Inter IKEA Systems BV called me
ikeahackers.net
ikeahackers.net
From what I've heard, if they didn't, someone else might have a case that their trademark is open to use.
> If they didn't, someone else might have a case
They could have just licensed their trademark to the website for a non-null sum of money.
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/07/cease-and-desist-letter-of-th...
Another way to deal with unauthorized use of a trademark is to authorize it. So IKEA could have started with a letter asking IKEA Hackers suggesting a potential agreement and a nominal fee. An imperative cease and desist letter isn't required.
They will make the "IKEA Hackers" logo look less like the official IKEA logo, and they'll put a big "not an official IKEA site" banner on each page. My guess.
If I was an Ikea exec though, I'd additionally suggest a partnership with the site. Displaying Ikea ads and creating a funnel from individual articles to Ikea's order form would be a great idea to benefit both the site and Ikea financially. Not that Ikea needs it, but it's still good business sense.
However, we don't know what they'll come up with. It's a giant corporation so pretty much anything is possible and it's probably too early to get your hopes up.
It is possible that IKEA does not want to be associated with a site that encourages people to use their products in ways they were not designed for. I noticed a hack to make a baby changing table by taking an IKEA dresser and attaching stuff to the top. Obviously that is something that anyone is free to do with the furniture they bought at IKEA. But... if something happened and a baby is injured and IKEA is seen as endorsing such a thing, they might be sued. I know some places are more litigious than others but companies often take some fairly hard-line "cover your ass" steps to avoid such a thing.
The thing is they should be able to protect it by simply "licensing" it to the guy who runs ikeahackers.net and charging him an "undisclosed sum" for the license (a dollar should make it legal, though IANAL).
I agreed with this at first glance, but on second glance: What makes you say this? If you are like me, then your antecedent probability assumption itself was based on sexism, and not evidence. And, in fact, some quick Googling suggests that at least half of bloggers are women. I suppose its debatable whether Ikeahackers is a "blog" but this seems like evidence enough to undermine the premise that, in the absence of any other information, the person behind the site is probably a man.
I don't mean to condemn you, or anything like that. I freely admit that I use the word "guy" by default and, as I mentioned, I was initially in agreement with your point until I took a step back and did a little intentional self-criticism.
I hope we can all agree that sexism is probably universal, to one degree or other, and that we all should work to minimize it, but also that the occasional slip does not make one a bad person.
You wrongly assume that the probability assessment was done solely on the fact that it's a blog. It's not. There are additional information that influences the probability. Mainly that there's hacking involved.
There's also another point worth making: even if it were true that you have a truly objective, rational reason for assuming that (e.g.) the author of the blog is a man, this doesn't resolve the question of whether you should speak as though you assume all unidentified hackers, bloggers, whatever are men. There is more at stake than whether you happen to be right or wrong in guessing the blogger's gender. The problem is that such patterns of language can and do easily harden into norms -- i.e., you may only use masculine nouns for probabilistic reasons, but this pattern of speaking, if sufficiently widespread, can give rise to the view it is abnormal (in the normative, not the merely descriptive sense) for women to hack or start hacker blogs. This is a bad thing because the social pressure that results can meaningfully restrict the freedom of future women.
I feel awkward saying ya'll a lot so I use you guys. But many times the group I am referring to is female so I use you girls or ladies. This can get you in trouble depending on the age of the group sometimes I get: "are you calling us young/old" and then I go back to ya'll.
"Some guy couldn't make a right turn at the light for 10 friggin minutes so now I'm late"
Not necessarily a guy driving (let's suppose I couldn't see the driver; I just know their car didn't move for forever) and it's unfair/sexist to men to assume it was a man, could have just as easily been a woman.
"Hey guys, is everyone ready to go to lunch?"
There might well people girls in the group that's going to lunch (there often are) and I don't want to offend them. But "Hey people, " doesn't sound right, "Hey folks," doesn't either, and "Hey everybody," isn't a good substitute either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LqozaaB7s&t=1m12s
Anyone have a good gender-neutral word I can use instead?
I also try to stick with "person", "someone", singular they, whatever is as flexible as possible until I know what the person prefers to be called.
I do find myself accidentally defaulting to assuming he/she depending on the context. Been trying to correct myself so I don't make people feel unwelcome though. :)
This is a really weird example, as this is one of those cases where English actually DOES have a gender-neutral pronoun (someone).
If you mean defaulting to assuming someone's male, it's because it's deeply ingrained in culture. Notice how female characters in cartoons often must be explicitly differentiated as such (pink ribbons, bows, clothes)?
As such, given I didn't know the gender (or age) of the person involved, I tend to default to "guy" as gender-neutral. As mentioned by another post, "you guys" can include both genders.