Absolutely... This was the nicest lawyer's letter that I have ever seen, making sure not to slight the recipient, explaining their reasoning in clear terms and trying to be fair all around. If I ever need their type of services, I'll be choosing MailChimp.

Arguing on HN is probably a moot point, but I'll try anyways. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware they could have gone about this in a much more aggressive way. But to go through their lawyers right away was a much more aggressive response than what I would have expected from MailChimp. I guess that's the totally correct legal response, but why not just send me a quick message?

Who would you expect to receive a message from? Presumably this happens more often than you think, and the company protocol is to get legal to deal with it. I think you've misinterpreted this as in any way "aggressive" - this is just a company trying to tie things up as efficiently as possible. Sure, you'd like an informal response, but when a company is operating at the scale of Mailchimp, that doesn't seem realistic.

I was also quite impressed by the tone of the message from Mailchimp legal - probably the clearest, most polite takedown request I've seen.

Once its come to their attention, no manager/director is going to go to one of their dev's or designers and say "Hey, go ask person x to take that down...".

If this situation escalated it could look sloppy on their part if they didn't handle it properly with the correct resources from the beginning.

There is no reason why this issue at hand can't be handled in a professional manner - in this case by an actual lawyer.

I've received a number of C&D and this to me is by far the most level-headed and polite that I've seen in a long time.

Just because you didn't expect a response form a lawyer doesn't mean its "aggressive" by default.

The letter you got is a friendly request ("quick message"), not a legal demand. Why does it matter who it came from?

You're right, with one clarification: Miss. isn't an abbreviation, it's the full word. Ms. is short for Miss but is used for professional communication nonetheless. [Source: I transcribed documents intended for lawyers]

Huh, I guess I never stopped to think what "Ms." is short for, and it very well could be "Miss". However, for those non-native English speakers on HN, it's pronounced differently: "Miss" is pronounced with an unvoiced "s" at the end, "Ms." is pronounced "Mizz".

Actually I take it back! Ms. isn't short for "Miss". Miss (no period) used to be the default title for a woman, but now it's Ms. (pronounced as you say), and like Mrs. & Miss, derives from Mistress.

Good reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss#Use_as_a_title_.28honorifi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.

The fact that we have to worry about womens' marital status when addressing them is sad.

I'm off topic here, but I think this is more an artifact than common place anymore, right? While Mrs and Miss still exist, I've never seen them anywhere aside from formal invitations. (except my third grade teacher who required 'Mrs.', but that was almost 20 years ago)

I hadn't seen "Miss" in a while, until I saw it in the OP. Very unprofessional, yes.

darkstar999, read Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in Language", his clever 30-y-o essay on sexism in writing.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html