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Barney vs. Right to Satire
blkros writes "Looks like Barney isn't so lovable after all, or at least his lawyers aren't, as this article at Wired shows. They are starting to bring action against web sites that disparage the "lovable", purple dinosaur." The specific case they talk about is a page listing a hundred ways to kill a purple dinosaur, which strikes me as pretty fair satire (and a justifiable cause).
After the recent distribution conflict, the battle of the languages, and the horrific Great Editor War, something comes along to completely unite all Slashdotters in mutual hatred against a single menace...
Don't tell us, tell Lyons. Write them a letter and tell them why.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It seems that they went for higher profile sites first, particularily the ones that criticized the educational content of the show. I just decided to take the site down and not try to bother fighting it as I'm in Canada and don't have the time or the resources to fight this.
You can view the whole letter here. Maybe if enough people protest, I'll put the site back up somewhere else. However, if you look through Yahoo's Barney section here, you'll see plenty of infringement on the fan pages. The fan pages are much more blantantly infringing than any of the stuff I put up. Don't they have to threaten everybody that infringes, or else it won't hold up in court?
Yahoo has delisted many of the now removed sites under the "Anti-Barney" category. At one time there were close to 20 of them.
> Somebody tell me where I can donate to the cause.
Three letters:
EFF
(My monthly charitable donation goes to them, and they get everything in my will. Kids want money? They'll have to work for it just like I did. *That* is capitalism.)
Reality has a liberal bias
I read this a couple of days ago on OverLawyered; they focussed more on Cybercheeze's reply. This is how we should all react to spurious lawsuits.
Lawyers are actually a minority in Congress; there are more businessmen there now than lawyers.
Not only that, the government is made up of the people--and it's not true that 90% of the people are lawyers.
If the American public really wanted that sort of legal reform, rest assured, the American public would get it. When the American public wakes up from its slumber and tells the politicians, very clearly, what they're going to do or else, politicians scurry to obey the great Leviathan that's the body politic.
Unfortunately, 90% of Americans can't be bothered to give a damn about anything in law or government.
That's where the real tragedy is.
I sue you, you sue me,
You can't afford our lawyers' fee,
With a nasty letter from Dewey, Cheatem, Howe,
Up your ass our landsharks plow!
(Gotta problem with that, you big fat purple fuck? Bring it on, motherfucker, bring it on...)
Barney Doom was one of the original reasons I got into FPSs in the first place! How sad.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I love you,
You love me,
Let's recite from OT III
Uh, oh! There's a nasty cluster of Body Thetans on you, Barney!
Let's kill them with a Tom Cruise Missile!
Holy Xenu! You killed Barney! YOU BASTARDS!
Aw, too bad. Anyway, here's the Teletubbies to sing you the DeCSS source code song. Let's
all sing along!
k., before coffee.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
What's really sad about this is that in 95% of cases, they'll be going after people who haven't the resources to fight this. Satire is protected speech, but only when people want to protect it. Most ISP's will roll over and take it when they get a nastygram, rather than keep the site up while their customer fights it.
It will be interesting to see the first site that moves to rotten.com. My guess is they'll let it stand, knowing they haven't the legal stump of a leg to stand upon to take it any further than nastygrams.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
...if he was killed, scientists might be forced to re-engineer him in a laboratory using his genetic material, filling in missing gene sequences with that of a nearby relative (perhaps H.R. Puf-N-Stuf?).
In short, there's a palpable risk that he could could be re-engineered into a species infinitely more corny and terrifying than we could possibly imagine.
(p.s. - if any of you Internet comedians steal my idea about making a Jurassic Park parody with scientists building a theme park populated with genetically-engineeried enhancements of Barney, H.R. Puf-N-Stuf, the Banana Splits, or whatever... I'll sue for infringement.... In the spirit of this news thread...)
(well, maybe not. but could you at least throw CATS into the mix somehow?)
Dungeons and Barneys
Barney by AD&D Rules
Barney
Climate/Terrain: Nine Hells, Gehenna, Hades, The Abyss, PBS
Frequency: Very rare or daily at 4 pm
Organization: Solitary
Activity Cycle: Day
Diet: Little children's minds
Intelligence: Insipid (-12)
Treasure: Merchandising contracts
Alignment: Purple evil
No. appearing: 1 (may be attended by 1-100 Barney zombies, see below)
Armor class: 10 (big and plush)
Movement: 3
Hit dice: 8
THAC0: 12
No. of attacks: 2
Damage/attack: 1-10 (x2)
Special attacks: Hug (damage 3-30)
Special defenses: Aura of intolerable idiocy
Magic resistance: 90%
Size: L (8' tall)
Morale: Stupid (30)
XP value: 4,000
Barney is a demon from the lower planes, a great purple and plush deformed dinosaur. It is the enemy of intelligent lifeforms, eternally seeking out small children and feeding on their natural intelligence and curiousity.
Combat: Barney will normally attack with it's two great paws, each inflicting 1-20 points of damage. If a victim is struck with either paw and fails a saving throw versus paralyzation, they are dragged to Barney and may be hugged next round. A hug inflicts 3-30 points of damage each round until the victim or Barney is killed.
Barney may also utter a 'Power word "I love you"' once every three rounds. Any adults hearing the power word must save versus spells or flee in terror for 1-6 rounds. Any child hearing the power word must save versus spells or be controlled by Barney. He or she will thereafter follow Barney's commands with a delightful smile, and is subject to continued brainwashing. Each day that a child is in Barney's control they may be taught another lesson by Barney, decreasing their intelligence and wisdom by 1. When either stat reaches zero, the child becomes a mindless Barney zombie! Barney zombies follow his commands with love and a delightful smile, and eagerly spend gold coins on Barney merchandise.
Barney is constantly surrounded by an aura of intolerable idiocy. Any individual within 20' must save versus spells once per round or lose 1 point of intelligence. When intelligence reaches zero, the victim falls to the ground in a quivering, gibbering wreck. Intelligence may be regained at the rate of 1 point per day afterwards. In addition, the aura tends to make spells go awry, tactics to fail, and mundane items to become intelligent with their own insipid personalities.
Habitat/Society: Barney resides in a great temple and television studio on the lowest plane of the Abyss, with areas extending into every lower plane and prime material plane via transdimensional gates. He is constantly surrounded there by 1-100 Barney zombies clutching plush dolls and lollipops, which they may use as +2 maces in combat.
-From CyberLost, via AOL; original Bitnet post by Hellraiser
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You'll get it if you diss Barney!
Hey kids! Our word of the days is "Lawsuit!" Later on in the show you'll watch me use some lawyers to stick my giant purple dick in some people in court! Won't that be special? Everyone's doing it! Got a problem with a bully on school grounds? Get a lawyer! Did your sister take that 5 cents you had in your piggy bank? Get a lawyer! Someone call you some names? Get a lawyer! It doesn't matter if you win or lose if you're a giant corporate dinosaur! You can bankrupt them with legal fees and the results are about the same!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, if you read this carefully it seems clear that this applies only if you are going to link using their logo.
This paragraph is the confusing part,
You are granted permission to link up CyberCheeze from your Web site, as long as you use only the Logos provided. All use of other graphical elements for linking to the CyberCheeze Web site without explicit prior permissions is illegal. By downloading the Logo, you fully agree to the Policies set herein.
The first sentence is very poorly written, but I interpret this to mean that if you want to link to this site using a graphic logo, you have to user their logo and you have to abide by the policies set down here. This says nothing about text links.
Mr Cranky. Another film review site.
Funny, bitchy, and beating on Barney.
judge: clerk?
clerk: yes judge?
judge: do we still have that first amendment
thingy hanging around?
clerk: we do.
judge: case dismissed.
BTW, the above is sarcasm. However, I could quite easily forsee that at least part of the argument made by the lawyers on behalf of the trademark owners would be that kids looking for Barney stuff on the web could possibly come across disictions of violence against Barney, Barney and Friend in adult situations, etc.
Unfortunatly, if you get a jury pool full of soccer moms, this may easily work. There are many who do want to sanitize every corner of the world so they don't have to do any actual parenting, because otherwise they wouldn't have time for Amway and Starbucks Coffee between running their kids to soccer practice and holding Tupperware parties. After all, it takes a village, and we're all part of that village whether we want to be or not. :-(
--
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Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
He didn't say he wanted Barney to be dead, he merely expressed that if Barney were reach the state of death the site in question explains how to achieve that he would love the strangely toned dinosaur. Legally, a world of difference, I'm sure you'll agree.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
modern propaganda no longer is concerned with lying to all the people all of the time. modern propaganda has no need to convince all of the people that A is also not-A. modern propaganda does not even need to lie, explicitly. modern propaganda consists of portraying information in so many different ways that one group of people think A is A, one group thinks A is not-A, another group thinks A could be either, and another thinks that A is just another government fabrication anyway so why bother...
the american public in the late eighteenth century did not awaken in righteous anger and throw off the oppressive chains of the United Kingdom. there was no spontaneous consciousness-raising en masse. rather, the intellectuals of the time -- businessmen, public servants, lawyers -- published many persuasive texts over a period of time that provided an ideological foundation upon which vast amounts of human resources could be laid, body stacked upon body, to forcefully settle the argument.
the People, as conceived by dreamy-eyed libertymongers, simply does not exist. the People is a convenient fiction called into being at various times in history to suit the whims of intellectuals [who worship ideas above the People], revolutionaries [who worship violence above the People], and large-scale social forces [which serve the interests of nobody and nothing save survival probabilities]. the People is variously hardworking, honest, stupid, delusional, downtrodden, longsuffering, lazy, avaricious, hopeless, helpless, heartless, and directionless. the People is a blind golem. it knows neither what it wants nor how best to obtain the few things it can coherently conceive. numberless infinities of cells flake off your body and die every day as part of natural functioning. oppression, genocide, deception -- these are operational processes of the Body Politic which you idolize so zealously.
there will be no Great Awakening of the American Public.
---
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
http://www.cybercheeze.com/info/logolink.html
It seems you can't link to them without using their logo. Does that make the above link illegal? I guess so. So while I liked the intent of Cybercheeze's reply, they're also pulling some lawyer crap of their own. Am I wrong? Is it illegal now to link to a site without permission?
Seriously, what's happening to our civilization when everything needs to be so regulated?
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
Why haven't sesame street sued over Bert Is Evil? Maybe they are too busy laughing at it....
"A site with 100 ways to kill a purple dinosaur's lawyers?"
;)
That's a HELLUVA idea! I think I'll start such a list up on my personal home page tonight.
One thing's for sure, there IS no bad way to off a lawyer
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Quite frankly, if such a case could be won, it would set a dangerous precedent. Imagine if you couldn't participate in M$ bashing on your website. Or for that matter, imagine if you couldn't participate in Linux-bashing. No trolling intended. Just two examples I thought would appeal to slashdot readers. But seriously: Some time ago, companies were given the right to advertise on TV that "their product was better than {insert specific brand name}." Would winning such a court case undo all of that?
I would think their case would hold water if we were talking about slandering a real person. But this is a "fictional" character on a TV program, and one that seems to almost invite animosity (for some inexplicable reason). What makes them think that we should give up our rights to free speech?
Somebody tell me where I can donate to the cause.
GreyPoopon
--
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Is the logical implication of this that Lyons Partnership are prepared to give those who ask permission to brutally savage Barney?
http://www.themeparks.ie