Seriously, Rosemary?

At the start of 2010, a company that makes music software (Image-Line) announced a new product that they would soon be selling: Drumatrix. It combined a physically modeled drum set and an internal step sequencer. And you could name your own price. And they would donate some of the money to Haiti. How cool is that? Very.

It wasn't long, however, until they were sent notice that "drumatrix" was a term already in use by someone else; somebody named Rosemary Schonfeld, who has written a book on "a different approach to drumming" called Drumatrix. I should point out here that I don't know the exact order of events. It may be that Image-Line started work on their project, noticed the name after doing a search, sent an inquiry and then received a negative reply.

Regardless, what I first saw posted about the software (on KvR Audio) was a thread announcing the product, noting the name conflict, and asking for name suggestions. In this case, I actually understand the owner of the name wanting to hold on to it because drum software with the same name could be confused as having something to do with a drumming method. Regardless, I find name protection in general to be eye-rolling (likely because of Monster Cable, who seem to want to own anything that refers to monsters... which is hardly their original idea). I also don't tend to take things very seriously, so I made my own suggestion for a new name for the software: "Rosemary Schonfeld". I thought it was funny. A few other people thought it was funny, too.

Rosemary apparently didn't.

Or maybe it was my later comment, when it was noted that Image-Line was probably going with the name Drumaxx:

Boo! From this day forward I will only refer to it as "Rosemary Schonfeld, the Happiness Smashing Machine".

That was Feb 2nd. On June 15th*, I got a private message on the KvR Audio site from "rosemary", who may or may not be Rosemary Schonfeld:

You seem to have a problem with my name: Rosemary Schonfeld. Before you post comments like this perhaps you should do some research - I have been using the name 'Drumatrix' for twenty years! If you have some other problem, keep it to yourself.

I would have replied in the same private fashion, but she turned off reception of private messages. Oh well. I can't honestly say I want to get into a dialogue with her, anyways. All I know about her so far is that her website is awful, she's humourless, and she likes to tell people what to do. So I'm responding here. I'll take it line-by-line...

You seem to have a problem with my name: Rosemary Schonfeld.

Uh, no. You seem to have a problem with reading comprehension and/or a lack of a funny-bone. Certainly you should have been able to tell I was just kidding, even if you didn't find it funny. Any problem I might have had would have been with you, not your name. I have to be honest here: I think it's very funny to bow to someone's demands by making them less happy. That was the joke; your name's just a name.

Before you post comments like this perhaps you should do some research - I have been using the name 'Drumatrix' for twenty years!

Even if you had only used it for 20 days, you still would have had the rights to it, I think. I'm not a legal expert. I also don't care. If I seriously had a problem with you upholding your legal rights, do you think I would have also suggested "the Big Drump" along with your name? By the way, are the first two sentences supposed to be connected? Would knowing your longtime use of 'Drumatrix' stop me from making fun of your name, if what I wanted to do was make fun of your name?

If you have some other problem, keep it to yourself.

This is the line that completely mystifies me. What kind of person thinks they have the authority to say something like that? It's just so casually arrogant. I'll do as I please, thank you very much.

Speaking of which...

* That's five months later! Also, June 15th is the same day that "rosemary" signed up at that website. Not only that, but she made no comments in the forum. So it looks like she signed up only to gripe at me!