Am I the only one bugged about this? What part of protecting our country involves doing the bidding of corporate masters? If someone steals my car, will Homeland Security go find it for me? Damn, I hope not! I would HOPE they would be trying to actually protect the country in a meaningful way, like perhaps protecting us from terrorists. *sigh*
This from The Trademark Blog

Read this entire story below from The Oregonian, about Department of Homeland Security agents objecting to the sale of toys in a toy store in Oregon, on intellectual property grounds. The article is a little vague about distingushing between Customs and non-Customs DHS agents and I'm a little puzzled as to what really happened. U.S. Customs, which is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, does have an intellectual property division and does have the power to seize allegedly infringing items at the time of importation. Federal marshalls are sometimes enlisted to aid in the seizure of counterfeit items which have already been imported. This doesn't appear to be either situation. Also, it seems that the goods weren't seized, merely taken off the shelf. The story is odd: if you have additional information, please send it in.

Update: One seasoned litigator notes that if 'Customs' was substituted for 'DHS' in the article, then the story would merely be unusual. Customs agents are sometimes involved in post-importation matters relating to counterfeits.

Feds create puzzle not found on toy shelf

Nothing about running a small store called Pufferbelly Toys prepared Stephanie Cox for a cryptic phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"It's all very surreal, quite honestly," Cox said Wednesday. "I thought it was a prank when I first heard. I couldn't understand why Homeland Security would be investigating a tiny toy store in St. Helens."

The call came in late July or early August. A man identifying himself as a federal Homeland Security agent said he needed to talk to Cox at her store.

Cox asked what it was all about.

"He said he was not at liberty to discuss that," she said.

They agreed to meet in early August, but the agent later canceled. Cox thought the matter had blown over when the agent called back Sept. 9 to say he was coming out there.

"I was shaking in my shoes," said Cox, who has owned Pufferbelly Toys for more than four years. "My first thought was the government can shut your business down on a whim, in my opinion. If I'm closed even for a day that would cause undue stress."

The next day, two men arrived at the store and showed Cox their badges. The lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube. She said yes. The Magic Cube, he said, was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time. He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

After the agents left, Cox called the manufacturer of the Magic Cube, the Toysmith Group, which is based in Auburn, Wash. A representative told her that the Homeland Security agents had it wrong. The Rubik's Cube patent had expired, and the Magic Cube did not infringe on rival toy's trademark.

John Ryan, corporate counsel for the Toysmith Group, said Homeland Security, which includes Customs, routinely blocks shipments of products from overseas that violate intellectual property rights, such as patents, copyrights and trademarks.

"That's fine. That's not an outrageous federal act by any means," Ryan said. "But we certainly were surprised that a federal agent approached a toy store owner and frightened them."

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

Kice also said Homeland Security officials routinely investigate such complaints and follow up if they determine they are valid.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

After gaining assurances from Toysmith officials, Cox put the Magic Cube back on the shelf soon after the agents left.

Six weeks after her brush with Homeland Security, Cox is still scratching her head.

"Aren't there any terrorists out there?" she said.

Posted by mikki at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seizure of Servers Hosting Indymedia Websites Violates the First Amendment

San Francisco, CA -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing a coalition of independent Internet journalists whose websites were shut down on Thursday, October 7, when their servers were seized by the FBI. The two servers, which were located in the United Kingdom and managed by San Antonio-based Rackspace Managed Hosting, hosted Indymedia's Internet radio station and more than 20 Indymedia websites, as well as several email lists.

The seizure was in response to a "Commissioner's Subpoena" issued at the request of a foreign government. Citing a gag order, Rackspace has provided no further details. An FBI spokesperson has confirmed that the subpoena was issued at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities. Earlier this month, the FBI made informal requests to both Rackspace and Indymedia to remove an Indymedia news story that included photos of undercover Swiss investigators posing as anti-globalization activists. At the time, the FBI admitted that the posting did not violate US law.

EFF has contacted the FBI to demand Indymedia's illegally seized servers be returned and is preparing for legal action in the event that negotiations with the FBI fail. EFF is also calling on Rackspace to challenge the government's illegal seizure. "If Rackspace stands behind its claim of providing 'Fanatical Support' to its customers, it will go to bat for Indymedia--one of its biggest customers--and demand that the FBI return the seized Internet servers," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney. "Rackspace should also fight for its own rights and challenge the gag order preventing it from sharing its side of the story." A federal court in New York City recently found a similar gag order unconstitutional in Doe v. Ashcroft, the ACLU's challenge to a secret PATRIOT Act subpoena served against an Internet service provider.

"The FBI can't pull the plug on more than 20 news websites -- our modern printing presses -- based on a secret proceeding at the request of a foreign government. This is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "As far as the Constitution is concerned, Indymedia has the same rights as any other news publisher. The government can't shut down the New York Times, and it can't shut down Indymedia."

The Indymedia seizure bears a striking resemblance to EFF's very first case, Steve Jackson Games v. US Secret Service. In that case, the Secret Service seized the hardware and software of Steve Jackson Games, an Austin, Texas-based computer game publisher. That seizure, which shut down an Internet bulletin board and email server in addition to disrupting the publisher's business, was found to be an illegal violation of the publisher's rights.

Contact:

Kevin Bankston
Attorney, Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org

Kurt Opsahl
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
kurt@eff.org

For inquiries about Indymedia:

Devin T. Theriot-Orr
Edwards Sieh Smith & Goodfriend
devin@essglaw.com

Posted by mikki at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone has heard all the stories about those stupid people who call tech support. Those total dumbasses who don't plug in the machine, don't turn it on, etc. etc. And the Psycho Sensei, having previously supervised a tech support department, has heard many stories of those confused people and has chuckled heartily at them.

Well, today the Psycho Sensei became one of those stories. Our new plasma came in, and it's a wonderful unit. It worked great when I plugged it directly into my Tivo. However, it didn't work when I tried to put it through the A/V switch. So I figured it must be a problem with the programming of the A/V switch and set about fixing it. Unfortunately, you can't program the switch without the remote, and I couldn't find the damn remote. In fact, I had wanted to order a new one months ago and didn't. Mumble foo. So I called Lexicon, talked to a very nice tech support person and he sent it out right away.

This morning, I received the remote and checked all the programming. It all seemed fine! Imagine my surprise when the Tivo still didn't work through the plasma. After trying just about everything, I gave up and decided to call tech support back again. I got the same nice guy I got the day before, who remembered me and everything. At first, I thought that was great. Now I think it's embarrassing.

Moral of the story - when you pull the component wires out of the back of the tivo and plug them into the switch, make sure that you use a second component cable set to go from the Tivo out to the switch input. DUH! Not only that, but flaming DUH!

Posted by mikki at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 21, 2004

VP Consumer Affairs
Deer Park Spring Water Co.
A division of Nestlé Waters North America
2767 East Imperial Highway, Suite 100
Brea, CA 92821

Dear VP of Consumer Affairs:

I was totally shocked to find out that Deer Park adds sulfates to its water. However, I was downright terrified to find that consumers are not warned about this additive, OR the huge amount of sulfates per ounce that you actually add. According to your consumer service hotline, you add 8.5 mg per 8 fluid ounces.

At this moment, I am largely incapacitated after spending two weeks of serious symptoms such as vomiting, dizziness, painful esophogitis, migraine headaches, and a face covered with hives. All of this is a direct result of consuming Deer Park water. I am one of those millions of Americans with serious sensitivity to Sulfur based preservatives.

As a sensitive individual, I carefully research the labels of every product that I put into my body. However, you do not provide me the tools I need to stay healthy by providing a warning label. This seems to be in direct violation of what the Federal Food and Drug Administration had to say on its website. To wit:

“Bottled water, because it is a food, must comply with the general requirements for food labeling contained in 21 CFR 10”

So why aren’t you properly labeling your product? Why did I have to call your consumer affairs hotline in order to find out what was poisoning me? People who purchase bottled water because they are afraid of contaminants or toxins in tap water simply don’t expect the company who bottles the water to add things to it without letting people know.

At the very least, I need you to immediately terminate all bottled water shipments from Deer Park to my home. I was using your home delivery service, as well as purchasing your 1 pt bottles until the toxin level got high enough to sicken me to this extent. When I first became ill, I tried to “flush” it out of my system by increasing my water consumption. I’m afraid to think what might have happened if I hadn’t just happened to telephone your consumer affairs department to ask if your water added sulfates.

I can only guess how many Americans may be suffering symptoms for which they don’t know the cause is your water. I must urge you to immediately begin labeling your product before someone more sensitive than I am suffers irreparable damage or even death because they presume your water is safe for them.

Please do the right thing. Please properly label your products. And please immediately terminate my bottled water shipments.

Sincerely,
ME

Posted by mikki at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Psycho Sensei is on a roll! After being sick for the past two weeks, I finally put together what the problem is. You know Nestles, that wonderful company that distributed contaminated baby formula? Well now they're poisoning the Psycho Sensei. Their subsidiary, Deer Park Water is the water that I've been drinking for quite some time now. I just recently deliberately increased my water intake, trying to be as healthy as possible. In theory a good idea, but not when you use Deer Park Water, which contains, by their own Customer Service Dept., 8.5 mg of sulfates in 8 ounces. That is a LOT of sulfates. And there is NO warning label on the bottle. There is NO warning on the website, and the only way to find out is to call them.

So think about this logically for two minutes. One buys bottled water because they don't want to consume impurities and/or toxins that might be found in tap water. So why in the world would they ADD impurities and toxins to the bottled water? And why should the consumer have to CALL the company to find out that they've done this? If they had put a warning label on the bottle, perhaps I would have saved myself two weeks of hell, a face covered with red spots, bruises from falling down trying to get to the bathroom because I was too dizzy to walk there, days out of work, etc.

All for want of a label that is required to be on just about every other product that is consumed in this country.

Posted by mikki at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What good is health insurance when we have to pay more than an average home mortgage per month for medication? Why pay EXTRA to get non HMO insurance when you can't even get them to pay for necessary medication for which there is NO cheaper alternative?

So you shop for a job as carefully as you can. You decide whether to take it based on salary, benefits, work environment, etc. You THINK your benefits include reasonable drug coverage, perhaps with a co-pay like so many others are. So you take the job.

THEN you find out that your wonderful new insurance company has decided arbitrarily that the drug you need is something they don't really like to pay for, so they decide to only pay for 50%. So you get a bill. For 1100.00 EACH MONTH!

Now, of course, that's on top of the 500.00 per month you pay for health insurance anyway.

The "you" in this instance is Mr. Psycho Sensei who works for Lockheed Martin, a company who you would THINK would have good benefits packages, especially if the employees are paying 500.00 a month for them.

So let's see... 1100 plus 500 would get a nice house in a lot of parts of this country. So, buy a house, or stop a progressive disease that eats your joints and puts you in great pain. Let's see. Can we make this trade off? How many people in the country are having this same problem? And the Shrub wants to maintain the "status quo?" Oh please....

Posted by mikki at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting that Arnie would go against his good pal Shrubbie on such an emotional issue, but pretty cool as well.

Gov. Schwarzenegger takes a political risk and endorses a $3 billion California bond measure that would fund embryonic stem-cell research. [Wired News]

Posted by mikki at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the "olden days" it was possible to, through specialized equipment, record HD broadcasts onto DVHS tapes, maintaining full digital quality so that it could be time shifted at will. This set up was VERY useful, and worked fully in accordance with fair use, and the Betamax decision. And all was well.

Unfortunately, Dish Network changed its satellite configuration for High Definition programming. This rendered the previous setup completely useless. So what did they decide to do for those of us whose functionality was destroyed, and our previous high definition receivers made instantly obsolete? They offered to give us a discount on an HD Tivo type machine.

At first glance, this isn't a bad idea. However, when you find out that the firewire ports that WERE going to be included in the device were explicitly EXCLUDED, you find that it is not possible to archive the programming you wish to record. Given the finite capacity of HD recorders, this is a BIG issue.

Dish, of course, was caving in to the MPAA who now seems to make all decisions regarding what technology is permissible and which is not, regardless of the law and our rights. As Dish quality is not as good as DirecTV quality, I cancelled Dish, since there is no longer any advantage whatsoever to having it. Their "customer retention" people called me up in some sort of an attempt to "get me back." I told them that they should go to their legal department and get them to stand up to the MPAA and not let a group of thugs decide what legal technology we are allowed to have. Of course, even after explaining the whole thing to the minion on the telephone, she still didn't know anything I was taking about. I finally found a way to get a simple message to management, however. "I'll come back to Dish when they enable firewire output in their HD recording device." Hopefully they will understand.

Posted by mikki at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Due to PayPal deciding to commit suicide for the past few days, thus my being unable to process my orders on Enchanted Works, I have reluctantly been required to replug in my fax machine to accept orders. Soon after reconnecting it, the it rang and I got yet another junk fax.

However, this junk fax is in the DC area. this makes it a LOT easier for me to invoke the "Junk Fax Act" (47 U.S.C. §227) and take them to Fairfax County Court in small claims.

So I called the number listed, and got a recording asking me to leave a message and they'd get right back to me. I said, "Hi, I'm calling for my free $500.00 since you sent me a junk fax, which calls for statutory damages." I left my name and number and told them to get right back to me because I'd like to file suit against them. We'll see if they call me back :-)

Posted by mikki at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The wonderful Gaige has brought me a monitor on which I can watch bad television while waiting for a new plasma. What a wonderful wonderful Gaige. He also spent time making sure it worked. Hooray for the Gaige.

Also, we are having a vote on which new logo to use for my retail website. So go to this link and view the contenders. Then go back to Enchanted Works and vote. Thanks!!

Posted by mikki at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Oh dear, oh my. My NEC Plasma TV is dead. Whatever shall I do? There it was, perfectly happy last night, then this morning, dead. The power comes on, but the screen is totally black. Black as night. Even with no source the screen is blue and shows menu information when asked. It is dead and now I need a new one and this is bad timing and whine whine whine. AIEEEEE.

Posted by mikki at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The world of photography has lost a giant.

Richard Avedon, whose high-profile fashion photography of the 1950s and 1960s was eclipsed in later years by his own distinctive and evocative portraits of the known and unknown, died yesterday of a brain hemorrhage at a hospital in San Antonio, where he was on a photo shoot for the New Yorker. He was 81. [Washington Post: Front Page]

Posted by mikki at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)