[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo

[Mathieu Stumpf]

Le 2013-06-04 10:00, Federico Leva (Nemo) a écrit :
> Peter Southwood, 03/06/2013 19:26:
>> In case anyone was so misguided at to think that I object to WTO
>> protecting their logo per se. That is NOT my point, and never was. 
>> My
>> point is that the WTO logo and WV logo are not easily confused. I 
>> asked
>> a simple question about what the specifics of the complaint were, 
>> which
>> has still not been answered. Instead the query has been brushed 
>> under
>> the carpet and a pointless quibbling has ensued.
>> I give up in frustration. Asking a simple question on this list 
>> appears
>> to be a complete wate of effort.
>
> I'm sorry you feel that way. Trademark similarity is not an exact
> science

Isn't it because trademark is based on the completly irrelevant and 
irrealistic willing to have an unilateral despotic control on some 
symbol, branded as "image protection", using ego/narcissistic fallacies 
to argue, threat and coercion to impose its observance?

As far as I know, the widest used symbols, like yin and yang, various 
crosses, the peace symbol[1], etc., have no trademark, and still 
communicate a clear message. Sure you can have ambiguities with several 
meaning branded with the same symbol, but this is resolved with context 
as easily as it is with any homonymous.

Of course some people may try to abuse others using well known symbols, 
but this is not something trademark will prevent efficiently. One may go 
as far as using a "close but not the same" symbol, computing how much 
that may cost to go in court and how much profit this may generate and 
go with it as long as chances are great to end with a positive financial 
state through usurpation.

You don't protect people and social movements by inforcing brand. Maybe 
inforcing production standards can help. But definitively what people 
need is ways to make accurate interpretation by themselves. They don't 
need to be infantilized with "real source of truth" that they may 
blindly trust just because there's some logo on it.

Oh, well, I guess I'm just losing my time throwing words that will have 
no significant impact, but as this thread become longer and longer, I 
can't resist anymore to give my (probably uninteresting) point of view.


[1] And you may know that the peace symbol is historically as recent as 
the yin and yang is ancient: a non-trademarked symbol can rest for long, 
and you can still make some of them nowadays

-- 
Association Culture-Libre
http://www.culture-libre.org/