ESA Threatens Kotaku With Lawsuit... Over A T-Shirt
Striking a blow for 1st Amendment rights, uber gaming blog Kotaku has refused to take down a photo of this T-shirt that the ESA says is an infringement of the ESRB logo. They claim that the editorial article that Kotaku editor Brian Crecente posted about the t-shirt is an advertisement and that there was “substantial likelihood that the ESRB certification marks will face tarnishment and dilution.”
The offending shirt was created and sold by Gamer’s Hell and originally posted about over at one of our favorite sites, bits bytes pixels & sprites. BBPS, not having lawyers on their side, had to bow to the absurd order to remove the shirt and all links to it from the site. Kotaku, however, is not going down that easy. They have flatly refused to remove the image and are willing to fight for their right to post such editorial content.
For me, I think the t-shirt is giggle worthy at best, but I say kudos to Kotaku for standing up for blogger’s rights everywhere.
ESA Threatens Kotaku [Kotaku]
Fruit Brute
Posted to Video Games on 10 November 2006
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: 1st amendment rights, esa, esrb, kotaku, tshirt
Oh my God, now they could sue you for posting about the t-shirt. HA!
No, now they could threaten to sue. They’d never actually go to court because they’d never win, there are laws protecting parody.
How many times have you seen the “Explicit Lyrics” or R-rating tag lampooned?
Here’s the real root cause of this angst:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061109-8188.html
Interesting insight into these people on the ESA.
Muddy is right. “Parody” is an acceptable and legal use of a logo or brand. (My boyfriend was an attorney for years)... ESA will get nowhere with this.