Trademarks deliberately put the hand on the scales, creating a monopoly to the benefit of the entity that receives the trademark. Revoking the trademark takes the hand off the scales. That is pretty much the definition of a level playing field. Do you think that there's going to be another sports team called the Redskins that's going to come in and take business away from the current team? Get real. We're talking about T-shirt sales here. The unfairness that you propose is nonsense, because the other teams get no benefit from it.

You're probably too young to remember, but back when I was a kid you could get really awesome T-shirts sold by vendors who weren't licensed. And then at some point the teams and the bands realized that they could monetize their brands, and started selling these crappy-ass T-shirts that were nowhere near as good as the stuff the independent vendors sold. _That_ was when the thumb came down on the scales. That was when the playing field became no longer level. If the Redskins permanently lose their trademark, Redskins fans will once again be able to get awesome schwag, just like in the good old days. As far as I'm concerned, this is a win whether they continue using the name or stop using it.

That said, I think they ought to stop using it, because it's in insanely poor taste. If they just pick a new name, they will be able to trademark it immediately, and sell T-shirts with the same monopoly they had up until this recent PTO decision. They might see a temporary 10% blip downward in sales if they choose poorly, or they might see a sudden surge in sales if they choose well. But no matter how this comes out, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. This is just not a big deal.

The government is required to decide whether the trademark is offensive. The law says it has to do so. It's not a "political" assessment, any more than it would be "political" for the government to refuse or revoke a trademark on a team that called itself the Kikes or the Beaners. You have a very weird idea of what "politics" means. It is not politics when a disparaged minority demands an end to the disparagement. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. It's the same thing. You are allowed to speak ethnic slurs, but you are not allowed to have government protection in support of that speech.

It's definitely a problem for the business. But it is not a free speech problem. It is a problem that a lucrative government monopoly has been withdrawn. This will definitely cost them money, but they can still use the logo and the name if they want to. They'll just have to compete on a level playing field, the same way their team does. :)

Huh? What speech of the owner's is silenced? The only way your argument works is if you are claiming that the speech was being paid for out of the proceeds that came from the monopoly granted to the trademark owner. That doesn't make much sense, since it is the mark itself that is speech. But even if it did make sense, you would have an even worse problem, because now the government is privileging the speech of trademark owners over that of non-trademark owners. So according to your theory, trademarks are a violation of the freedom of speech, and are unconstitutional: the problem is not that this trademark is being revoked, but that all trademarks are not being revoked.

The equal protection clause might apply here, but if it did it would apply in the sense of removing the trademark, not in the sense of allowing it. Trademarks are by definition favoring the registrant over all others. Doesn't get much more unequal than that.

You could turn it around and say that everybody is entitled to a trademark and that denying anyone a trademark violates the equal protection clause, but again if that's so, trademarks already do this: you can't trademark just anything, and the government decides what's trademarkable and what isn't.

So the bottom line is that if the equal protection clause applies, the way it applies is that it eliminates all trademarks, including the Redskins trademark.

How is the government refusing to enforce a restriction on free speech rights (which is what a trademark is) an infringement on free speech rights? 'splain, please.

All rights you have are always subject to the will of the government. That's why it's so important to have a constitution where those rights are specifically laid out, and why it's so important for citizens to participate in civic discourse and not just expect the thing to run itself.

Trademarks are a constitutionally permitted infringement on free speech. Refusing to alllow a trademark can't possibly infringe on free speech: it does the exact opposite.

Oh, you mean WiFi. That's okay--the power is quite low. I thought you meant telco-style microwave, which is much more powerful and can hurt you if pointed the wrong way. I agree about exclusive franchises. They should be illegal. Right now they are unregulated, which is why I was reacting negatively to your proposal to regulate _less_.

Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Check out these sweet digs. Corporations do not just put cash in the bank. They invest it in stuff they can sell later, and depreciate and deduct now, so they pay less tax. So sure, they'll cry you a river about how their profit margin is so low, but booking profit and paying the taxes on it is the last thing they want to do.

Right. How do you do that? There are a couple of ways. One is the common carrier way: regulate the last mile, requiring that whoever has a connection from their distribution point to your home rent access to that connection (the whole connection, exclusively, or else just access to the IP layer) at the same price their internal ISP business unit pays for it.

Alternatively, you can have the municipality or even the development own the last mile, and rent it out to whichever ISP the end-user chooses. "But there's only one ISP!" That's because the last mile is so expensive. Dropping fiber to the distribution point is a lot cheaper. So suddenly you open up to more competition.

These are the only ways I know of to fix the monopoly problem. If you've got another way, I'd love to hear it, but don't just handwave it.

No, it means they have to rent it for the same price to whomever wants to rent it. They don't have to upgrade it.

The difference is that provisioning the last mile is what's expensive. Running fiber to the point of presence is easy. So if you regulate telcos as common carriers, suddenly you have competition between ISPs again, and so they can't pull that crap.

Back when they were still regulating data transmission under common carrier rules, there was competition in the point of presence: the telco had to lease lines to the home at the same price to competitors as to their internal service provider. The consequence of this was that they could not use their stranglehold on the last mile to charge monopoly rents. They could still make money selling Internet, but if they screwed you (e.g. with a "fast lane") you could switch. Now there is no competition, and guess what? They are starting to put in fast lanes.

So what you're saying is that we can have a monopoly of greedy corporate bastards, or we can have a government-run monopoly that charges a price that's regulated by voters. And out of these two choices, you are selecting the former, because boo-hoo, the voters will set the price at cost, and the corporations want to make a profit, and that's not fair. Well fuck their profit. They want to own our eyeballs and sell them to the highest bidder. Fuck that.