This article has been indexed from Deeplinks
The House of Representatives has inserted SHOP SAFE—a piece of legislation that would make it extremely difficult for any individual to sell things online and equally difficult for any online platform to compete with Amazon—into a 3,000-page trade bill. It cannot remain there.
The “Stopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in E-Commerce” (SHOP SAFE) is a bill that claims to be about protecting consumers but is more likely to enrich big brands at consumers’ expense. SHOP SAFE would force pretty much any online service that allows people to buy and sell items to institute a draconian trademark protection system. If they don’t, they risk crushing liability for the actions of their users.
Tell Your Senators to Save Online Buying and Selling
Let’s say you want to sell something online. Some used baby clothes. Or let’s say you have a small side business selling baby clothes you make yourself online. In either case, you might list your items online, on a website like Craigslist or Etsy. Let’s say you describe what you are selling as “onesies.” Under SHOP SAFE, this will be a lot more difficult to pull off than you might expect.
Because, unbeknownst to you or to most people, Gerber has a trademark registration for the word “onesies.” Under SHOP SAFE, pretty much every website you might use to sell your used or homemade item will have to use an automated trademark filter that would prevent you from selling anything that had “onesies” as part of the description.
Furthermore, under SHOP SAFE, all of these websites would be required to have a three-strike system. So if you used “onesies” three times in one year, you would find your account terminated. And that would be that for your attempts to sell things online.
Even if the trademark filters don’t get you, SHOP SAFE will lead to plenty of other hoops for
[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.
Read the original article: SHOP SAFE Will Stomp Out Online Sales of Used and Homemade Goods