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White House Cease & Desists to The Onion
raj2569 writes "You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion (soul sucking, life sapping, irritating, obnoxious, but still free registration), the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal." The only joke here is that our tax dollars are being spent on this.
Here
From the NPR report this morning, it seems to revolve around use of the seal of the president for commercial purposes. Pretty cut and dried. Everyone else from IBM to the Red Cross protects their identification. The question is: Is the Onion the only high profile entity to use the symbol? I don't know. Does Saturday Night Live use the exact symbol? Or do they change it slightly? Seems the Onion could do the same. Everybody goes away happy.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Something is sad, but I think it's around your comments assigning blame to the DMCA. Like it or hate it the Onion is potentially in violation of the law.
TITLE 18 PART I CHAPTER 33 713
(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(c) Whoever, except as directed by the United States Senate, or the Secretary of the Senate on its behalf, knowingly uses, manufactures, reproduces, sells or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seal of the United States Senate, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(d) Whoever, except as directed by the United States House of Representatives, or the Clerk of the House of Representatives on its behalf, knowingly uses, manufactures, reproduces, sells or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(e) Whoever, except as directed by the United States Congress, or the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives, acting jointly on its behalf, knowingly uses, manufactures, reproduces, sells or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seal of the United States Congress, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(f) A violation of the provisions of this section may be enjoined at the suit of the Attorney General,
(1) in the case of the great seal of the United States and the seals of the President and Vice President, upon complaint by any authorized representative of any department or agency of the United States;
(2) in the case of the seal of the United States Senate, upon complaint by the Secretary of the Senate;
(3) in the case of the seal of the United States House of Representatives, upon complaint by the Clerk of the House of Representatives; and
(4) in the case of the seal of the United States Congress, upon complaint by the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives, acting jointly.
The Onion advertises and sells goods through its website and hardcopy version, which is indeed "commercial."
Moreover, if the US Code states that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement," then that pretty much paves the way for the White House to decide where the seal can be used.
Looks like the Onion is out of luck. (And out of humor too, starting about a year and a half ago, IMHO.)
1) To the original poster - are you incapable of writing your own summary? Nice cut
and paste
2) The Onion may be free, but it *is* commericial - it has a lead in ad as well
as ads on its pages.
3) The government does this all the time.. they are just glacially slow in doing anything about it.
You actually bought into the notion of IP.
Let me help you.
If you're writing satire, you can use this kind of stuff. And particularly political satire is given wide latitude. So if I were the Onion, I would relish a court fight here. It would give them even more notority, and they would win.
This proves to me that the White House is actually manned by monkeys. No the smart ones, either.
The Seal of the President, Senate, Vice-President,etc are NOT the property of the people of the USA they are the property of the government of the USA and there is a major difference between thoses two.
As for the mis-use of it congress put it rather high, 6 months jail time.
Over all not that much of a big issue, someone complained, the customized form letter was sent out as required by federal law, and as you mention the onion will have to make some changes and will probably get a few funny articles out of it.
There is a law regarding the seal: TITLE 18, 713.
Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both. (Emphasis mine)
Seems like this wouldn't apply to The Onion as a satirical piece.
Well they're hardly using it to promote a commercial venture,
If that's true, they should drop the banner ads, and they should definitely stop intercepting hits to their home page to display interstitial commercials. Today the Onion is trying to get me to buy shoes, watch TV shows, eat fast food, report software pirates, wear jeans, buy belts, buy The Onion books, and go to the theater. I certainly hope they're getting paid for all that.
and if you can find someone who reads one of these Onion pieces and believes it suggests presidential support,
Okay, here you go:
http://www.weeklyradioaddress.com/
This is the page that made me think they may have a case. I too thought that this was just another attempt by the Whitehouse to bitchslap dissent, because I thought that they were just talking about the presidential seal graphics that might be in photos used in obvious parody articles about the President.
But look at this page. There's no info about the Onion (you'd have to have started from an Onion page to find out the connection), all the links go to official whitehouse.gov pages, the style is that of the official whitehouse.gov page, the server uses local copies of their potentially copyrighted graphics, and they've got a nearly identical (it says "Resident of the United States" now) copy of the Presidential Seal in the upper left corner: large enough to recognize, but small enough that the modification (even assuming it's always been modified) isn't obvious.
Could someone listen to one of these addresses and not realize they were listening to a parody? I doubt it, but then again I knew they were an Onion parody before I ever went to the site, and I've only listened to one address so far. Since the Onion's humor is sometimes of the prescient "it's funny cause it's true" variety, I could definitely imagine there being addresses in there capable of fooling people.
could you point them in my direction, as i've got this bridge i'd like to sell them.
Well, I'm not buying, but there's no story so ridiculous you won't find someone to buy it. Even the Onion's regular articles have fooled the Bejing Evening News, MSNBC, and some fundamentalist Christian groups in the past.
- In Kosovo and Haiti, the death toll has been much lower than Iraq. In addition, in Kosovo, Clinton used this thing called 'the international community', which can be beneficial when conducting 'police actions'.
- FEMA did so well in Florida because they were, well, f'n embarrassed by Louisana (one n, thanks). In the case of LA, when your state is so devastated that the local infrastructure collapses, you have a right to expect federal help. There are documented cases where FEMA told police officers in various parts of LA to *email* them requests for help, when police stations and power stations were completely flooded and useless. Good job Brownie!
- Blowing about a blow job, understandable. Blowing the cover of a CIA agent because you're pissed that they uncovered one of your major lies for going to war, understandable but kind of much worse than the blowjob thing.
FYI, Bush != Conservative. I never thought a tax and spend Democrat would be preferable to a borrow and borrow and borrow and spend and spend and spend Republican.If the government wishes to enforce against the Onion, they need to enforce against all "unauthorized, commercial or illegal" use of the seal, supportive or not.
Actually, no, they don't. The government gets to pick where they spend their law-enforcement resources and the executive branch makes the call. (Another example of this is the consistent case law declaring that the police have no obligation to protect any given individual from a crime or threat, no matter how grave or obvious in advance.)
A private individual or company has an obligation to take some action if his mark is being infringed to avoid it going public domain. But even there the requirement is not to pursue every infringer.
The closest argument to "must pursue all" is the requirement for equal protection. But even that only comes into play if there's a consistent pattern of only going after a suspect class of infringers, rather than making the pick in a way that doesn't discriminate, or discriminates only on some rational basis (such as biggest ones get the hit) with other things (like race) only present, if at all, as a side effect.
However, as a separate issue, satire is protected speech. If the seal was used in a clearly satirical way the Onion has legs to stand on. (I haven't seen the article in question yet, but given that it's the Onion it seems likely that's what they were doing.)
The problem with satire is that sometimes it looks too much like what it's satirizing and confuses people. I suspect that's what happened here - either because some functionary didn't get that it was satire, or thought others wouldn't.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And lets amend your historical corrections. Anyone with any degree of intellectual honesty credits the Clinton Administration with balancing the budget. Since I'm not going to make that assertion without facts to back it up...
Business Week, 5/19/97: "Clinton's 1993 budget cuts, which reduced projected red ink by more than $400 billion over five years, sparked a major drop in interest rates that helped boost investment in all the equipment and systems that brought forth the New Age economy of technological innovation and rising productivity."
Goldman Sachs, March 1998: "on the policy side, trade, fiscal, and monetary policies have been excellent, working in ways that have facilitated growth without inflation. The Clinton Administration has worked to liberalize trade and has used any revenue windfalls to reduce the federal budget deficit."
U.S. News & World Report, 6/17/96: "President Clinton's budget deficit program begun in 1993... [led] to lower interest rates, which begat greater investment growth (by double digits since 1993, the highest rate since the Kennedy administration), which begat three-plus years of solid economic growth averaging 2.6 percent annually, 50 percent higher than during the Bush presidency."
Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chairman, Audacity, Fall 1994: "The deficit has come down, and I give the Clinton Administration and President Clinton himself a lot of credit for that... and I think we're seeing some benefits."
While we're on the topic, the government shutdown was as much the fault of the Republican Majority in Congress and Clinton's. Alexis de Tocqueville once said that it is the nature of American Democracy to "view as virtuous an incomplete conquest." The willingness of BOTH the Republican Congress and the Democratic Whitehouse to ignore this sage wisdom was the cause of the shutdown. It takes two to tango.
While you're quite right that some of the actions taken by the Clinton administration militarily didn't turn out for the best, those actions were not unilateral invasions of a sovereign country with neither the backing nor support of the UN or NATO. Moreover, our involvement did not turn into the most costly and deadly American overseas deployment since Vietnam. As to Rwanda -- it was a tragic failure, and one for which I'll never forgive the Clinton Administration. It's good to see that Bush learned from that failure and is responding in the Sudan.... oh... wait....
Your depiction of the Plame case goes from evasive to outright lies, so we'll clear that up.
1 - You're right, no crime has technically been committed if no one was aware that Plame was undercover at the time since you can't expose someone who you don't know to be undercover.
2 - Plame WAS undercover at the time, according to ABC News.
3 - Even presidents are innocent until proven guilty in this country. Clinton was never convicted of perjury. That said, what he did smacks of dishonesty and was unquestionably wrong. Speaking of perjury -- it's interesting that the testimonies of Rove, Cheney, and Bush, and the various reporters being questioned are not only divergent, but don't even line up from session to session. You might see some GOP perjury indictments before this is all over.
Final Correction -- Your mischaracterization of Katrina is fairly misleading as well. A hurricane breaching New Orleans levees was on the FEMA list of nightmare scenarios. Bush's budget priorities transferred funds away from the Corps of Engineers levee projects, contributing to the collapse.
Also, don't forget that you can heap blame upon the state of Louisiana as much as you want - but the failure to Federalize the National Guard rests with one man alone. Bush had the authority to act and failed to. Did the state government screw up? Yes. But Bush -=LET=- them screw up. That matters.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I will repeat myself. The Onion is WRONG. If they want to pursue this, it could become a matter of imprisionment for the Onion editors and/or writers. They do NOT want to mess with this.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Ok, you are actually quite off on the FEMA comment. There is a big difference between what happened in Florida with hurricanes and what happened in Louisianna. There was poor response from FEMA and most everyone notices it.
It was FEMA who turned away Wal-Mart trucks with water and supplies.
It was FEMA who told Amtrak they didn't want evacuation help.
It was FEMA who did not use available Navy ships and sent away the Coast Guard with diesel fuel.
It was FEMA who turned away volunteers with boats and hovercraft.
The recent Florida situation doesn't count because FEMA is trying to overcompensate now. Also your conspiracy theorist will tell you to look at who is Governor of Florida...
The fact is both governments screwed up, but FEMA is looking worst in this because they are the ones who are suppose to have the resources to provide aid. I point you to about 1/2 the way down the story here. An example of government preventing aid, and why I think (as a libertarian) that FEMA is nothing more then a unnecessary entity that has only gotten in the way of volunteer efforts.
I can probably find a few local and state government screw ups too (there was a Doctor licensing issue involving the state govt. I think). There is plenty of blame to go around, the fact is FEMA does share a lot of blame and to ignore that fact is pure ignorance.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Seems like this wouldn't apply to The Onion as a satirical piece.
s c_sec_18_00000713----000-notes.html
Read on:
(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by
the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly
manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either
separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness
of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part
thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official
use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
And those regulations were specified by Richard Nixon (later amended by Gerald Ford):
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/u
Ex. Ord. No. 11649. Regulations Governing Seals of President and Vice President of United States
Ex. Ord. No. 11649, Feb. 16, 1972, 37 F.R. 3625, as amended by Ex. Ord. No. 11916, May 28, 1976, 41 F.R. 22031, provided:
By virtue to the authority vested in me by section 713 (b) of title 18, United States Code, I hereby prescribe the following regulations governing the use of the Seals of the President and the Vice President of the United States:
Section 1. Except as otherwise provided by law, the knowing manufacture, reproduction, sale, or purchase for resale of the Seals or Coats of Arms of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or any likeness or substantial part thereof, shall be permitted only for the following uses:
(a) Use by the President or Vice President of the United States;
(b) Use in encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, journals, pamphlets, periodicals, or magazines incident to a description or history of seals, coats of arms, heraldry, or the Presidency or Vice Presidency;
(c) Use in libraries, museums, or educational facilities incident to descriptions or exhibits relating to seals, coats of arms, heraldry, or the Presidency or Vice Presidency;
(d) Use as an architectural embellishment in libraries, museums, or archives established to house the papers or effects of former Presidents or Vice Presidents;
(e) Use on a monument to a former President or Vice President;
(f) Use by way of photographic or electronic visual reproduction in pictures, moving pictures, or telecasts of bona fide news content;
(g) Such other uses for exceptional historical, educational, or newsworthy purposes as may be authorized in writing by the Counsel to the President.
Sec. 2. The manufacture, reproduction, sale, or purchase for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, of the Seals of the President or Vice President, or any likeness or substantial part thereof, except as provided in this Order or as otherwise provided by law, is prohibited.
Richard Nixon.
So, for-pay encyclopedias can't include it in an article?
s c_sec_18_00000713----000-notes.html
That use is expressly provided for via executive order.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/u