Fox News Discovers The Power Of Reverse Internet Marketing

Overhype

from the here-it-goes-again dept

Sometimes you have to wonder how big corporate lawyers can misunderstand things so badly. We were just talking about how trying to force something off the internet actually has the opposite results, and along come Fox News lawyers trying to shut down a parody site that sold t-shirts for the obvious parody “Faux News Network”. The most amusing part in all of this is that the owners of the site said it was getting almost no traffic since the war ended, and they were considering shutting it down. However, the Fox cease-and-desist letter has fueled publicity to the point where they’ve sold $3,000 worth of t-shirts in the last 24 hours. Perhaps corporate lawyers need to take a class that explains how the internet works – and why cease-and-desist letters like this have the opposite effect. It’s yet another example of business decisions being made by lawyers on the basis of law, and not what’s best for the business.