FedEx Cracks Down on Box Furniture, Citing DMCA

nospmiS remoH writes "Wired is running an article about a guy with no money making furniture out of FedEx boxes. If that weren't strange enough, FedEx is going after him, legally citing the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA. Apparently they are not upset about the furniture itself but rather this site that he put up with pictures of his creations (pretty good work really). My favorite quote from the article, '...Avila clearly intended to operate a business from his website because he used the .com domain suffix, the "commercial level domain," rather than .net.' You just can't make this stuff up."

Trademark yes, copyright no

[Kelson]

Can they justifiably go after him for trademark violations? Absolutely. But copyright? You'd have to be insane.

It's constantly amazing to see the extent to which people will abuse the DMCA to get what they want.

A little bit excessive...

[necro2607]

Aren't there laws about making absolutely unreasonable legal threats towards someone? ...

This is wayyy over the line!

Well, guess I won't be shipping any packages with FedEx any time soon. Knowing that "that could be me" is enough for me to boycott the company and encourage others to do so as well...

You have to love their claim

[Evets]

You have to love their claim that his building furniture with fedex boexes violates the terms of use at fedex.com.

"fedex.com is provided solely for the use of current and potential FedEx customers to interact with FedEx and may not be used by any other person or entity, or for any other purpose."

Questionable spending choices

[winkydink]

He can afford to spend money on a laptop and orange hair dye but not necessities. Misplaced priorities? More likely a publicity stunt.

Re:It does sound silly, but...

[MindStalker]

It seems like they would have come clause in their free box request thingy, to ensure you use the boxes for shipping via fedex, and not for personal use. I had no idea you could get tons of free fedex boxes, if I had known I might have gotten em last time I needed boxes. Anyways, if they don't have such a clause, they need to fix it. If they do, they need to prosecute this guy for violating that clause, in effect stealing their boxes. Otherwise they need to STFU.

Re:It does sound silly, but...

[theguyfromsaturn]

Then they should charge for the cost of the empty boxes. This guy showed publicly something that possibly thounsands of people do in one form or another. "Free" (as in beer) stuff tends to be abused this way. However, the guy might still have payed the few cents the boxes if it saved him the furniture.

FedEx likes their TM

[mediaslave]

I remembered them going after a coffee shop dba Federal Espresso in my home town a while back... found this:

http://www.lexnotes.com/sources/subs/cases/2ndCir_ 98-9430.shtml [lexnotes.com]

I believe they had to change their name, but funnily enough someone in San Fran is running a Federal Espresso now:

http://www.usrg.com/drg3/san_francisco/r/39/r3913. html [usrg.com]

Maybe someone should warn them...

The catch? Those aren't your USPS boxes!

[pergamon]

Shipping supplies from the USPS state very clearly that they're the property of the USPS. The first time you order a shipment of boxes from the USPS, they make you sign something saying that you acknowledge this fact and that those supplies are indeed only for the purpose of sending stuff by means of USPS.

I had thought Fedex and UPS did the same, but I just examined a couple Fedex medium boxes we had laying around here and they don't say anything of the sort.

Re:Allowances for artistic expression?

[dubbreak]

From the furniture creator's blog:
"Over two weeks ago, FedEx improperly used the DMCA notice and take-down provisions to get the website at www.fedexfurniture.com taken offline. The company claimed trademark infringement and conversion, neither of which allow it to take advantage of the powerful remedy provided under the DMCA."... http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu]"

His blog is available at http://furniture.weblogswork.com/ [weblogswork.com]

I don't live in the states but ...

[chrome]

this just makes me go HUH!?

I mean, what kind of demented, bored, halfwit lawyer decides it would be a good idea to SUE a guy making FURNATURE out of PACKING MATERIALS?!

I mean, COME ON! Give the guy a break!

Hey, that guy is so poor, he obviously needs more problems, so lets slap a lawsuit onto him! Yeah!

Great idea!

Bastards.

Nice Dinette set...

[Radical Moderate]

...I like the way he slipped Tux into the picture, obviously pandering to the /. crowd!

Re:Death knell

[hanshotfirst]

Problem solved with a can of spray paint or cheap upholstery.

I don't see how DMCA applies, since there was no digital rights management hardware or software installed on the boxes he received (unless you count the chemical bonding of the paint to paper), and he did nothing to circumvent that (non-existent) copy protection.

Re:Free Boxes from UPS & FedEx

[mekkab]

We're on Slashdot, go figure out the similarity of this situation on the OS front.

Its reasoning like this that I find on boingboing.net, and that I don't agree with.

TANSTAAFL. Linux Distros cost bandwidth, which can be amortized and taken care of in a cheap way (bit torrent..., etc.). Linux costs development time which many developers are willing to give up for free.

But Companies pay for HARD GOODS. Boxes cost. That cost is rolled up into the price of service. If the cost of raw materials goes up, the cost of the service goes up. If you don't use the service, then you aren't hit with the higher fees. But don't think that this compares at ALL with the cost of an OS license for a copy of code! And to be ignorant of wider scope and say "well, it doesn't cost ME anything" is absolutely true, and completely immature and intellectually bankrupt.
To be cogent of the wider scope and to say "it doesn't cost me anything and I don't care about anyone else" is much more acceptable.

You decide whats right and wrong; but be aware of the larger picture.

/When I moved, I took used printer paper boxes from work. One person's trash...

Re:If we had the DMCA in the 60s...

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Well not to worry, if they can't get Warhol, they'll get his fans... [warhol.dk]

Oh the bitter irony...

Re:Trademark yes, copyright no

[jps3]

He could have easily just not used the trademark "FedEx" and minimally obfuscated the full logo in his creations and images. No argment, and everyone would have clearly understood it all. But since he pushed the "FedEx" trademark to promote *himself* that is what got him into trouble. Note I am not taking sides here, just saying he could easily have avoided the entire thing *and* gotten the exact same point across...

Re:Trademark yes, copyright no

[joeljkp]

It's up to the judge in your case, influenced by considerable precedent and the quality of the arguments of the two sides. If you have a decent judge, he'll take a look at the work as a whole. If you have a non-decent judge, well, that's what judicial elections are for.

Re:Free Boxes from UPS & FedEx

[blackbear]

I did this the last time I moved. Those are very stong boxes. They also happen to be the perfect size and strength to move books. You can put just enough books in that an average person can easily carry the box, and it won't break.

The boxes you buy from the packing store are far from being as strong.

Re:If we had the DMCA in the 60s...

[interiot]

In this case, "They" would be the owners of the late Andy Warhol's work, not Campbell Soup Company.

If I was UPS...

[nigham]

I'd give him our boxes, ask him to build furniture out of those, host his website and assign him a lawyer.

I think the goodwill I'd get would be worth many times the cost I'd incur.

while tenuous

[XO]

...they are absolutely right on one thing. .com is for commercial entities. If you aren't commercial, you should be denied .com. If you aren't a non-profit, you should be denied .org. If you aren't an ISP or other infrastructure provider, you should be denied a .net.

That's the way it once was, and that's the way it should be. The way it is now, there's no difference except that people prefer .com because that's what people remember the most.

Bring sanity back to DNS.

Re:The catch? Those aren't your USPS boxes!

[shotfeel]

But I don't care what agreement the shipper & shipping company may have, if its a box that's shipped to me, I consider it my property.

Because if they do think they still own the box after the delivery has been made, they'd better get over here and pick them up or I'm sending them the bill for expenses and labor used to properly dispose of their boxes.

Note I am talking about boxes that have been used for shipping something, not empty boxes the shipping company may have provided with the understanding that they be used in doing business with them. Its not entirely clear to me how he got his boxes.

Re:Even better!

[CrazyJim1]

Yah I used to work at UPS too. I had the 95 degree working conditions loading trucks, but that wasn't as bad as when I got my $1 an hour raise to sort packages, elbow to elbow with assholes. They'd be crude, and even body check you occassionally. But you're only working for 4 hours a night anyway... My true stories of bad work come from minimum wage labor at Sony for 12 hours straight, where its like 100 degrees, and you're wearing a chemical suit, and doing non stop movement around razor sharp metal that you have to handle, meinwhile the pressurized piping around you may break which fired out sulfuric acid on occassion. But I can't bitch, theres people with far worse jobs out there.

Anyway I remember doing UPS when I was going to CMU... And if you think its awful to be loaded under massive coursework, and dead sociallife at CMU, imagine commuting 2 hours to go to a suckass job. I'm so glad I graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a scientific computing degree. It'd be nice to have a job, but some jobs are better off not done...

That being said, I actually liked lifting boxes into a trailer. It reminded me of a mix between going to the gym and tetris. Suckers pay to go to the gym, when you can get paid to lift boxes. Of course, when you're loading trucks, theres no chance for a hot chick to wander past. But I guess thats the price you gotta pay if you want to work most anywhere.

bachelorpad

[beczka2005]

I wonder what the ladies think of his bed :)

Re:Free Boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we let FedEx know what we think of this action?

https://www.fedex.com/cgi-bin/qrf2.cgi?link=4&firs t=y&formpage=general [fedex.com]

Here's the message that I sent:

I saw this article today in Wired:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68492,00. html [wired.com]

I think it's despicable that FedEx is using the DMCA to harass a guy who can't afford furniture and is just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation. Perhaps you have forgotten the time that the owner of FedEx gambled the company payroll in Vegas to save the company.

As a result of this incident, I will be shipping with UPS whenever possible.

I also know a few hundred thousand other people who feel the same way:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/08/11/1715204.shtml ?tid=123&tid=17 [slashdot.org]

What Slashdotting?

[alienfluid]

I don't know about you guys but I don't think the website is showing any signs of being Slashdotted. It's fast and zippy even after over 300 comments - must be heck of a server.

Re:Free Boxes

[AviLazar]

You "know a few hundred thousand other people"? Maybe you mean you saw a list of a few hundred thousand people who feel the same way as you? I don't even know a few hundred thousand other people - and I doubt I have ever met a few hundred thousand other people.

Not to mention what this guy was wrong:
FedEx sends these boxes under the good faith that you will use them to ship through FedEx (walk into a FedEx store and ask them for a box and they sell them...ship with the box and its free). So he is using their shipping supplies at no cost, using their name (fedexfurniture.com) and the furniture which is their name. All of this for a product. Maybe, as opposed to sitting 20 hours a day at his FedEx box, he should go out and get a job?

Great ingenuity on his part (or I should say his friends) - if he just made this stuff for himself and a couple of friends and said "hey look at this" it would be fine...but he is making a profit on another company w/o their permission - and they are losing money. That is NOT cool.

Oh snap!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

FedEx is clearly a not for profit organization because they have fedex.org!

Hey, FedEx, /cry about it.

Re:Free Boxes from UPS & FedEx

[Rocko Bonaparte]

This is what I did when I moved recently. Licquor store boxes are very sturdy since a broken booze box can mean $200 in alcohol oozing all over the place. I have a short school bus I used to move down last year, and I used it in my house move. I got much more junk since then, and needed boxes to easily transport it around. So I drove my school bus over to the booze store and starting hauling out empty box after empty box of booze.

I'm sure that looked terrible to a bystander.

That's nothing...

[stanleypane]

I used to manage a distribution warehouse, so I was lucky enough to visit the local UPS operation here in town. Each day, we fill a feeder truck with anywhere from 300-500 packages on average. These feeder trucks are then picked up every day and driven back to our local UPS facility. Once the feeder arrives at UPS, the entire trailer is tipped at about a 30 angle and all of the packages on top literally come tumbling out of the truck onto a sort station at the docks.

It is not a delicate process at all. And when a couple hundred of your packages all start toppling over each other, it is very scary indeed. I'd rather them play football with the packages.

Re:Even better!

[stretch0611]

For those considering a career at UPS: please first consider dealing smack or pimping out underaged runaways. It's a good deal more fulfilling.

I also worked for UPS. However, I worked as a programmer for them and I never touched a package.

I agree, you do not want to work for UPS.

• In my last performance appraisal before I quit, my Project Leader wanted to give me a 5.4 (out of 6) but our Project Manager forced her to lower it to 4.8 because I did not work enough unpaid overtime.
• Upper management does not understand that thinking about how to solve a problem is work. In their mind, if you are not typing, you are not working. Also, many do not value your job if it does not involve touching a package.
• While I was working in Mahwah, NJ and Paramus, NJ, The nearby hubs would the IT department for volunteers to help delivering packages during the Christmas rush. If you did not volunteer they looked at you funny.

Actually I had a few more problems working there but the above is just a small example of the problems working for UPS.

Lawyers should pay damages for letters

[Anonymous Coward]

This perfectly illustrates my contention that lawyers (not their clients, although it this case these seem to be FedEx lawyers), should have to pay and pay big when they send out letters that make claims no court is likely to support.

In this case, the lawyers seem a bit dim about IP law, and not just the DMCA. The parody bit about "social or other commentary regarding FedEx" is particularly dumb. Parody makes fun of a copyright holder or how they write, speak or sing. As much as I might hope otherwise, it has nothing to do with social commentary and you can parody out of sheer nastiness if you want. Besides, you can't copyright "FedEx," you can only trademark it. Anyone is perfectly free to write a novel filled with references to FedEx without violating any FedEx "copyright." And copyright only deals with publications, you don't "publish" a chair.

There should be a court-sanctioned fast track to award damages in situations such as this. Those getting these dreadfully inaccurate threatening letters could go to court and quickly not only get compensated for any legal fees they have to pay to find out what this FedEx lawyer is saying is gibberish, but get a hefty damage award to discourage lawyers from making such outlandish claims. And I mean big money, big as in six figure and above settlements. Big as in getting fixed for life for one out-of-bounds cease and desist letter.

We need to bind up lawyers as tightly as lawyers have bound up everyone else. The law need not care how nastily and dishonestly lawyers treat one another, but their letters to non-lawyers should have to be as carefully worded as SEC filings. They shouldn't be able to make any claim that's not going to stand up in any court in the land. They should have to tell those they'd like to threaten all sorts of reasons why they, as lawyers, may be wrong in what they're claiming. They should have to state that if we win, all our legal fees may be paid by them and we may even be awarded damages. In short, any lawyer dealing with a non-lawyer who is not his client should have to be very, very, very, very nice.

That, after all, is what surgeons have to do. They have to tell you all sorts of reasons why you might not want to get the surgery. Ditto drug companies. Ditto cops making an arrest. Ditto everyone right now but lawyers. That's not "equal justice under law."

The law should be the same for lawyers as it is for everyone else. Of course, tell that to some lawyers and they will go ballistic. I mentioned this to one lawyer and within seconds he was red-faced and almost screaming. The bad sort of lawyers don't like this. No my precious, they don't like it at all. It takes away the One Ring they use to rule over non-lawyers. Take away their ability to lie and threaten and where would they be? Poor smucks with nothing to do.

--Mike Perry, Seattle Untangling Tolkien

P.S. By the way, I was in a copyright dispute over the book above. I hung in there and saw every claim the opposing lawyers made in their cease and desist letter demolished. In the end, facing a strong possibility of losing at summary judgment, they became quite polite, particularly after the judge dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice. But my book was delayed for a year and a half by their threats and for that I got not a penny. The lawyers, however, got quite rich off the Tolkien family.