The gaymers subreddit community has filed a petition to cancel Chris Vizzini’s trademark on “gaymer.” Vizzini is the owner of gaymer.org and served the community with a cease and desist letter back in September over their alleged trademark infringement.
Temporary gaymer moderator ozuri announced their decision Wednesday:
Mr. Vizzini, you keep using the word ‘gaymer.’ I do not think it means what you think it means.
To the rest of us, it means community. It means pride in our differentness and our small community. It means inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness. It means banding together and using a common hobby – games – to unite a sub-set of our community that otherwise has nothing substantive in common. It bridges the gap in the gay community of an arbitrary characteristic with an activity that allows commonality, of purpose and activity. In short, it is the antithesis of a claim of ownership and threats to exclude or demands to capitulate…Claiming ownership of the word gaymer is like claiming to own ‘soccer mom,’ ‘baby boomer,’ or ‘computer geek’.
And so, on behalf of the reddit gaymer community, we have engaged the law firm of Perkins Coie to pursue this matter on our behalf and they are representing us pro bono. Yesterday afternoon we filed a petition with the Trademark Office to cancel the “Gaymer” trademark registration.
“This registration should never have been granted,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry in a statement. “Gaymer is a common term that refers to members of this vibrant gaming community, and we are happy to help them fight back and make sure the term goes back to the public domain where it belongs.”
If the reddit gaymers and gaymer.org can’t settle their dispute through the proper legal channels, may we suggest taking their battle where it truly belongs — the virtual realm — with a high-stakes, winner-take-all digital blood bath on that pay-for-gay Star Wars planet, Makeb?
How about we take this to the next level?
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2eo
Just keep using it and ensure the information is routed through the Cayman Island DNS I and some friends offered, he can do fuckall about it.
hamoboy
I just lawled when I realized his name was “Vizzini” and ozuri used that Inigo Montoya line on him! Just GENIUS! 🙂 🙂
Daveliam
I see that even after being corrected last week by about a half dozen people, queerty continues to run the false story that there is a ‘gay for pay’ planet in the Old Republic. This kind of blatant disregard of the truth makes me question the validity of all of the stories on the site. Seriously, it takes 5 minutes to fact check this thoroughly…..
2eo
@Daveliam: Lets be fair, the reporters on this site don’t have actual journalistic jobs else they wouldn’t be here.
I don’t expect fact checking, Lester has it in for games and gamers so just keep having a go at him in the comments as it’s moderately funny.
boring
Can we get the copyright stricken off the record on the terms that it’s a shitty, embarrassing word?
Aaron
@Daveliam: Can you visit this planet on a free account? Can you experience same sex romance in any of the F2P content of the game? Just asking.
2eo
@Aaron: It’s in an expansion pack, it will eventually be released into the f2p content of the game, but not for a good six months.
It’s cost over $20 million to build the expansion thus far and it isn’t finished yet, the fact some people still won’t listen to what has been said here over each article clear as day is moderately irksome.
Integrating the new content into an MMO is ridiculously difficult, the gay friendly content was missing on release but it is being put in, and just over a year into an MMO for an expansion is really solid work.
It’s the voice acting that costs so much.
Ergo it only counts as “pay for gay” if you choose to pay for the expansion. But I don’t expect Lester to acknowledge this really simple and correct reasoning, I don’t think he’s smart enough to get it.