Fed Up and the Rains of Bolivia

So… Jose Avila was running a little short of cash after moving into a new apartment, and decided to make his own furniture. Out of old FedEx boxes. Very cool, right? Very WLBOTT-worthy, so he uploaded pix of his furniture to his web site.

The good folks at FedEx were having none of that. They decided to crush him like a bug. Within a day of launching his site, they DEMANDED he take down the pictures.

Here’s a shaky hand-held video camera filming a Keith Olbermann interview with Jose Avila, III. At one point during the video, a little kid is heard asking, “Why you doing that?”

Interesting take from JaffeJuice:

Okay, so FedEx had a huge PR blunder on it’s hands. David .vs. Goliath.

By Andrea Vaccaro – © Museum Associates/LACMA, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22852418

A lawyer for the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society decided to give him a hand and give FedEx some push back.

Our research department wasn’t able to determine the ultimate resolution to this case, but although the web site was taken down the domain name is still alive (www.Fedexfurniture.com) and redirects to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_furniture).

To quote Bob Dylan, “Ain’t No Man Righteous, No Not One“. We should note that Jose used about 370 boxes, which he did not pay for. If this became a thing, FedEx would not be able to provide free shipping boxes. However, FedEx went after his ISP and forced them with the threat of contributory infringement as specified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

So…. in a near dystopian corporate America, is this really that far-fetched?

Why Should We Care?

So why should we care? Well, to quote the prophet,

“Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?”

Historically, corporations have had absolutely no problem aligning themselves with the worst of totalitarian regimes, if it meant maximizing their profits. This is one of the core tenets of fascism.