BuyMusic Shuts Down DontBuyMusic Parody Site

from the it's-a-parody,-dammit dept

Yet another case of lawyers going too far when it comes to intellectual property. It's pretty clear that parody is fair use, but that didn't stop the lawyers from Buy.com and BuyMusic.com from sending a cease-and-desist letter to the folks running DontBuyMusic.com, a parody site. This is extra amusing, since BuyMusic, themselves have been accused of copying Apple's iTunes ads. Of course, when that story came out, I pointed out that it might be part of BuyMusic's publicity strategy to get sued. Now, the reverse is happening. DontBuyMusic.com, which probably would have faded away, is getting a ton of publicity. While those who ran it took it down, because they didn't have the money to bother with a legal fight, I'm sure others will soon mirror it, and many more people will see it. Sending cease-and-desist letters to get something off the internet almost always backfire. By calling attention to something you want off the internet, it almost guarantees that the content will (a) become more widely dispersed and (b) get a lot more attention. I know that intellectual property law says that you need to actively protect your IP to keep your rights to it, but these lawyers need to get some business sense to understand that what they're doing is having the opposite effect for the companies they represent. Update: It appears that the folks at DontBuyMusic.com have put their site back up, but in a redesigned way to avoid the apparent trademark infringement.