I thought parodies have to be clearly different but use similar styling, i.e. call it "FedThen" and cleverly include the `24/7` or something in the lettering, maybe inside the "e" which gets shaped kind of like the "o"
The stuff that just has the "FedNow" logo is borderline. I wonder why organizations do this, highlighting the logos of organizations they oppose. I have an EFF hoodie that says "National Security Agency" on the front and "Defund Big Brother" on the back, and I get questions all the time of "Do you work for the NSA?" and then have to turn around and show them the back. I wish parody apparel was always parody at a glance.
Looks like infringement of trademark, not of copyright.
It might be protected speech, but I suspect that Bitcoin Magazine isn't consulting a lawyer as much as they should.
> > “The Federal Reserve has extensively used and promoted the FEDNOW mark and has built up substantial goodwill in this invaluable asset. Financial institutions and consumers associate the FEDNOW mark with the Federal Reserve and its services.”
> An interesting point. For starters, what goodwill has the Federal Reserve built up? Have you seen the state of the working class today? Perhaps you have already forgotten how Fed policy directly led to mismanaged bond portfolios in regional banks across the country, such as Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, Silvergate or First Republic? Perhaps you have already forgotten about the historic inflation rates seen throughout the U.S. since government-imposed lockdowns all but forced the Treasury’s hand to stimulate the economy to the tune of trillions of dollars?
> There is no goodwill, Mr. Murphy. And certainly not substantial goodwill either.
Edit to add: there is an actual legal reply by an actual lawyer, to which you can assign your own value.
The Fed is why America can send pieces of papers and bits and receive trillions of dollars worth of goods and services. Thanks to this, Americans have the highest average disposable incomes in the world and the highest median income in the world behind a tiny tax haven. If Americans aren't able to benefit from this, they have no one to blame but themselves or the other parts of government.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Next year, and every year forward, arguably in part because of the Fed, America will be able to receive less dollars in goods and services for the same agreement,
due to US' objectively-falling creditworthiness, as rated by the large institutions and nations who are willing to lend to us.
We'll see what private financial institution gigs he parachutes into after his current role.
From another comment: Ben Bernanke now serves on the board of two of them (Citadel, PIMCO). And Alan Greenspan serves on three (Deutsche Bank, PIMCO, Paulson & Co).
>Have you seen the state of the working class today?
is a better response in their minds than pointing out that FedNow has only really been around since the end of July, relatively few people are aware of it (AFAIK), and financial institutions are not going to confuse the Federal Reserve and a magazine. It's not about the Fed's goodwill, it's about the goodwill associated with the FedNow trademark, but they seem to think inflation is a counterargument.
Personally, I would have gone with "FED NO" on the shirts or included the "The digital panopticon is here" tagline on them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by...
Yes, yes it does.
Reading the Fed's C&D, their complaint is about the trademark, not copyright. The magazine's lawyer's response is also about trademark, not copyright. The author of this article isn't as familiar with the law as the lawyers are.
When you're being sued, you should be careful about what you say about that, especially what you put in writing, and publish globally.
So I think this is one example of them not consulting a lawyer enough.
And, their lawyer's response is pretty decent. I think that there's lots wrong with everything cryptocurrency, but their shirt looks like a rock solid parody.
The Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express.
[0]: https://www.frbsf.org/education/publications/doctor-econ/200...
The Federal Reserve is in effect a consortium of banks acting as an independent central bank more so than a government entity.
> The Fed is independent in the sense that monetary policy and related decisions are made autonomously and are not subject to approval by the federal government. [0]
It isn't just insulated, it is independent. The Federal Reserve's shareholders are the member banks, not the public.
> Federal Reserve Banks' stock is owned by banks, never by individuals. Federal law requires national banks to be members of the Federal Reserve System and to own a specified amount of the stock of the Reserve Bank in the Federal Reserve district where they are located. [1]
Federal Express, too, is subject to similar government oversight being a publicly traded private corporation.
[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041515/why-f.... [1]: https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS95/rpt/olr/htm/95-R-1200.htm#:~:tex....
Banks are involved with the regional Federal Reserve Banks. But the Federal Reserve Banks are controlled by the Federal Reserve and have pretty minor powers.
Sure they don't. That's why Ben Bernanke now serves on the board of two of them (Citadel, PIMCO). And Alan Greenspan serves on three (Deutsche Bank, PIMCO, Paulson & Co).
If you've never heard of PIMCO, it is the investment bank that advises central banks on their policies and investments, including the Federal Reserve. But banks have no involvement, of course.
> PIMCO is one of the largest investment managers, actively managing more than $2 trillion in assets for central banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, corporations, foundations and endowments, and individual investors around the world. [0]
That said, Bitcoin is a state sponsored pyramid scheme, and only someone riding the coattails of early adoption and espousing permanent oligarch rule through its lack of taxation could ever speak highly of its poor design, replacing centralized banking with a centralized computing infrastructure arms race to the detriment of the world's resources. There, I said it.
Regarding Bitcoin, it's important to recognize that it's fundamentally about decentralization of financial control, not necessarily decentralizing value hoarding (though it largely does that too). It uses a distributed ledger technology, where the minting process (mining) and transfers (transactions) are verified by a consensus mechanism across a global network. This eliminates the need for central banking authorities, theoretically reducing the points of failure and censorship. It's designed to be a deflationary currency to counteract inflationary fiat systems, with a predictable supply that's governed by math, not by policy changes. While concerns about energy consumption are valid, the network is increasingly moving towards renewable energy sources and more efficient mining practices. Moreover, innovations like the Lightning Network are addressing scalability and resource issues, aiming to make Bitcoin more sustainable and accessible.
I think you should revisit your talking points / read the code / understand the thing you're talking about before having such a strong (false) statement.
I could have agreed with that if it had a fixed block subsidy. Not with the repeated halving that leaves each next generation with 32x less bitcoin to mine.
Has Bitcoin changed its mining protocol?
Even if you take this conceit, we have to step back that bitcoin has irrevocably failed. Governments have definitely proved that they can regulate bitcoin transactions through various mechanisms. In China, mining is banned. In US, they are considered securities and regulated. No use case has emerged to truly transact in bitcoin. The only deflationary aspect is it's value in relation to fiat currency, which is still downstream to the supply of money controlled by central banks.
Personally, I don't think bitcoin is viable. The root of the problem is that no one is willing to transact in it. But beyond that, looking at it's implementation, I am not convinced that it accurately models the relationship between demand for the currency and the people willing to mine it. It seems very dogmatic to assume that it is just a logarithmic relationship between computing power and money supply. At the end of the day, there might not be a more efficient solution to establish demand for money than some kind of political process.
Also, just stop there!,
because the rest of that sentence will change every 5, 10, 50 years, no matter what anyone does.
Don't start any program within your home that you don't want your enemies to have access to use against you while they're in power.
One of the reasons that the Nazis were especially effective at finding Jews in the Netherlands is because of their very detailed civil registry, that included religious affiliation.
French authorities were also forced to help the Nazis locate Jews during their occupation, and this is one of the reasons the French today don't keep official records on people's race or religious affiliations.
Just because you fully trust authorities today doesn't mean the guard won't turn over in the future for any number of reasons.
At the point where you've already been taken over by the new "Nazis" it doesn't much matter. They'll put into place the systems you fear anyway. You say the French today don't keep official records on people's race or religious affiliations, but corporations do, and so that data on the population already exists and could be obtained very quickly. The nice French government today won't touch that data, but New Hitler would.
In the meantime, because France doesn't want to consider race in statistics, it's made documenting, understanding, and addressing the massive racial discrimination problems they have very difficult. For years there have been calls for the French government to start collecting ethnicity data in their statistics because blinding yourself to problems means you can't solve them. (https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_international_compar...) The policy to avoid that kind of data collection was well-meaning, but it turns out that not collecting that data doesn't adequately protect the people of France, and in fact it's actually hurting them.
Very few people would be happy with their lives if there were suddenly no surveillance at all. There would be crime, corruption, disease, pollution, extinction, and abuses of authority everywhere. We'd be totally blindsided by extreme weather, incoming asteroids, solar flares, and earthquakes!
One of my favorite forms of surveillance is body cameras on police officers. Body cams are amazing tools! They help protect the police from false claims of abuse and aid them in training, while at the same time they help protect the public by helping us find tyrants and corrupt cops. Body cam systems aren't perfect (tapes "go missing", some cops can turn them off) but they can be improved, and they should be because surveillance (like most valuable tools) isn't all good or all bad. Don't throw away powerful tools because you fear how they can be abused. Develop robust systems of transparency, accountability, and (ironically) surveillance to make those tools work for our benefit.
There's billions of USD of it owned by dozens of different countries.
Which state are you implying to be sponsoring the "pyramid scheme"?
Hard to continue reading you after that kind of statement.
> That said, Bitcoin is a state sponsored pyramid scheme,
And now damn near impossible.
The fact that states can't issue more crypto on demand is why they'd be stupid to ever pay attention to it, much less let people pay their taxes in it. Crypto is not even money in the sense that it doesn't represent a debt, which is where the value of money is derived from.
The reason I'm here is to discuss issues, which means more than single word answers. I'd love for you to respond in a way that actually challenged what I'm saying, or questioned it more deeply or whatever. I'm not here to win; I'm here to learn.
I addressed the specific point you made in your first sentence already in the thread. It having value is irrelevant to whether or not it can or should be taxed, but it being taxed is sufficient to give it value.
It’s relevant unless you plan on taxing things with no value.
Context is everything: Does a bar of gold have value? What about if you're alone on a desert island and dying of thirst? What's the value of a glass of water?
How about a £10 note? Does that have value? Does it depend on whether you're in the UK? Does it's value change depending on the availability of a money changer?
You absolutely can tax things with no value and poof, they suddenly have value. Everyone can now attach a real value to that thing dependent on how it will allow them to satisfy their tax obligations. Indeed, fiat currency has value precisely because of the tax obligations it can be used to satisfy.
You say context is everything and yet refuse to share the contexts you believe cryptocurrency has value. You lack confidence in your own consistency.
I think I do now understand the point you're trying to make, which is that should you be taxed on your holdings of a commodity for simply holding them? Let's talk about something different - pebbles say, since crypto is so loaded. Do you think that changes the discussion?
That's a question I have no opinion on. It's just political. That said, tax has always been about taxing something that is valued by the tax payer not the tax recipient, so I see no inconsistency with a state saying they don't value pebbles but still taxing people based on their holdings of it.
As for whether I think pebbles should be taxed, no. I don’t think you should be taxed for holding anything, regardless of anyone’s perception of its value. Taxes are to pay for state services you use and should be directly proportional to your use of them and nothing else. Paying your fair share is not the job of my cryptocurrency.
Your problem is you completely misunderstand what tax is for in a sovereign state. Of course you then fail to understand why states might wish to tax things you think are irrelevant to them in terms of holdings. You can rant at your living in within the confines of a state, but you're deluded if you think crypto has anything to offer the situation.
I suggest you understand how a little more about how currencies actually function (hint, you won't find it in a mainstream economics textbook, but the mechanisms are well understood). Alternatively you can get angry in your ignorance. I'm relaxed either way. In any case, I'm done here. Take care.
I would say the same about the Federal Reserve.
So, I'm not sure I follow your assumption.
¹with obvious regards to those of color
It's easy to agitate a federal agency if you do something novel or extreme. The fact that this was sufficient really highlights how petty the Fed's actions are.
I noticed that in the lawyer response, a court case was cited. I did a search for this court case and found plenty of analysis. It turns out that the Congress passed a law, the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, which specifically provided protections from parodies. But...
> ... the concern with the TDRA's "fair use" parody clause is twofold. First, it is too broad in some respects by immunizing all non-source-denoting parodies from liability in one fell swoop. The main criticism of such a broad-brush approach is that it fails to assess the message communicated by the parody and its effect on the reputation of the mark. Second, the clause is, quite ironically, too narrow in other respects, as it excludes from its ambit certain source-denoting parodies that might be deserving of protection.
So the question, I guess, is whether this parody is excluded by the poorly-worded TDRA. Remember that earlier this year the Supreme Court sided with Jack Daniels in a trademark parody dispute against a dog toy manufacturer!
[1] https://scholarship.law.campbell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
FedNow is basically a speedup for bank to bank ACH transfers. ACH is 1-3 days; FedNow is a few seconds.