Wednesday February 6, 2008
Who owns your name?
Maclean\’s magazine sent me a free copy. I was actually tempted to subscribe – especially at one-eighth the regular newsstand price.
Then I looked at the cover letter. It was addressed to “Jim & Taylor.”
Not “Jim Taylor.” Not “Jim & Joan Taylor.” But “Jim & Taylor.”
“Oh, that,” said Joan when I pointed out the mistake to her. “We get quite a few pieces of mail with that address. Someone\’s got us on a mailing list that they\’re selling around…”
Canada\’s privacy laws forbid the use of personal data without that person\’s explicit consent. All the charities Joan and I support, all the companies we have shares in, send us annual assurances that they retain our personal information only for their own internal operations, and that they do not release that information to any unrelated organizations.
But someone is making a profit out of selling my name – even if they get it wrong – to organizations like Maclean\’s.
If I could find out who\’s doing it, I could object. I could demand that they remove my name. I could report them to Canada\’s Privacy Commissioner. I could refuse to support any of the charities they service. I could sell my shares in protest…
But they didn\’t ask if they could take my name in vain. So there\’s no one to retaliate against.
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If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
The episode made me wonder who owns a name. Companies can trademark names like Coca Cola, Kleenex, and Aspirin. Individuals can\’t.
If someone else wants to call himself “Jim Taylor,” I can\’t stop him.
The letters that make up our names are in public domain. In our language, all names are permutations and combinations of just 26 letters. On our recent holiday, Joan Taylor met new friend Jann Taylor. Their names vary by just one letter.
Certainly, Joan and I don\’t own the street address to which Maclean\’s sent their promotion mailing. For the time being, we have exclusive use of that address. But when we die or move, the address will stay here; it will “belong” to someone new.
Do any of us truly “own” anything?
North American civilization takes private ownership as an unquestionable axiom. If you own land, for example, you can do almost anything you want on it – log it, bulldoze it, blast it, ignore it – as long as your activities are not specifically illegal.
We extend that notion to national sovereignty. How we treat native people, poor people, women, gays, convicts, is nobody\’s business but our own.
Although it\’s rarely stated explicitly, we also tend to treat the planet as the private property of humans, to do with as we wish.
But if I don\’t own my address – if I may not even have exclusive ownership of my own name – maybe the model is more like leasing than owning.
Perhaps, like leasing a car, we only have temporary rights to use certain names and spaces. Then we have to pass them on in good condition to the next user.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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