Can you Hear Me Now, You Bastards?

Posted on August 20, 2003 in Censorship

The Fox/O’Reilly “fair and balanced” lawsuit has already spawned a bastard child:

Verizon Wireless, the cellphone company, in which Verizon holds a majority stake, asserted in court papers filed late on Monday that union officials violated the company’s trademark by using the “Can you hear me now?” phrase last week during a conference call with journalists. In turn, the Communications Workers of America, one of the two unions representing Verizon workers, filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday, accusing two Verizon executives of violating federal wiretap rules by listening to the conference call.

I don’t care what you think of labor unions: this kind of behavior by Verizon deserves censure. As with the phrase “fair and balanced” there’s no trademarking a phrase that is well established in ordinary usage. The maneuver by Verizon is nothing more than an attempt to suppress the union, a smaller, less well-financed voice.

This is why it is dangerous to allow any group or person to amass large amounts of money within a democracy: they can use that money to set themselves above the law and to harass the powerless. They can use their money to buy influence so that acts that are by all accounts unethical and harmful are not subjected to laws. They can buy air time to drum into our head that the law is the only morality, that because there are no laws preventing what they do they are morally perfect and just arbiters on questions of good and evil.

The United States will go far to recover from its present madness when it starts to limit what corporations can do with their money and make corporate officers accountable, too.

Question: if Verizon and Fox lose their lawsuits, can the victims countersue for legal expenses and hardships created by the wrongful suit? If it’s not the case now, it should be.

Observed at frog n’ blog.