What do you do if you need furniture but are living on a limited income? If you’re one Jose Avila, you direct your web browser to Fedex.com and order a bunch of boxes. Cuz, apparently, Fedex boxes can be used to make quite sturdy furniture — from couches to beds to chairs to desks. To help spread the word that “it’s OK to be ghetto,” Jose setup the website FedexFurniture.com to share pictures and provide details for construction materials.

Enter Fedex and its lawyers with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in tow.

Head on over to Wired to get the full scoop and to read the exchange between the Fedex legal team and the lawyers from the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, who are representing Jose. After reading, let us know which is the crime: Jose’s ingenuity or Fedex’s attempt to crush it.

While I’m disappointed that Jose decided to use new Fedex boxes (I’m sure he could have been just as innovative finding used ones) I think his creativity is just another example of how we can reuse products that are often discarded.

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And I’m totally disappointed in Fedex. Their antics will only encourage the Freecycle media relations people.