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Re: Microsoft bullies again



on Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 03:10:56PM +0200, George Karaolides (george@karaolides.com) wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Greg Madden wrote:
> 
> > More wasted bandwidth,
> > 
> > No, it  didn't deny intrance it redirected you to a site that suggests 
> > you download a MS product., while suggesting MS was standards compliant 
> > & whatever you were using was not.  FWIW,  Konq & Opera passed the W3C 
> > validator, Netscape didn't., don't use IE.
> > - -- 
> > Greg Madden
> 
> Now if only there were a way for W3C to forbid you from calling your
> site a www-site unless all the content was W3C standards-compliant,
> the situation would have been quite different; you would have to call
> it msie.whatever instead of www. 

Any possible control over 'www' as a trademark has been long since lost.
Too, Trademark refers to trade dress, not functional characteristics,
and as such, 'www' in an FQDN might well be considered functional
(though you could raise an alternate argument given trademark and domain
name disputes).

More likely:  an aggressive promotion of "W3C Compliant *ML" buttons on
websites, alongn the lines of a "best viewed with any browser" campaign.
My experience in multiple contexts is that negative labeling (e.g.:
this product is harmful to your health) is very rarely implementable,
and generally only by government mandate (think cigarettes and alcohol).
_Positive_ labeling -- "this product is foo" -- is far more likely to be
adopted voluntarially.  False presentation -- claiming compliance where
it doesn't exist -- could be taken to violate commercial speach or even
trademark if the campaign utilizes a service mark.

Such a campaign is only as successful as its public perception.

This is all rather OT for d-u.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>       http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?             Home of the brave
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