"CCTV-1" Can Absolutely Be a Condom Brand!

2006/8/1 13:04:15

Recently, someone is registering the condom trademark "Central One" [中央一套, a pun — "CCTV Channel One" and literally "Central First Sheath/Condom"]. This has sparked debate. But what's more worthy of debate is not whether "Central One" can be a condom trademark — because "Central One" absolutely can be a condom trademark! As long as there's no legal issue, this possibility is an inevitability. What's more worthy of debate is: why is this debate still being debated?

Obviously, if "Central One" didn't carry another special meaning and occupy a special position, this debate would never have arisen. Similarly controversial was "Er Ren Zhuan" [a folk art form, also a pun on "two-person rotation"] being registered as a condom trademark. Of course, since that only involved a regional matter, it didn't attract attention from people in other regions. But "Central One," due to CCTV's nationwide influence, naturally provokes corresponding debate.

Yet this matter, which is purely a legal question, why must it be debated? Logically there are two possibilities: first, our laws have too many loopholes, and public confidence in the law is so low that matters that should be resolved by legal adjudication are felt to require moral debate for a just outcome; second, our laws are fine, but we are accustomed to moral judgment, so moral debate perpetually attempts to interfere with legal judgment.

The widely debated legal issues of the present day generally fall into these two categories, and both exist simultaneously. Given that China never had much of a tradition of rule of law to begin with, these two situations form a deadlock: legal inadequacy makes moral debate seem more justified, which then further undermines legal efficacy; conversely, the tradition of moral debate creates more legal loopholes (in both formulation and enforcement), which in turn reinforces the power of moral debate.

Moral debate can be fabricated, while law cannot — yet these two forces exist and intertwine in reality, and the implications are worth deep reflection. Of course, this is simply the current reality. Online linguistic violence makes this vicious circle even harder to escape. Where it all goes from here — even Martians don't know!