Send LAWYERS, GUNS, from HERSHEY - The Chocolate's Hit the Fan

One of the stupidest examples of legal bullying has just hit Americans in the mouth.

There's a reason the anus is called the "Hershey Highway." That company's assholes have just dumped their shit on Cadbury, and on anyone who distributes Cadbury products!

This is the "real world." On the Internet, you can abuse copyright all you want, and people shrug. "Oh, what harm does it do if we steal every Beach Boys album. They're rich. Oh, what harm does it do if we steal every indie artist's music, or every struggling author's books. The people who grab it off the torrents wouldn't have bought it anyway."

By that logic, the people who go to specialty shops and British import stores to buy a fucking Yorkie bar...wouldn't have bought it anyway? Would prefer a stinking Hershey bar instead?

What level of insanity have we reached when LAWYERS can actually put up a case that a round York Peppermint Patty made out of toothpaste-like mint, can be confused with a Yorkie bar? WHERE is the competition?

The New York Times, which does care about all things British, and twee little shops that sell British goods, reported this story. (Had it been about blogger assholes stealing music and constantly re-upping and getting dozens of new blogs through Google...no.)

What kind of MORONS does Hershey think can't tell the difference between a TOFFEE bar, and their PEANUT BUTTER cups? The packaging is that similar? No, it's not.

All we have here, is good old fashioned American bullying. Hershey is bigger than Cadbury and Nestle, and they want a bigger piece of the candy bar market.

You can bet that the Internet won't help. The biggest importers for individual sales, who already charge a fortune in postage, will automatically block Americans from ordering. Americans are aleady blocked from ordering a music download off Amazon UK, for example, and eBay forbids their "everything else; adults only" auctions from showing up on Ebay UK and other version of eBay around the world. So it will be up to a few renegades to tell Hershey, "go ahead, SUE ME," over a box of dollar Yorkie bars. It will be up to a few sneaky eBay sellers and obscure shops to somehow get a British friend to ship a box overseas in a plain box marked "Tampons" or something.

I can understand a concern if we're talking about a product made in two different countries that happens to be the same, like the British and American pressing of a Beatles CD. But is either country SO fantastic or so poor, that they'd care if a small group of people preferred the import?

Meanwhile, America has allowed Detroit (Ford, Chevy, etc.) to go into ruin while allowing the import of Toyotas.