I found myself presented with a problem one morning. What do you do when you're threatened by a large multinational corporation?

My answer was pretty simple. First, I had to climb back into my chair, because I had fallen out of it laughing my ass off. Next, I forwarded the message to every person I know with an e-mail address. I was quite prould. Its not every day that your web site takes a step towards the big time.

The question is: Do I knuckle under, or stand and fight? The concensious of my friends and my review of the copyright and trademark tombs is that I'm covered under the "Fair use" and "Satire" tenents of these laws. Basicly Lyons Partnership doesn't have a leg to stand on, and this is basic harrassment and bullying. I mean come on… they even list the url as volksblast.com rather then dudeface.com... that basicly means that they spydered the site and didn't even know it existed until some bot found it. And if that's not slimy enough, the letter is address to the "ISP" of volksblast.com. Rather then contact me directly, they decided it was more prudent to attempt to yank the rug out from under me.

Stand and fight.

The first step is to see if you can make the problem go away. Within an hour of receiving the threat, I fire off this mild mannered response. Basic interpersonal tactics. When provoked by someone bigger then you are smile and politely tell them they are full of shit.

In my understanding of the copyright law, the use of the barney character at dudeface.com falls under the provisions of fair use. The images are of a particular barney doll, and are not meant to be suggestive of "barney" in general.

Also this web page has been in place in its current form for more then four years. As such, since this is the first I have heard it suggested that it is infringing on LP's copyright it is hard to imagine how it can be adversely effecting LP's intellectual property.

In the interest of being reasonable, I will review the copyright laws again, and if I find that dudeface.com is in violation, the mentioned page will be taken down.

Because of the prevalence of hoax on the net, I will be awaiting the arrival of a hard copy of your statement, to verify its validity, before taking any action.

I figure this qualifies as showing good faith. It will give me some time. I can happily wait until the paperwork comes, and their dead line passes because I've shown due diligence.

I wait. I wait. I wait some more. Quite a while has passed now, and still I hear nothing. No formal petition. No paperwork of any kind. I don't even get another e-mail from them.

Actually, I'm mildly disappointed. I was all set for a fight. I had a few chats with some local news organizations. Traded an e-mail or two with a couple of nation ones. They all seemed to love the idea that the huge organization behind this purple abomination that is the joy of kids every where is trying to crush a little guy like me. A little guy with a simple web site that isn't harming any one.

The free publicity I would have gotten would have been phenomenal.

But alas... they all needed some kind of paperwork to make it official. No signed complaint, no news story.

Such is life.

So I sit patiently. Waiting. Waiting for the next Goliath to bumble across my path.

To read who was pissed at me and why <click here>

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