Here is a pleasant example of some ridiculous legal gesturing… Mattel is suing a porn site because the actresses’ stage name is “China Barbie” and her domain name is www.chinabarbie.com. (No, I can’t activate this as a link because Yahoo will get upset on behalf of every Puritan out there who thinks your body is naturally dirty (note the weirdly anti-Jewish slave conspiracy stuff in here… wow…) and you can’t touch it in pleasant ways without getting hairy palms and owing your bishop a blowjob…). It is important to note that news of this lawsuit broke today, on 2007.08.22, and her website opening announcement was on 2004.09.01. That’s just enough time for her to have money to legally extort through the legal system. Hmmm…
I’ve met plenty of people named Barbie in my life, and though I’ve always thought it was a silly name and the girls themselves often brought to mind strippers I know named things like “Star”, “Candy”, and “Bambi”, the name is legitimate and I doubt a porn site will divert much of Mattel’s revenue stream. Does everyone named Babara conflict with Mattel’s trademark also?
I imagine there is little crossover between the customer demographic of Mattel’s Barbie buyers and China Barbie’s wanker club, but who knows. I would go farther with this and propose that its ridiculous to imagine that there are many customers for whom the choice of whether to spend $19.99 this month on Asian porn starring a slightly out-of-shape girl or a plastic play doll presents itself often, if ever.
Maybe porn-surfing is not a two-handed affair in the typical way for these people… maybe every one of them has the mouse in one hand and the other on a Barbie Doll instead of the emotional stick-shift. Of course, that would only mean that Mattel is making more money, not losing it, and China Barbie is advertising for them. This isn’t slander, its a name, and they named their doll after a girl named Barbara 48 years ago.
I’m sure Mattel is going to sue me next for not putting a (TM) next to every use of their name… I should probably go back and edit this article to reflect that. Of course, that would spend more of my time, and to total cost of this entry is already way over the budget I set aside for it:
Budget: 8 Minutes, $0.00
Actual cost: 14:23 minutes, $0.82 for the tea I drank in the middle of it
Besides, Mattel, she’s not even hot enough to pose a threat…