FedEx furniture

FedEx furniture is the artistic creation of computer programmer and creative consumer Jose Avila, III. In June, 2005, Avila created a website, Fedexfurniture.com, to display photographs of a couch, bed, dining room table, and desk that he had constructed out of cartons obtained from overnight shipping giant FedEx Corporation (FedEx). FedEx attorneys used the takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force Avila's ISP to take the site offline, accusing Avila of infringing on FedEx's copyrights and trademarks, breaching his contract with FedEx by using the cartons for purposes other than shipping, and potentially misleading consumers into believing that FedEx approved or endorsed Avila's actions. Among attorneys and activist organizations concerned with the exercise of First Amendment rights on the Internet, FedEx's actions raised questions about the constitutionality of using the DMCA to censor unwanted speech. The Fedexfurniture.com website is down as of July 8th, 2017.

In 2005, Avila moved to Tempe, Arizona with nothing more than clothes and work essentials. He was still stuck in a lease on his California apartment, and could barely afford his new apartment in Arizona.

After a bit of frustration over not having furniture, Avila remembered that a former roommate had solved a similar problem by constructing furniture using FedEx cartons. Using hundreds of FedEx boxes and materials that he "already had lying around" for shipping various items, Avila constructed every piece of furniture in his apartment. Avila's designs were sturdy and attractive. Friends urged Avila to put pictures of the furniture on a Web site. According to Avila, he did so in order to show that trying financial circumstances need not lead to despair; one can respond creatively, even artistically, by using "found" materials. The site's message was "It's OK to be ghetto".

The site subsequently attracted widespread attention, both from Web surfers and the press. Because the site was getting so much traffic, Avila placed a PayPal donation link on the page and asked for help to pay for the bandwidth charges. He also announced a plan to sell Fedexfurniture.com T-shirts, although Avila says that no T-shirts were ever sold.

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