Work, or Lack Thereof

I really need to get my ass in gear on this Work thing. Another day, all burn, no earn. I'm writing a test scenario for a form that hits up a server for a certificate, and I don't know if I need to write the program to mock the server function or if the developer has already made one. I need to ask him.

Anyhoo, so instead of actually working, I read about copyright law all day. The Taubman Company vs. Webfeats et al. is a remarkably interesting read... For those of you who like Legalese. It's about this guy, Henry Mishkoff (who is a self-employed web designer working under the nonincorporated business name "Webfeats"), who was so happy about this new mall (The Shops at Willow Bend) being put in he created a fan site about the mall, full of information about the mall, and offering links both to the Mall's website and the websites of stores within the mall.

His reward for praising the mall? The mall's owner sued him!

Ya see, the Taubman company, the owners of the mall, decided that the mall's official website (www.theshopsatwillowbend.com), and Mishkoff's fan site (www.shopsatwillowbend.com) were "confusingly similar" despite a disclaimer that Mishkoff was not associated with the mall, and also decided (for some bizarre reason) that Mishkoff was using it to take away business from the mall, and furthermore accused him of Cybersquatting (That is, they accused him of planning to place horrible objectionable stuff up on his website hoping to shame them into paying him reams of money for the domain name). So they decided they should take his fan site away from him.

Long story short, after almost two years of utter bullshit in which Taubman's legal team spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to bludgeon Mishkoff into submission, the Little Guy managed to win. If you like to read long stories in which large corporations try to bully the average Joe by hammering them with confusing bureaucracy and the Little Guy winning, you can read about it at http://www.taubmansucks.com/ .


I really don't have anything else today. I'm really tired. I even came home from work and immediately took a two hour nap.

I think I will now continue said nap.

So 'til next time, rock on.