FC: Humorless Mastercard lawyers threaten rec.humor.funny newsgroup

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

[This isn't the first time rec.humor.funny has run afoul of the censorhappy 
and humor-impaired. See my note at the end. Partial (long) list of 
Mastercard trademarks: http://www.mastercard.com/legal.html --Declan]

*********

Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:22:19 -0600 (MDT)
From: David Butterfield <David.Butterfield@Sun.COM>
Subject: Mastercard vs. RHF
To: declan@well.com

 >From bt@templetons.com (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Subject: Mastercard threatens rec.humor.funny over satire
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 19:30:00 PDT


Two years ago, rec.humor.funny published a sick satire of the Mastercard
"Priceless" ads (There are some things money can't buy, for everything
else there's Mastercard) based around the Columbine tragedy.  I won't repeat
it here, since it was pretty sick and offensive, though you can find it
on the web site at:

	http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Apr/columbine.html

Today we received a "cease and desist" letter from Mastercard's lawyers
demanding that the parody be removed from our web site, falsely claiming
it violates their trademarks and copyrights, in spite of the well
established rules protecting satire and parody from such attacks.

The letter can be found at

	http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/price.html

Here, however, is my response...

--------------------------------------------

	Web site hosting for anybody:		$10/month and up

	Threatening letters to people who satirize you, hoping
	they won't know the law:		$500

	Reputation as giant corporation required to intimidate
	small publishers:			$billions

	Supreme court decisions protecting parody and
	satire from accusations of copyright and
	trademark infringement...  		Priceless


	There are some rights money can't buy.  For everything
	else, there's Mastercard's lawyers.

-- 
Selected by Jim Griffith.  MAIL your joke to funny@netfunny.com.

Join and contribute to the Electronic Frontier Foundation today.

This joke's link: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.html

**********

Excerpt from:
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/eff/pub/Censorship/Academic_edu/CAF/batch/apr_18_1993.txt

  For example, in 1988 this joke was published:

     A Jew and a Scotsman have dinner.  At the end of the dinner the
     Scotsman is heard to say, 'I'll pay.' The newspaper headline next
     morning says, 'Jewish ventriloquist found dead in alley.'

In response to this joke, MIT student Jonathan Richmond challenged
rec.humor.funny. His challenge led to newspaper articles in Waterloo,
Ontario and a ban of rec.humor.funny at the University of Waterloo.
News of the incident reached Stanford University and, about two months
later, Vice-President for Information Resources Robert Street banned
the newsgroup (with approval of President Donald Kennedy.)




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact.
To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------