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Pastimes : Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank, Sues FBNers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ISOMAN who wrote (2784)	5/30/1999 11:51:00 AM
From: Don Pueblo	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 3795

I think I understand what is happening. Not sure, but here is what I think is going on (theoretically). If you have an actual real company, and pay for their services, and your press release might contains lies, which may or may not be intentional on your part, (theoretically) [reference deleted] has a disclaimer on their contract; about.businesswire.com which (theoretically) holds them harmless for the content of said (theoretical) press release. I assume that this is so that (for example) an investor that (theoretically) lost money on an investment as a direct result of believing these (theoretical) lies would (theoretically) lose a fraud case against [reference deleted] for passing the bogus information along, and thus (theoretically) contributing to the (theoretical) fraud in some manner. The contract even has a clause stipulating that the (theoretical) content of said (theoretical) press release is the responsibility of the entity that submits it. In other words, if you write it, then you own it, [reference deleted] is "out of the (theoretical) loop". But! If you are playing an April Fool's joke, pay for the services of [reference deleted], but do not have an actual company, or any way to collect money as a result of a press release, then that's totally different. You enter Bizzaro World, where everything is reversed. If you write something, then it no longer is yours if you agree that it is. If (since you have no actual company) you have no actual way to commit fraud on the public, (possibly implying somehow that such was not your intention), and since responsibility for the accuracy and authorship of your material has been disclaimed priorly by [reference deleted], then you must be guilty of Bizzaro Fraud! If (theoretically) on your fake April Fool's gag web site you say you have something that may be for sale (but really isn't) but specifically state you are not soliciting to sell it, then you really are soliciting for something real, and since [reference deleted] has nothing to do with the web site, then they have been Bizzaro Damaged! Also, if you have never engaged in such Bizzaro Fraud before, then you obviously have a long history of engaging in actual fraud! Hah! Now, if you have a real company (theoretically), that engages in actual fraud by submitting fraudulent material for a press release, and then profiting by same, that's fine. No problem there. [reference deleted] has the disclaimer, they are not liable. So there is no dilution of the [reference deleted] trademark. [reference deleted] has no need to trouble you at all (theoretically). However, if you parody [reference deleted] after they act like boneheads, for example if they ask you to take their trademark off your web site and you do, (theoretically), and if you have no real company, then whatever parody of the trademark you put up is obviously also dilution of the [reference deleted] trademark. Finally, and this is important; if you are an actual criminal, and you intend to actually defraud investors, and you (theoretically) publish a (theoretically) fraudulent press release using the services of [reference deleted], [reference deleted] has that disclaimer on the contract, so (theorectically) you can defraud as much money as you want and lie as much as you want without being concerned about trademark dilution, since it appears that (theoretically) nobody has ever been sued by [reference deleted] for anything remotely connected to press releases. But if your intention is to educate and enlighten with an April Fool's gag, then (theoretically) your intention is obviously to commit fraud and dilute the trademark of [reference deleted], so you must be a Bizzaro Evil Demon from hell and you must die to make room for the real scam companies who really intend to defraud investors and their real press releases which may or may not contain lies (theoretically) and which are sole responsibility of the company as per the [reference deleted] contract. Hope this helps, TLC