EFF Teaches Barney The Dinosaur An Expensive Lesson In Fair Use

from the happy-now? dept

Tue, Nov 28th 2006 1:22pm — Mike Masnick

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?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2006 @ 1:37pm

I love you, you love me. . .
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2006 @ 1:41pm

Let's go nuts and sue Barney?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Stu, 28 Nov 2006 @ 1:55pm

Barney is scarey as hell.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ehrichweiss, 28 Nov 2006 @ 2:37pm

funny...
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Copyright double agent, 28 Nov 2006 @ 3:18pm

Stealing from the thief?
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?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2006 @ 4:12pm

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?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
IT STUDENT, 15 Dec 2006 @ 7:18am

Can't We All Just Get Along??
[ link to this | view in thread ]
HANNAH, 1 Oct 2007 @ 11:52am

:O
Barney??Being sued I used to love him when I was little
Awww...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
gawd666, 22 May 2009 @ 9:00pm

my fave song
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
[ link to this | view in thread ]