Manchester United Becomes Manchester UFC In 'Football Manager 22' Over Dumb Trademark Spat
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It won't be a massive surprise that Manchester United, the famed Premier League football club, has made it onto our pages before. As the "Yankees of European soccer", it would be shocking if the club hadn't at some point taken aggressive action in the technology and IP space. Still, there isn't a great deal of posts in there, so you would be forgiven if you thought of Man-U as generally not bad on this sort of thing.But, no, the club is perfectly capable of being protectionist, and even occasionally taking outrageous positions. For instance, we can start with the fact that Sega's Football Manager 22 will no longer include the name of the club in the game, but will shift it to something barely different after a lawsuit was filed because of... reasons.Manchester United will be renamed Manchester UFC from Football Manager 22 onwards after the resolution of a trademark dispute. The Premier League club sued Football Manager publisher Sega in May last year, 16 years after the release of Sports Interactive's first Football Manager game, and 28 years after the launch of the first Championship Manager game. In the actual lawsuit, Sega pushed back and stated that including the club in the context of a football/soccer game was a legitimate use, indicating it as basically simply describing reality. Sega also noted that Man-U had appeared under its name in the Football Manager series for literally 30 years without any complaint from the club whatsoever. Why this suddenly became an issue comes down to the club's desire to sell exclusive licenses for use to Sega's competitors, of course, but soccer games have existed forever. Where has Man-U been this entire time?Further pushback came from Sega, indicating that the game designers went out of their way not to use Man-U's logos or crests, as that really would be a trademark violation. Somewhat amazingly, Man-U responded saying that was trademark infringement, too.United also claimed Football Manager infringed its trademark of the Manchester United logo by not using the official Manchester United crest in the game. This "deprives the registered proprietor of its right to have the club crest licensed", Manchester United's lawyers said."Consumers expect to see the club crest next to the name Manchester United... and this failure to do so amounts to wrongful use," United argued, although the club's lawyer accepted this argument was "somewhat novel, and certainly in the context of video games, but it is certainly arguable". Yes, it's novel, because I've never heard a trademark claimant suggest that not using trademarked iconography was infringement solely because it didn't result in a licensing deal to use the actual trademarked iconography. That's... not how this works. It would also be interesting to see how this claim would run up against any free speech rights Sega could point to in the UK. While obviously different from the laws in America, I'll just note that the 1st Amendment here would make this argument a complete non-starter. A 2nd party can't claim the right to force the 1st party to put something specifically in their game.But, alas, Sega changed the name to something barely different to get out of this whole mess, noting the entire time that it admitted no guilt.This means that, from this year's game onwards, Manchester United will be named 'Manchester UFC' or 'Man UFC'."These name changes have been made purely to settle the dispute on a no admissions basis," Sports Interactive added. "SEGA and Sports Interactive maintain that they do not need a licence to use the Manchester United name but have made the change as a gesture of goodwill so that both parties can move on." And so everyone playing the game will know precisely what the game is referring to with its "Manchester UFC" name, but the club won't actually get the exposure benefit of having its normal branding in there.Talk about an own-goal.
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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Aug-2021
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Bad Faith Politicians Are Using Social Media Suspension To Boost Their Own Profiles
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You may have heard that conspiracy theorist and nonsense-spouting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has, not for the first time, been temporarily suspended from Twitter for passing along conspiracy theory nonsense regarding vaccines. She's unable to tweet for 7 days. I, unfortunately, can't find the tweet now, but back in July when she was similarly suspended for just 12 hours, I saw someone jokingly note that temporarily suspending someone like Greene was the equivalent of Twitter throwing her a fundraiser, since she would immediately turn around, play the victim, and get her gullible, duped followers to throw more money at her. And, no doubt the same is true with this suspension as well. She's already put out a statement and the usual "conservative" media orgs are already talking about how "Twitter can't handle the truth" or some such nonsense.And then, of course, you have people who are reasonably ticked off at Twitter "only" temporarily suspending Greene for spreading nonsense info, rather than permanently banning her.So, in the end, you have both ends of the political spectrum mad about this setup, and trying to spin it to their own advantage. However, once again, it really seems to highlight the impossible nature of content moderation at scale, especially when some of the parties are clearly acting in bad faith.Twitter has its escalation policies in place, and they're designed (reasonably!) to deal with good faith users, who might not realize they're violating the rules or spreading dangerous disinformation. In that world, an escalating penalty system makes sense. Getting suspended for a few hours or a week generally sucks for users who actually like to use the site but it's a sort of "cool off" period combined with a gentle nudge to be a better participant on the internet. But, of course, that system kind of breaks down when you have not just bad faith actors who are deliberately testing the boundaries of what they can get away with, but who actually benefit from the suspension and the press attention that comes with it.At this point, some will say "well, that's a perfect reason to just suspend such people permanently." But, alas, that comes with its own challenges. Indeed, jumping straight to a permanent suspension only proves that the company would be treating some people differently, and would be treated by people like Greene as "proof" of "anti-conservative bias" (again, this would be bad faith, but it would allow the story to have some level of confirmation). So, Twitter can't do that without providing what a bunch of people will see as confirming evidence. So Twitter follows its rules, and continues to escalate the punishment (eventually MTG will get permanently suspended, it seems only a matter of time).Looked at realistically, the fact that Twitter is following its stated escalation policies, rather than doing an outright ban should be seen as evidence that it is not "biased against conservatives," but is treating everyone the same. If you violate the company's policies about COVID vaccines, then you go through the escalation process -- whether you made a mistake in good faith or whether your a bad faith grifter. Of course, that's not how it will play out anywhere, because no one does nuance any more.Some might argue that the obvious bad faith nature of MTG's arguments mean that Twitter should just have a policy of banning bad faith grifters. And that's certainly tempting, but how do you define bad faith grifter within a policy such that a large team of content moderation professionals can apply it consistently? The problem is that you really can't. The very nature of an escalation policy is that it does, eventually, take care of most bad faith grifters. It just takes time, and allows them to violate the rules a bunch of times before getting the final send-off.
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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Aug-2021
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