AOL/TW Attacks
AOL/Time Warner has filed a temporary restraining order against Zach Exley, the owner of CNNdn.com, originally a parody site based loosely on CNNfn. According to this Wired News article, the owner, who also runs gwbush.com, claims it wasn’t intended as a parody… He clearly needs a better lawyer, since parody is protected under the First Amendment. According to the article, the CNNdn logo, which is clearly based on CNNfn’s logo, is at the center of CNN’s argument. What Wired neglected to mention, but the legal filing makes clear, is that most of the non-parody text on the site was copied verbatim from an older version of CNNfn’s page. I think it’s a clear case of copyright infringement, but a cease-and-desist letter certainly would have been enough. I don’t know why he merits so much attention – perhaps someone in CNN’s legal department is a republican.