First, let me say I support breast feeding. I believe my child is healthier because of it, and I hate the pressure we feel when the baby needs to eat and we are anywhere but home.

That said, just because someone makes a profit with a focus on a good cause does not give them a right to infringe trademarks or co-op someone else’s ad budget as their own. (10% of the proceeds going to a milk bank along with an occasional fundraiser DOES still make this “for profit” – in fact, I’d be willing to bet the site does more profit with being able to say it supports the milk bank than it would otherwise)

If the pork producers had not spent millions of dollars promoting the “other white meat” campaign, then the lactivist would most certainly not be using the saying “the other white milk”. Inherently, without the widespread nature of the pork campaign, a t-shirt with “the other white milk” printed on the front would be stupid and meaningless and therefore zero shirts would sell and yield zero profit.

Here is the thing. Trademark enforcement is a tough business and the reality is, our American court systems do not allow companies to be picky and choosy where they decide to protect their intellectual property. If the pork guys allow this infringement to go unnoticed, what happens when the next infringer comes along and sells a million t-shirts…their case to stop that infringer would be weakened if they allowed the lactivist to continue.

It is completely obvious that the commercial benefit from these t-shirts is as a result of an infringement (see above – without the pork campaign I think a reasonable person would agree – no shirts sell)…so if you assume there is an infringement, why would the online marketing community support this?

I understand that the woman behind the lactivist is a fellow marketer…and I understand a lot of people may know her and like her, but does that make her actions right?

Would it be ok if I copied some of your websites???..just borrowed some copyrighted material…maybe modify it just a tick….don’t worry, I’ll only make a little money from it. Or how about if adware just takes a little of the traffic you earned and stole some commissions here and there…not a big adware program like WhenU..just a very small one….and what if they donate 10% of the profit to the United Way? will that be ok?

I know there will be people up in arms over my post…I know examples will be given as to how stealing material from your website or allowing spyware are different…and I fully acknowledge that. What I’m trying to do here is illustrate two simple points.

Point 1 – no matter how much we support breast feeding or the lactivist blog – the shirts do infringe because without the pork campaign they are worthless (they do not meet legal definition for acceptable parody under free speech either – but that is too much to get into here).

Point 2 – Once you acknowledge point 1, the only morally and ethically correct answer is to stop infringing. Infringing “just a little bit” is no more right that stealing “just a little bit”.

I am saddened that our community has rushed to support someone in doing something that is legally and ethically wrong. I think it devalues our common voice and when we need to stand up as an industry, things like this can make our voices less noticeable and lower our overall credibility.

Again, I know this ain’t the prevailing view…but I felt obligated to post and point out what I believe is a mistake.

I wish you all the best.