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Barney Surrenders To the EFF

Posted by kdawson on from the big-purple-capitulation dept.

davidwr writes, "Earlier this year, EFF sued the Barney the Dinosaur people for harassing a Barney parody web site. Well, Barney finally surrendered, err I mean, learned to share. For more, read the case history at the EFF site."

10 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Hang on, wait.. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

    The EFF actually won a case? What, did they get new lawyers or something?

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Hang on, wait.. by Neoncow · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, they were up against Barney the Dinosaur.

    2. Re:Hang on, wait.. by ntk · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sigh. Is that old "Bonhomie Snoutintroff" canard still kicking around? A story that gave as its warped reasoning for the idea that "EFF always loses" two cases that EFF didn't actually conduct (Eldred v. Ashcroft and Gilmore v. Gonzales), and one that we actually won: ("They defended two amateur online journos against Apple's ham-fisted effort to silence criticism, and got beat down severely: another bad precedent." - odd, that's not quite what the Appeals Court decided when the California state appeals court upheld our defence, and held that our clients were protected by California's reporter's shield law and the constitutional privilege against disclosure of confidential sources: http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Apple_v_Does/ ).

      And as to the Snoutintroff claim we somehow "persuaded" Ed Felten to withdraw from a talk as a media stunt, it's worth reading what Felten himself had to say about that period. Chilled speech, baseless legal threats, people losing jobs because they stand up for their right to reveal security flaws. That's what EFF fights.

      It's worth spending time reading EFF's actual track record - either from our list of victories, or from the Wikipedia list.

      (Or hell, just read our press releases from the last week where we were filing an amicus brief to defend constitutional protection for stored email, began a case to investigate and correct some 18,000 missing votes in an apparent e-voting mess-up in a Florida seat that was won by less than 400 votes, and filing an FOIA request to uncover the details of EU passenger records being handed over to the US government. And that's what we did on a Thanksgiving week - with a staff of around 30, and a budget that's a fiftieth of the size of the ACLU, and a twentieth of what the MPAA spend on Washington lobbying alone. And consider becoming a member if you're impressed - you have no idea how much every extra membership helps, nor how much there is left to do.)

  2. Singalong by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Funny

    I love you, you love me,
    This is bestiality...

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  3. Re:HIS Lawyers.. surrendered. by Jello+B. · · Score: 5, Funny

    And he's all out of hugs.

  4. Barney isn't stopped! by autophile · · Score: 5, Interesting
    While the Big Bad Barney has agreed not to pursue Frankel any longer, the settlement document on the EFF website does not claim that Barney will not try to harass anyone else. Apparently Barney has to pay Frankel $5,000, which is a drop in the bucket. Barney will probably accept the risk of going after other, more likely to be intimidated, sites.

    --Rob

    --
    Towards the Singularity.
  5. EFF was Bound to Win by MrCrassic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...because this case had no basis.

    Even though I really hate Britney Spears, I must admit that before she got pregnant, she actually looked kind of hot. However, after she got pregnant, she gradually turned into a monstrosity (or was it years of lyrical and systematic infection of our American youth finally striking back...?). If the value premise of the case were true, that meant that if I used Photoshop to exaggerate her hideous appearance to blatant unrealistic proportions, then posted it back on my MySpace, I have used the image of Britney Spears illegally under copyright law and will be subjected to all sorts of governmental discipline. Does this make any sense?

    I'm glad that the court realized the flawed logic of this case. It would have been a shame if that person had to pay some consequence solely for using merely the image of a character humorously (or not). I knew the dinosaur had some evil in it...

  6. Re:From the settlement agreemenr ... by Carnildo · · Score: 5, Informative
    "... Conditioned upon the parties' compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement, the parties, and their respective officers, directors, agents, servants, employees, parents, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, attorneys, successors and assigns, hereby release each other from any and all claims, demands, damages, losses, liabilities, rights or causes of action, including but not limited to any claim for attorneys fees, arising out of or relating to the Action and/or the allegations asserted therein. ..."

    Reading this please make your own conclusions about the inner structure of the underlying legal system (IMAGINE YOU WOULD STRUCTURE CODE THE SAME WAY!).


    Reading this sort of legalese is actually quite simple: whenever you see an agglomeration of terms like that, read the first one, and mentally replace the rest of them with "or similar". It's actually quite similar to programming, since you need to explicity enumerate the cases. Neither computers nor lawyers are very good with fuzziness.

    The code equivalent would be

    if(is_party($complainant) || is_party_director($complainant) || is_party_agent($complainant) || is_party_servant($complainant) || is_party_employee($complainant) || is_party_parent($complainant)....)

    Yes, you need to include all the clauses in order for the if() statement to work properly.
    --
    "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  7. Five years ago, I got C&D'd by Barney... by oskay · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Five years ago I had a website with a collection of jokes collected from mid-1990s humor mailing lists. Naturally, there was a whole page of Barney jokes. The same stupid ones that you've seen a million times. You've seen all the song parodies (here, if nowhere else), and then there was the giant ASCII-art-Barney-being-killed-by-something. I think that it might have been a face hugger.
    At the time, the web site (for stupid, complicated reasons) was registered in my father's name. So, imagine my old man's surprise when one day HE gets a letter from Barney's lawyer threatening (purple) fire and brimstone. Without much of a good alternative, we caved. I was really, really mad, and I suppose that I still am. To this day, it's the only legal 'trouble' that any of my web sites have stirred up, which is actually somewhat surprising.

    Now that someone has finally stood up to the purple bully, can I finally dig into my old backups and put up the page of Barney jokes again? Whether or not Barney jokes are still relevant at the end of 2006, I suppose that I should, merely on principle.

  8. Re:Why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean, -1 Uninformed? Seriously, do you not even know what fair use is? Copyrights have limits, despite what copyright holders like to pretend. They are an artificial monopoly created to reward artists, not a God Given Right. Don't believe me? Here you go, the law itself. And before you get confused, parody is a form of "criticism" and "comment"--laws are always a bit vague because the world isn't black and white. Yes, there is also a limit to what is considered a parody, but parodies are legal. Determining if something is a parody is up to the courts.

    Obviously, I am not a lawyer and you should not use this as legal advice. Otherwise, I would have smacked you down with much more wit and knowledge, that which is gained from more than five seconds on google.