Best Buy Cease And Desists Blogger For Reporting Someone Else's Parody

By consumerist.com December 12, 2007

Ok, so there’s these guys called Improv Everywhere and they like to do mass coordinated pranks inside stores. They did one where they sent a whole bunch of people in blue polo shirts and khakis to go to Best Buy and stand around. Genius. Anyway, they made some Tshirts that parody the Best Buy logo. Unfortunately, they’re selling them, so they’re infringing on Best Buy’s intellectual copyright. They get a cease and desist letter. Fair enough. Where it gets freaky is that Laughing Squid blogged about their Tshirts, and Laughing Squid got a cease and desist letter too. Bwuh? Best Buy PR said the problem was that Laughing Squid wasn’t “reporting” but was “promoting.” Ok… So bloggers aren’t journalists now, we’re promoters? Duly noted. We’ll get right on ordering kilos of coke and cutting up our enemies and dumping them in the East River.

Best Buy Cease & Desist Letter [Laughing Squid via BingBoing]

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Comments

  1. rjhiggins says:
    December 12, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    Quoting Wikipedia on the subject of bloggers vs. journalists is like quoting Rudy Giuliani on the subject of marital fidelity.

  2. spinachdip says:
    December 12, 2007 at 11:24 pm

    @Beerad: You’re right about trademark infringement – you don’t have to profit to infringe. Though the parody aspect should make trademark issues a moot point.

    As for promoting vs reporting, I’m not sure there’s any real distinction when there’s no crime involved. And it’s not atypical for “buyer’s guide”-style articles in mainstream media to link to online shops (not sure about the policy about NYT, I haven’t read the Style section in a while).

    But again, since Scott Beale/Laughing Squid is still a third party, perhaps not an impartial one, but a third party nonetheless. The blog isn’t producing or distributing the not-really-trademark infringing products.

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