Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick




EFF Teaches Barney The Dinosaur An Expensive Lesson In Fair Use

from the happy-now? dept

The folks behind Barney, the purple dinosaur TV character, have a long history of not quite understanding copyrights and fair use, as they tend to send out cease & desist letters at the drop of a hat, even if there's no actual violation. In fact, they sent so many to one person who had an online Barney parody site (parody is protected by fair use, remember) without actually suing him, that he (along with the EFF) finally sued Barney's owners back. It seems that this little sing-a-long lesson in copyright and fair use finally made sense to the stuffed dinosaur, who not only has agreed to stop sending out cease & desist letters to the guy, but also will pay for his legal bills in defending himself. Are we all a happy family now?

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 1:37pm
    by Anonymous Coward

    I love you, you love me. . .

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 1:41pm
    by Anonymous Coward

    Let's go nuts and sue Barney?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 1:55pm
    by Stu

    Barney is scarey as hell.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  4. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 2:37pm

    funny...

    by ehrichweiss

    About 10 years ago there was a file going around about how Sesame Street was a million times better than Barney and one of the things on it was that on one episode Barney basically humiliated a child for not wanting to share something whereas on SS, they simply said the child had that right and while it was cool to not share, there were benefits to sharing.

    I'm guessing that Barney decided HE didn't want to share either.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  5. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 3:18pm

    Stealing from the thief?

    by Copyright double agent

    Isn't most of Barney's music ripoffs from other songs? How do they get to sue when they just take nursery songs and change the words?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  6. Nov 28th, 2006 @ 4:12pm
    by Anonymous Coward

    I smell you, you smell me
    We're a smelly family
    With some stinky socks
    And some really stinky shoes
    Won't you came and smell me too?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  7. Dec 15th, 2006 @ 7:18am
    by IT STUDENT

    Can't We All Just Get Along??

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  8. Oct 1st, 2007 @ 11:52am

    :O

    Barney??Being sued I used to love him when I was little
    Awww...

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  9. May 22nd, 2009 @ 9:00pm

    my fave song

    by gawd666

    Ihate you, you hate me, lets get together and kill barney! put a colt to his head, pull the trigger and hes dead!

    p.s: read inuyasha meets barney

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It