EDITORIAL: COPYRIGHT LAWYERS BULLYING THE UNCOVEROR
On December 3, 2004 Uncoveror.com received a threatening letter from GAF
Counsel, claiming to represent Lyons Partnership, L.P. ("Lyons Partnership"),
The people behind a certain purple dinosaur character. They demanded that
we stop using the image of this character, and apparently the name as well.
In this era of the DMCA, The Patriot Act, and so many other restrictions on
free speech, I could not just ignore it. Although I suspect that court rulings
about parody being free speech, such as
Larry C. Flynt v. Jerry Falwell might protect my first amendment rights in
this case, as no reasonable person could mistake the story to be true, I do not have the resources to
fight these people. If I had the ability to fight a
SLAPP, I would. Copyright was meant to promote the progress of science and
the useful arts, not lock up ideas as property, which is really no different
than suppressing them. I wrote about these issues in previous editorials called
WHO IS THE PUBLIC DOMAIN? ALL OF US and
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN AND THE PUBLIC
DOMAIN.
I have altered the story in question. It is now
entitled AL QAEDA MESSAGE OF TERROR HIDDEN IN
CENSORED SHOW. The original may be
available on an internet archiving site. This is censorship, but what else can I
do?
I am contacting the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for advice, and may someday be able to restore the original version.
But for now, I am complying with their demands. It seems that the people behind
the purple dinosaur are not at all different from the ones who sue day care
centers over the use of a certain cartoon mouse.
Matthew Brown
Webmaster
of Uncoveror.com
P.S. The Uncoveror is not intended for children, but just in
case some youngsters are reading this, you have a right to know something:
There is no Barney. That's a guy in a suit.