Rap star Kayne West slapped a slew of anonymous digital-currency operators and another 100 unnamed co-defendants with a trademark-infringement lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block the use of a new digital currency that would rival encrypted “Bitcoins” — but rely on Kayne’s name and image without his permission, reports NyPo.
“Defendants have willfully and admittedly traded upon the goodwill and notoriety of Kanye West, one of the most famous entertainers and brand names in the world,” says the suit filed in Manhattan federal court by West and his company Mascotte Holdings. “Without hesitation, defendants have usurped Mr. West’s name and likeness for the sole purpose of propping up the perceived ‘value’ of the defendants’ ‘digital coin mine’ and its ‘cryptocurrency.’”
“Defendants also boldly asserted that ‘Anarcho-capitalism is coming, it can’t be stopped,” says the suit, referring comments made by someone identifying themselves as “Coinyewest” in Jan. 7 article by the tech-blog Ars Technica. “Whether it has a symbol that looks like a dollar, a dog, or a cartoon picture of a rapper, it’s all the same thing.’”
ReplyDeleteFailing elites threaten our future
Leaders richly rewarded for mediocrity cannot be relied upon when things go wrong
The policy making elite failed to appreciate the incentives at work and, above all, the risks of a systemic breakdown. When it came, the fruits of that breakdown were disastrous on several levels: economies collapsed, unemployment jumped and public debt exploded. The policy making elite was discredited by its failure to prevent disaster. The financial elite was discredited by needing to be rescued. The political elite was discredited by willingness to finance the rescue. The intellectual elite – the economists – was discredited by its failure to anticipate a crisis or agree on what to do after it had struck. The rescue was necessary. But the belief that the powerful sacrificed taxpayers to the interests of the guilty is correct.
Second, in the past three decades we have seen the emergence of a globalised economic and financial elite. Its members have become ever more detached from the countries that produced them. Thus, the glue that binds any democracy – the notion of citizenship – has weakened.
The narrow distribution of the gains of economic growth greatly enhances this development. This, then, is ever more a plutocracy. A degree of plutocracy is inevitable in democracies built, as they must be, on market economies. But it is always a matter of degree. If the mass of the people view their economic elite as richly rewarded for mediocre performance and interested only in themselves, yet expecting rescue when things go badly, the bonds snap. We may be just at the beginning of this long-term decay.
Accountability and power
Third, in creating the euro, the Europeans took their project beyond the practical into something far more important to people: the fate of their money. Nothing was more likely than friction among Europeans over how their money was being managed or mismanaged.
The result is the birth of angry populism throughout the West, mostly the xenophobic populism of the right. If elites continue to fail, we will go on watching the rise of angry populists. The elites need to do better. If they do not, rage may overwhelm us all.
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/europe/failing-elites-threaten-our-future-1.1656168?page=2
Shouldn't you be on the side of Kanye in this, Robert? I mean, you are a fan of Intellectual Property... :)
ReplyDeleteP.S. The entire joke of Kanye as a fish is taken directly from this South Park Episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishsticks_(South_Park)