Originally published at: Maine confiscates a vegan family's "obscene" vanity license plate | Boing Boing
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Peter Starostecki, whose family – including children – are vegans
Wish I could somehow bet cash money that this thread will turn into a concern fest for those poor, supposedly malnourished and endangered children.
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My first thought was that it wasn’t read as Love Tofu, but instead was read as Love To F U.
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Nah, everyone knows Buck loves tofu.
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I LUVTOFU2!
What I do is freeze, thaw, cube, convection “fry” on an iron skillet in the oven and then add to the wok
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No room on the plate for LUV TOFU?
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I think that they are missing an opportunity. If vanity plates are available to make the state extra money, charge a lot more for suggestive plates. A lot more.
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That was exactly the problem, of course, and it said as much in the article. Still seems rather unfortunately humourless on the part of the DMV, but oh well. I hope their replacement license plates offer them an opportunity for a new start…
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Reminds me of the proud mother of several NC State students, with the license plate.
NCSTMOM
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There’s only room for 7 total characters. LV_TOFU would work. But the state will probably continue to insist TOFU is really code for “to fuck you” and decline those.
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But the state will probably continue to insist TOFU is really code for “to fuck you” and decline those.
Yeah. Tofu just can’t catch a break!
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That took me a few extra moments, but I’ll take a it as a sign of an unsullied mind.
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California, at least, won’t let you have “69” on your personalized plate unless it’s a 1969 car.
There was this classic of the genre.
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Tricky thing English words, had a medical care worker neighbor with the vanity plate THERAPIST and damned if she didn’t get a few complaints from occasional wanderer by. (She learned to quip back that it would never occur to her to use the definite article)
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Wouldn’t TOFULUV work just as well?
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A quick look at my local rules revealed some (mildly) interesting stuff:
Unacceptable character combinations
- Less than two or more than six characters, such as “A", “JASMINE", “NICHOLAS"
- Characters in combinations that could cause misidentification, such as “i” being possibly misidentified as “1”, or 0 = O, 8 = B, 5 = S, 2 = Z
- Characters in a combination that would resemble an existing plate that would create identification issues. For example, if “TIGERS" is already issued, “TIGER5" would be denied because the “S” and “5” could be easily misidentified.
- Symbols other than hyphens. For example, “@“, “?”, “/“, “&”, “.“, “+”, etc.
- Slogans that contain only numbers, such as “962 221”, “1426” or “645-354”.
- Any character combinations that conflict with formatted sequences of characters currently in use or that ICBC plans to use, such as “ABC-123", “123-ABC", “1204-FT", “GT-1234"
- Any single letter as a suffix, preceded by more than three numbers, such as “4352 A", “54635-W"
- Any single letter as a prefix, followed by more than three numbers, such as “A-4321", “B-56543"
- The prefixes “CL", “VA", “VE", “GR", “MC", “MB", “MD", “PG", and “BC" followed by any numbers
Slogans may be deemed objectionable under the following criteria:
- Human rights discrimination: slogans which express or imply disrespect of race, religion, place of origin, ancestry, colour, gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, or political belief.
- Sexually suggestive: inappropriate connotations.
- Abusive, obscene, or derogatory language: offensive slang in any language.
- Driving risks: references to speed, speeding, other risky driving behaviour or anything contrary to road safety.
- Drugs/alcohol related: terms describing alcohol or other legal or illegal drugs, including brand names and slang; reference to the use sale, effects, and/or consumption of drugs, alcohol, controlled substances, or paraphernalia used in the consumption thereof.
- Violence/criminal activity/bullying: words associated with weapons or threats; connotations about violence, illegal activity or bullying.
- Intellectual property (such as trademarks): infringement of intellectual property rights such as trademarks, except if the applicant provides written approval of the trademark owner.
- Religion, politics, public figures, dignitaries and law enforcement official: religious, political, law enforcement connotations or falsely suggesting association with an institution such as law enforcement, a church, or government.
References to non-profit advocacy, trade or similar entities may be acceptable, subject to all of the criteria above
Recalls
If ICBC receives a complaint about a slogan or a plate that has been issued and it is later determined to be obscene or objectionable, in the opinion of ICBC, the plate may be recalled. Note that licence plates are the property of ICBC.
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