[CTcard]

... My fear is that this ruling will put us on a slippery slope that may lead a banning of such terms as "nerd".  When the government starts deciding which words society cannot use, we have lost at least a part of our First Amendment rights. 

My better nature tells me to stay out of this, but you have hit upon one of my own, perhaps ridiculous, pet peeves. 

The following is a complaint about types of argument - not a comment upon the wisdom of banning "Redskins" as a trademark.


I usually hate the slippery slope argument. A good fraction of the role of government, the judiciary in particular, is explicitly about drawing lines and defining how far we go on any slope. Very few issues are so black and white that the proper course of action is all in or all out. That is the primary reason that ad absurdum arguments are absurd(um). 

[Let me digress to note that the use of the formal logical construct reductio ad absurdum is perfectly fine, but rather I object to the more colloquial use of the term as extending an original proposition to ridiculous extremes.]

I think it is also usually a red herring. In this case, you state that the current action by the patent office leads you to fear the banning of the word "nerd". Somehow I don't think you really feel that there is a danger that the word "nerd" will be banned by the government. It would appear that you don't like the actual action that occurred, so argue that on its own merits.


Your last sentence brings in a related logical failing; over-broadening of the issue at hand.
"When the government starts deciding which words society cannot use, we have lost at least a part of our First Amendment rights."

In this case the government is deciding which terms can be used as a trademark - not which terms can be used in speech (i.e. First Amendment). Those are different things and the government has done the former as long as there have been trademarks - with a particular emphasis on not allowing trademarks that mislead consumers. Few people object to that aspect of deciding which words can be used as trademarks, at least as a concept. More people object to the part of the same law that refers to immoral or disparaging trademarks, and the present case may be an over-reach by the government in trying to ensure morality and civility. But that is the objection - not that in concept trademarks cannot be regulated for content.

More broadly, the only case I can think of where the US government bans individual words in a first amendment sense is that there are indecency laws with respect to print and broadcast media. For the most part the direction our government has been moving is to remove these restrictions - for example I think that both the George Carlin comedy bit on the seven words you cannot say on television, and the follow-up Supreme Court ruling on WBAI's broadcast of the bit, are both now effectively defunct; at least based upon what I see on TV. 
Are there other cases?

EDIT: I see after writing this there have been a few similar comments. I agree with Oman that equating regulating toxic waste dumping with regulating words is bad logic and it appears I agree with stupac that the term "slippery slope" is in general a poor argument - in particular if the mechanism of going from A (the actual issue under consideration) to B (the bad outcome) is not clear and inevitable [though I dislike the all caps approach].

[CTcard]

... My fear is that this ruling will put us on a slippery slope that may lead a banning of such terms as "nerd".  When the government starts deciding which words society cannot use, we have lost at least a part of our First Amendment rights. 

My better nature tells me to stay out of this, but you have hit upon one of my own, perhaps ridiculous, pet peeves. 

The following is a complaint about types of argument - not a comment upon the wisdom of banning "Redskins" as a trademark.


I usually hate the slippery slope argument. A good fraction of the role of government, the judiciary in particular, is explicitly about drawing lines and defining how far we go on any slope. Very few issues are so black and white that the proper course of action is all in or all out. That is the primary reason that ad absurdum arguments are absurd(um). 

[Let me digress to note that the use of the formal logical construct reductio ad absurdum is perfectly fine, but rather I object to the more colloquial use of the term as extending an original proposition to ridiculous extremes.]

I think it is also usually a red herring. In this case, you state that the current action by the patent office leads you to fear the banning of the word "nerd". Somehow I don't think you really feel that there is a danger that the word "nerd" will be banned by the government. It would appear that you don't like the actual action that occurred, so argue that on its own merits.


Your last sentence brings in a related logical failing; over-broadening of the issue at hand.
"When the government starts deciding which words society cannot use, we have lost at least a part of our First Amendment rights."

In this case the government is deciding which terms can be used as a trademark - not which terms can be used in speech (i.e. First Amendment). Those are different things and the government has done the former as long as there have been trademarks - with a particular emphasis on not allowing trademarks that mislead consumers. Few people object to that aspect of deciding which words can be used as trademarks, at least as a concept. More people object to the part of the same law that refers to immoral or disparaging trademarks, and the present case may be an over-reach by the government in trying to ensure morality and civility. But that is the objection - not that in concept trademarks cannot be regulated for content.

More broadly, the only case I can think of where the US government bans individual words in a first amendment sense is that there are indecency laws with respect to print and broadcast media. For the most part the direction our government has been moving is to remove these restrictions - for example I think that both the George Carlin comedy bit on the seven words you cannot say on television, and the follow-up Supreme Court ruling on WBAI's broadcast of the bit, are both now effectively defunct; at least based upon what I see on TV. 
Are there other cases?

EDIT: I see after writing this there have been a few similar comments. I agree with Oman that equating regulating toxic waste dumping with regulating words is bad logic and it appears I agree with stupac that the term "slippery slope" is in general a poor argument - in particular if the mechanism of going from A (the actual issue under consideration) to B (the bad outcome) is not clear and inevitable [though I dislike the all caps approach].