It's utterly ridiculous that the UN is going after a band instead of focusing on shit that matters. Like people are actually going to listen to United Nations and think, "MAN GEOFF RICKLY IS THE NEW HEAD OF THE UN WHAT THE HELL WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN." Fucking idiots. This is what's wrong with the world today.
Maybe they should just alter their name to that of their website - United Fucking Nations. This is still absolute crap, though. Way to go after the real problems in the world.
Just an FYI, but the legal team of the UN probably asked it be removed. The actual countries in the UN -- the ones that make the decisions -- were almost surely not
I'm pretty sure they're referring to how the UN probably have some kind of legal team that dealt with this, and that the actual representatives and decision makers in general might have had little or no involvement.
While I'm sure that's true, the band wasn't causing the UN itself any problems. Like I said in my first post, it's not as if some random asshat was going to find the band and think, "Oh, snap, Kofi Annan formed a band," nor is someone going to assume Geoff Rickly is the new head of the UN. It just makes no sense. In fact, in the original thread on AP.net, I made the comment about INTERPOL deleting Interpol's MySpace and whatnot. It's the same thing, in a way.
Well, people were saying the UN needs to be doing its job instead of this. The UN is doing its job... as is its legal team. The simple fact is, if the UN doesn't protect it's intellectual property, it runs the risk of losing it (or rights associated with it -- if you don't protect your IP, you're screwed), as do any owners of intellectual property under U.S. law. Sucks that non-profits and other similar organizations have to waste money on a legal team for this, but that's just how it goes. Wasn't trying to sound like a prick, only stating for those unaware
Be that as it may, I still think the UN (and their legal team, or a combination of both) shouldn't be worried about whether a band is using the name "United Nations" to identify themselves. It's just like I said before: INTERPOL hasn't gone after Interpol, so why should the UN go after United Nations? It makes no sense to me. I understand your argument about intellectual property, but it's not as if the band was going to make off with the name. Everyone knows who and what the UN is. They're not going to get confused over something like this. Now, the logo, yes, that was intellectual theft, because the logo was clearly designed by people within the UN as an organization, and the band's version was practically a direct copy. What I'll hate is if book publishers see this sort of thing and think, "Hmmm, well, maybe we can sue As I Lay Dying and make them change the name of their band!" But I can tell you right now, that would be stupid, because (as sad as it is to say) I wouldn't have found out about Faulkner's book if it wasn't for the band. It's good... um... free... promotion? I think that's where I was going with that. I'm sorry if I came off douchey in my response to you. I wasn't trying to. I just didn't see where your statement came into play, but I see it now.
Interpol doesn't operate in the United States, however, and I'm guessing their copyright forms all reside in France, where it was founded Not to sound rude, but again, any sort of organization has to protect their intellectual property -- everything from names, logos, word usage, etc. Xerox has to send cease and desist letters to people saying "Xerox" instead of "copy" because they don't want their trademark name to become generic. Some other brands have had this happen because they didn't protect their trademark (I want to say Aspirin is one of those). It reminds me of the uproar that happened when people got mad at Microsoft for suing a kid who made a website called "Mikerowesoft" (his name was Mike Rowe). Microsoft had to protect their trademark, because if they don't it sets a bad precedent about people using their name or a similar-sounding name to capitalize off of it. The UN's probably doing the same thing here. Some people simply don't mind having their property used, mostly because they don't mind if it becomes generic. I think the UN does mind, but I don't know since I'm not them. I think it is a pretty stupid move to only get around to this now with the Myspace when they should've done it when the band started, however. Seems dumb.