According to George Orwell newspeak is “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year”, which ties in nicely with the latest official blog from a company who run a virtual world because, heck our vocabulary just got smaller.
Am I even allowed to use these tags any more? Do they tick the right boxes, I think there should be a space in one of them. Oh woe is me.
Now remember children, reading the blog and the associated links will give you lessons in generic nouns, proper nouns, common nouns and verbs. Hey they who can’t be named unless I am grammatically perfect are well respected in education circles so this is another wonderful example of their steps in educating the world, so hat’s off the the company. There’s more, we’re told not to use the brand name in a possessive or plural context.
Of course previous guidelines on how to use trademarks have been wiped from the records, so unless someone has copied and pasted the previous guidelines then we don’t know how many people have been incorrectly using trademarks. Apparently telling us that we have 90 days to comply is giving notice, even though the old rules have been erased from the annals of history. Personally I think prior consultation means you tell people that these will be the new rules in ninety days and give them time to compare the new rules with the old rules to see if they misunderstood them or they’ve changed, but heck maybe I’m just old fashioned.
Now some of us will need to use trademark symbols, if you’re in the United States you need to use the trademark symbol and if we’re outside the United States apparently we don’t have to use trademark symbol.
We can also all apply to join a funky new branding system and use a funky new logo.
However you’re not to use the brand name in domain names unless it meets the correct criteria and you’re not to shorten the brand name, use the tag line or try and use foreign words that mean the same. However as I’ve got ninety days notice I have to ask whether I’m allowed to refer to the brand as a word that would come between first and third and something that we have when we’re not dead. A bit of a mouthful but these questions need to be answered.
Now of course they have every right to protect their image. I was surprised a few months ago when I found a group inworld that had deliberately tried to make their name sound official. This is common sense that people who are not representing them directly shouldn’t be trying to hoodwink people into thinking they are official.
Protecting their logo is also important and people should need permission to use it, the press can use it, whomever they are. Protecting your brand is important. This was pretty clear in the old guidelines, indeed the old guidelines were pretty damn clear full stop.
However hold on a minute, isn’t this our world too? Isn’t that what the tag line itself implies? I can’t say I have a brand name because it’s possessive? I can’t use the plural of that brand name to describe all of us who participate in said virtual world? I must use correct captilisation? This seems just a little bit over the top.
Ninety days and counting to see how this pans out, fair use me thinks may make a lot of this a little bit redundant but we’ll see.
IPO anyone?