Judge Has Some Fun Denying Injunction Requested By One Brewery For Another Over Trademark Suit

from the for-the-lulz dept

While I write about a great many trademark disputes in these pages, there are certain stories that pique my interest above others, or otherwise become more fun. Writing about trademark issues in the alcohol industries has been something of a passion of mine, for instance. It's also fun to highlight when the courts get trademark questions right, since far too often the opposite occurs. And, when you have a judge who chooses to embed some humor in their rulings, that gets pretty fun as well.

And then sometimes you run into a trademark story that combines all three of the above. Such is the case in a trademark dispute between two South Carolina breweries. Low Tide Brewing has sued Tideland Brewing for trademark infringement over its name. As part of that suit, Low Tide Brewing went so far as to seek a preliminary injunction against Tideland to keep it from using that name while the suit plays out.

In ruling on the injunction, the judge was simply not having it.

“Low Tide has not made a clear showing of its likelihood to succeed on the merits of its trademark infringement claim. Without that showing, Low Tide is up the creek,” U.S. District Court judge David C. Norton concluded in his April 12 opinion. “Accordingly ... Low Tide’s request for an injunction (is) dead in the water.”

It's not Dave Chappelle level comedy, but it's pretty fun as far as these rulings go. And that wasn't the only part of the decision that incorporated a bit of humor into it. Though, given what the judge's reasoning for denying the injunction was, it seems likely that Low Tide isn't yucking it up alongside the judge.

As Norton noted in his ruling, a preliminary injunction is “an extraordinary remedy” that penalizes the defendant before the case is heard. Consequently, a trademark holder seeking a preliminary injunction must satisfy all parts of a four-prong test. One of those prongs involves demonstrating that consumers are likely to be confused about who made the product they’re enjoying. Norton agreed that Low Tide’s trademark is valid and distinctive, but found it wasn’t strong enough to cause customer confusion.

“The instances of third-party use of the word ‘tide,’ locally and within the relevant industry, are enough to take the wind from Low Tide’s sails,” Norton wrote. “As such, Low Tide’s endeavor to wash away the prevalence of the word ‘tide’ in coastal commerce holds little water.”

Furthermore, Norton ruled the two names aren’t so alike that consumers would struggle to tell them apart. “The marks are, at best, somewhat similar, meaning that Low Tide, now swimming upstream, has failed to demonstrate that the factor tilts the inquiry in its favor,” he wrote.

It doesn't end there. Norton went on to comment on Low Tide's submissions for what it calls actual customer confusion. That submission consisted of a single instance in which one of Low Tide's own employees called Tideland to ask if they were part of a Low Tide expansion. To that, Norton wrote in the ruling that "The court declines to take the bait."

All of which is a puntastic way for the judge to let Low Tide know that, while the trademark case will indeed go on, the court isn't looking too fondly on Low Tide's side of the equation. At this point, it might be time for Low Tide to find a way to bow out of all of this as gracefully as it can muster.

Filed Under: david norton, humor, trademark
Companies: low tide brewing, tideland brewing

School Can't Take A Joke; Turns Student Over To Cops For Listing The School For Sale On Craigslist

from the adminstrators-stripped-of-human-traits-during-hiring-process dept

Recent school shootings have led to heightened reactions from school officials and law enforcement. An over-correction of sorts -- thanks to the shooter in Florida having been brought to law enforcement's attention several times prior to the shooting -- has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of students across the nation.

The problem isn't so much treating potential threats as credible until proven otherwise. The problem is there's so very little subtlety applied. Things that should not be perceived as threats are, and even when they're determined to be either unfounded or not actually a threat, some schools decide their misperceptions are more important than the reality of the situation. (h/t Reason)

The graduating class of Truman High School in Independence, Missouri brainstormed senior pranks. Kylan Scheele came up with a pretty decent idea. He posted his school for sale on Craigslist.

The ad read:

Truman High School - $12725

Huge 20+ room facility.
Newly build football field.
Baseball Field to the SE.
Newly added 4 modern day rooms.
Has: Centralized air, heating, plumbing.
Next to Walmart for convenience
Huge parking lot, great for partygoers looking for somewhere to park
Bigger than normal dinning room.
Multi stove, oven, fridge and other appliances in the kitchen.
Reason for sale is due to the loss of students coming up.
Named after hometown resident U.S. President Harry S. Truman and his family.

About as innocuous of a prank anyone could have played on the school, one would think. But one would probably not be Truman High School administration. They turned it over to law enforcement.

Detectives with the Independence Police Department investigated the incident and found no probable cause or reason to pursue criminal charges. The had Scheele delete the post and advised him to talk to school adminstrators.

“They [detectives] didn’t see a credible threat,” Clark said. “They all kind of had a little chuckle about it but they wanted him to understand you could see how other people could see it as a threat.”

And how could people see this as a threat? Well, the school seized on one line of the faux ad: "loss of students coming up." Obviously, this referred to the pending graduation. The school, however, somehow read this to mean Scheele planned on harming the student body. That prompted the handover to police. And when it was handed back, the school doubled down on its "seriousness."

We take student safety very seriously and appreciate the students and parents who brought this to our attention. Out of an abundance of caution, administrators and police investigated and determined there was not a credible threat. A student who makes a real or implied threat, whether it is deemed credible or not, will face discipline. Due to the heightened concern nationally with school violence, we have extra police officers for the remainder of the school year and will have additional officers at graduations for all of our high schools.

Good lord. So, the non-threat the police considered non-threatening has resulted in Scheele's suspension and his ban from the graduation ceremony. The "implied threat" the school somehow read into a statement about graduating seniors is keeping one student from getting his diploma with his classmates.

It's also resulted in a lawsuit [PDF]. The ACLU represented Scheele in his demand for a restraining order blocking the school from blocking him from picking up his diploma at the graduation ceremony. Filed May 25th, the court has already ruled in favor of the school.

The school has also refused to back down, claiming the bogus ad caused "substantial disruption" and resulted in multiple parents retrieving their kids from school. (Wonder how much of that was due to the school informing parents it had turned over a "credible" threat to law enforcement?) As the lawsuit pointed out, there's no way the student intended to cause a disruption and no "reasonable" person could have imagined the outcome would have been school officials attempting to turn a satirical "for sale" ad into a criminal offense. The disruption was of the school's own making, but the punishment will be borne solely by the student who posted the ad.

Filed Under: humor, jokes, kyle scheele, missouri, police, pranks, threats, truman high school
Companies: craigslist

Where Credit's Due: Budweiser Goes The Cool And Funny Route On Microbrewery's 'Dilly Dilly' Craft IPA

from the dilly-dilly dept

I like to give credit where credit is due. When it comes to the myriad posts we've written about Budweiser or its parent company Anheuser-Busch, the credit has mostly been to do with being intellectual property bullies and all around megalith caricatures. That said, the company's actions surrounding a recent case of actual trademark infringement show the company not to be without humor or grace when it actually tries.

Minneapolis brewery, Modist Brewery, recently unveiled a new double IPA it decided to call "Dilly Dilly." If that isn't ringing any bells, you must not have seen the series of kingly ads for Bud Light that I find funny, although I can't describe exactly why.

As part of the ad campaign, Budweiser trademarked the phrase "dilly, dilly", because of course they did. Whatever problems we might have with the practical application of trademark law in modern times, the phrase is creative, unique, and with the ad campaign it has become an identifier for the Bud Light brand. Modist Brewery even knew about the trademark. And it expected Bud Light to push back.

According to The Growler Magazine, the owners had an idea they would be getting a message from Bud Light after they found out “Dilly Dilly” had already been trademarked as a slogan.

“But then we said, ‘Screw it, let’s see what happens.’ And that’s what happens,” Kale Anderson told the magazine.

Yes, Budweiser did indeed respond...by sending an on-theme messenger to Modist Brewery.

In case you can't see the video, the "messenger" from Budwesider states the following.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” he began. “Dear friend of the crown, Modist Brewery Company, congratulations on the new brew: Dilly Dilly Mosaic Double IPA ...” the man read. “We are duly flattered by your royal tribute. However, ‘Dilly Dilly’ is the motto of our realm. So we humbly ask that you keep this to a limited edition one-time-only run. This is by order of the king. Disobedience shall be met with additional scrolls, then a formal warning, and finally, a private tour of the pit of misery.”

To make sure the disposition of the message was clear, the messenger goes on to gift two Super Bowl tickets to the brewery, as the game will be in Minnesota this year. Rather than being the bully, Budweiser added some humor to its request that the brewery, which knew about the trademark, simply not continue the run of the IPA under the infringing name past the limited run, and it managed to do so in an entertaining and congenial way. As far as cease and desists go, this is about as good as it gets.

And Budweiser is earning high praise in the press for all this, extending its branding message and bathing the Bud Light product in positive coverage. That's a pretty good look and a welcome departure for a company not known for being so human and accommodating.

Filed Under: beer, budweiser, dilly dilly, humor, trademark
Companies: inbev, modist brewery

UK Party Leader Attacks Satirical Mobile Game Made By Teenagers Interested In Politics

from the well-okay-then dept

Nigel Farage, head of the British political party UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), is certainly an interesting character. UKIP is something akin to a vastly more organized version of the Tea Party here in the United States, in that their policies are typically further to the right of the more common conservatives within the political system. Farage is known to be controversial, to say the least, in part because of some opposition to his party's policies (which probably applies to most leaders of political parties in general), but more so because he often times enjoys getting in front of reporters and cameras and doing really stupid things, such as going ad hominem on a group of politically-minded teenagers who created a satirical mobile game jabbing at UKIP's policies.

A phone app made by school students and featuring a character called Nicholas Fromage kicking immigrants off the white cliffs of Dover has been criticised by the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage. Farage claimed the game, developed by a group of sixth-formers from Canterbury Academy, was “risible and pathetic” and that it had “crossed the line”, despite saying he welcomed the opinions of young people.

The game, which is again clearly parody, is a cartoonish jab at some of UKIP's policies with regards to immigration. Without taking any stand on the issues being discussed by the game, it seems almost too facile to point out that Farage's taking on of the students, particularly going so far as to call their efforts "risible and pathetic", is ill-conceived at best. To leave those attacks with a footer claiming to welcome the input of younger generations simply serves to spotlight how dumb this is. Open dialogue ought to be a politician's best friend, particularly for the leader of a self-ascribed libertarian-leaning party. The school where the teenagers developed the game, thankfully, has the children's backs.

But the school’s principal, Phil Karnavas, has defended the app, which he says is a bit of fun to celebrate “brilliant, traditional British satire”.

"It’s a bit rich, bearing in mind some of the things the members of Ukip have said, for their leader to say they have crossed the line. Mr Farage can’t have it both ways. He cannot expect young people to engage in politics and then criticise what they say when they do.”

Imagine instead if the footer had been the entirety of Farage's response. What if he had simply said that he welcomes the input of younger Brits and suggested that political interest from the young is a good thing? After all, for all of the ribbing in the game, some of it quite sharp, the whole thing was framed by a disclaimer that the point was to create political dialogue. For Farage to pretend like some kind of line was crossed simply makes him look more childish than the children he attacked.

[Farage] said: “Those elements are risible and in many ways pathetic. I think I’m quite well known for having a sense of humour."

Pro-tip: if you have to tell a reporter about how everyone knows you have a great sense of humor, you don't have a great sense of humor.

Filed Under: apps, children, humor, immigration, nicholas fromage, nigel farage, satire, teenagers, ukik, ukip

New UK Copyright Exception Allows Mashups -- But Only If Judges Think They Are Funny

from the you-must-be-joking dept

Five years ago, Techdirt reported that a request to the UK government to provide a copyright exception for mashups was rejected. Since then, we've been reporting on the UK's very slow progress in updating its copyright laws by bringing in various changes and exceptions. An article in the Daily Telegraph points out that there is a big problem with the new exception for parody, caricature or pastiche (found via @copyrightgirl):

Under a new exception to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, which comes into force on Wednesday, people will be allowed to re-use copyright material "for the purposes of parody, caricature or pastiche" without having to ask permission of the original author first.

There is an important caveat. If a parodist is taken to court, it will be up to a judge to decide whether the disputed parody is sufficiently funny.

A document from the UK government explains (pdf):

In broad terms, parody imitates a work for humorous or satirical effect, commenting on the original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target.

Leaving aside the fact that judges tend to be somewhat advanced in years, and are therefore likely to have a very different idea from young creative artists of what "funny" means, there is also the point that this narrow definition excludes a huge class of mashups that aren't even intended to be funny, just creative. As Mike pointed out recently in his article on Kutiman, it's all too easy for this brilliant use of elements taken from elsewhere to be seen as "infringing." The fact that the UK's exceptions do not permit such kinds of originality shows how much its new copyright is still stuck in the past.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, free speech, humor, judges, mashups, parody, uk

Skullgirls Creator Combats Piracy With Humor And By Being Awesome

from the doing-it-right dept

We've long made the argument that one way to combat piracy is to connect with fans and treat them well. In other words, being awesome will generate enough good will from fans that actually want a producer's product such that piracy no longer becomes a major concern, because fans will want to buy. It's funny how much of a reputation some folks have built off of this concept, from Joss Whedon to Wil Wheaton to Louis CK. Those examples aside, nobody said combating piracy by being awesome was easy, so it's still a good idea to highlight instances of people and companies doing it right.

Enter Skullgirls, a fighting game with an irreverent sense of humor and style, both in terms of its gameplay and the method by which it deals with people pirating their game. For instance, if you pirate Skullgirls and progress far enough through the game, you'll get this message.

Should you be unable to see the screen shot, a popup window comes up that reads: "What is the square root of a fish? Now I'm sad." This message only appears to players who have pirated the game. The player can then simply click out of the popup. Or, if you're Dan Hibiki, a.k.a. @SaikyoChamp on Twitter, you can tweet at the Skullgirls developer, Lab Zero Games, and ask them what's up with the message, which is exactly what he did. The official Skullgirls Twitter account tweeted back at him suggesting that he buy the game instead of pirating it.

Now, that'd be a pretty level-headed response from a game developer on its own, but when Lab Zero Games then went on to hold an awesome conversation with their pirate-on-a-hook, the concept of being awesome got elevated a few notches. Some highlights include:

//@Skullgirls ... I'm sorry. I kinda did a trybeforeyoubuy thing. I already bought it on PS3 and I'm planning on buying it for Steam, soon.

— Dan Hibiki (@SaikyoChamp) July 8, 2014

@SaikyoChamp It’s all good, man. Well... I mean, it isn’t really, but I get it. Just try to do the right thing eventually.

— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) July 8, 2014

As a result of not flying off the handle, even though it is understandably frustrating to see people pirating your work, there are a ton of people favoriting and retweeting the entire exchange. In other words, Lab Zero Games builds up a ton of goodwill, Skullgirls gets some viral publicity, and nobody has to spend gobs of money on lawyers. That's some next-level awesome.

Filed Under: drm, humor, piracy, skullgirls

Even The Onion Is Mocking Big Pharma's Focus On Patents Over All Else

from the truth-in-humor dept

For many years, we've been pointing out that the big pharmaceutical industry has become so focused, and so reliant, on patents that they've lost sight of the plot. They don't even consider other potential business models or, you know, keeping people healthy. These days, everything is about getting and extending patents, allowing them to charge exorbitant markup rates on drugs around the globe. It's now reached the point that even The Onion is deftly mocking big pharma's patent focus, with a story titled: "New Pfizer Breakthrough Miraculously Extends Lifespan Of Near-Death Patents." Here's a snippet:

“At Pfizer, patents always come first. Our primary goal is, and always will be, keeping them alive and healthy for as long as possible. And that’s why we couldn’t be happier to announce this wonderful development.” Hilty added that nothing causes Pfizer officials more distress than seeing a once robust patent expire at a young age, a “terrible tragedy” that allows dozens of generic manufacturers to copy it and offer pharmaceuticals to customers far more cheaply.

It's both funny and depressing at the same time, because it's pretty damn accurate. It's disappointing just how far the pharmaceutical industry has gone over the years. Back in 1929, one of the leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, George Merck, declared:

We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.

That's a noble position to take. That's not how the pharmaceutical industry acts today. At all.

Filed Under: humor, patents, pharmaceuticals
Companies: the onion

Cracked Writer Questioned By Secret Service Agents Over Humorous Article About Kidnapping President's Daughters

from the someone's-still-reading-the-entire-internet-every-day dept

Defenders of national surveillance have often asserted that the government (specifically, its intelligence and investigative agencies) isn't interested in your "emails/phone calls to Grandma" or your "cat videos." It's a stupid dodge which attempts to portray internet surveillance as only focused on legitimate threats to national security.

But the surveillance is omnipresent, and even those who would have honestly felt the government was unconcerned with their internet activities sometimes find themselves being questioned by Secret Service members over humorous articles that dared to invoke the word "President."

Cracked writer Daniel O'Brien, due to certain preoccupations with very specific subject matter, found himself chatting with two government agents due to a previously published humorous article (since removed, but archived here) that dealt with kidnapping the president's daughter. This, combined with research for his book, apparently got him flagged in a national security database.

I wrote a book about president fighting called How to Fight Presidents, which just came out today. It's a comedic nonfiction book that teaches you, appropriately enough, how to beat the crap out of every single lunatic who ran this country.

Or not every president. People who buy the book (which you can do right here or here) might notice that I've curiously left out every president that's still alive currently. Well, when you do the kind of research associated with this subject matter (Google "Bill+Clinton+weaknesses"), certain flags are raised, flags that the government takes notice of…

I won't get into the specifics of the article, but it was sort of a "how to" guide and has since been taken down (I've no doubt someone in the comments will clarify which article I'm talking about). In addition to having to take the article down, I also get stopped and pulled aside at airports five out of six times that I fly.

The end result was the Secret Service contacting Cracked's HR department in hopes of reaching O'Brien to "discuss" his "lightly treasonous" article. O'Brien's first contact with the Secret Service was via a phone conversation with an agent who explained (rather sympathetically) that while the agency had the capability to recognize satire, it had the duty to run out every ground ball, so to speak.

"I just mean I'm not some, I don't know, government dud. Believe it or not, I've got a sense of humor; most of us do around here. I know it's a comedy website, I know you're doing jokes. It just so happens that it's my job to pay attention when certain ... concepts are brought up online. That article, combined with your fascination with fighting presidents ... well, that's the kind of thing I need to know about."

However, his next stop was a trip to downtown Los Angeles to meet with two Secret Service agents who weren't quite as blessed in the humor department. The two agents were clearly taking the situation as seriously as anyone can take subject matter that describes President Jimmy Carter's daughter escaping a kidnapping vessel by "slicing through the ocean like a goddamned dolphin."

When O'Brien attempted to defend his humorous article by stating it was full of "impractical" and "useless" advice, the agents took it as an admission that he knew plenty of practical and useful ways to pull off the kidnapping of a First Child. The innate ability of the agents to use his own answers against him, as well as their apparent innate lack of a sense of humor, led to O'Brien being asked unanswerable questions like this one:

"In entry #2," Agent Hardass began, "you point out a number of common mistakes people make when breaking into the White House, including, quote, leaving either too much or not enough semen around, end quote. Why did you say that?"

Nothing makes a joke funnier than a long explanation of what's funny about it, and apparently O'Brien was forced to live through this particular form of post-joke hell for a majority of the two hours he was questioned.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to watch comedy as a concept die, I can assure you it's me sitting in a freezing room explaining to two angry government agents why "murder-boner" is an inherently more richly comedic pairing of words than "death-erection."

After exhausting the comedy-or-threat possibilities of O'Brien's article, the agents went on to more easily-answered (but equally difficult to prove) questions like, "Are you a terrorist?" and "Are you affiliated with any terrorist groups?" And... "Do you have the skeleton of Pocahontas stashed in your closet?"

So, all's well that ends well, I suppose, but O'Brien will likely be rewarded for his anti-presidential writings with extra attention at airports and a heightened sense of (mostly justifiable) paranoia. The government may not care about cat videos and grandma, but it still takes every joke about certain subject matter very seriously.

The NSA (and others) may claim they grab more data than content, but all this limitation really does is ensure your content and data will be completely divorced from their context. O'Brien wrote obviously satirical articles about presidents and had to go explain humor to Secret Service agents. Anyone else who says something that trips the surveillance triggers is now a potential national security target, and at the mercy of agencies that can work backwards through thousands of datapoints and content snippets, completely free to construct their own narrative from the context-free information just sitting around on their servers.

Filed Under: cracked, daniel o'brien, humor, presidents, secret service

Cracked Shows How To Respond To Someone Infringing On Their Work

from the with-humor-and-sarcasm dept

We've mentioned for years that Techdirt content is regularly copied and placed on various spam blogs. They're all over the place, and it's not hard to find. If we listened to some people, we'd be spending all our time sending off DMCA notices and venting angrily on insular blogs about how much more successful we'd be if only everyone else were responsible for blocking that infringement. But, of course, we recognize that most of the spam blogs get no attention at all, and anyone who does actually stumble across them, and like them, will quickly realize that the content comes from somewhere else, and will eventually find their way here and (hopefully) stick around. In fact, the site that merely scrapes our stuff without credit will probably have what little reputation they might already have harmed even more by such poor internet etiquette.

Of course, every so often, we see such things happen with larger sites. A few months ago, for example, a well-known blog that we like (and have linked to quite often) posted an exact replica of one of our articles (word for word), but with one of their author's names on it. I won't say who it was, because it's not that important. We were a bit surprised by this, but mainly because we didn't see why they would want to hurt their own reputation like that, as people were bound to notice. I sent a quick email to the editor and the writer, saying that (1) we were absolutely fine with them keeping everything the way it was but (2) we just wanted to see if perhaps the item was posted in error because it seemed out of character (the site posts all original content). Within a few hours, we got multiple apologies as they explained the snafu (involving them using a new aggregator, and the writer sending one of our article to the editor just because he might be interested in the story, and he got confused, thinking it was the latest article). They also posted a really unnecessary public apology, which we told them they didn't need to do (in fact, we told them they could keep the original article up). Basically, no big deal in the end. No threats. No DMCA. No screaming about copyrights. Just a friendly email and knowledge of how reputations work and everything worked itself out.

Point being: rather than relying on copyright or screaming about infringement, there are often much more effective ways of dealing with such things. Take, for example, the way Cracked (one of our absolute favorite websites, and it should be one of yours too) recently handled the UK's Daily Mail's decision to copy a Cracked article on horrible tourists. Rather than going all DMCA, screaming about infringement, Cracked did what Cracked does best, and brought the funny, publishing a "sincere apology" to the Daily Mail admitting that Cracked authors get "fabulous space-time powers" and the most logical explanation for what happened was that Cracked contributor XJ Selman, went forward in time, copied the Daily Mail's Sunday column, then went back in time, and pre-published it 24 hours earlier. Obviously.

we at Cracked are in the wrong here. Yes, our Saturday article flat-out plagiarized The Daily Mail's Sunday article. But how did this happen?

You see, when you sign up to write articles for Cracked -- which absolutely anyone can do, more information on that here -- you don't simply get the opportunity to pen monkeyshines for one of the most popular comedy websites on the planet. No, a singing jewel will descend from the heavens and mystically bless you with fabulous space-time powers.

Now, the Daily Mail (right, we've heard the Daily Fail jokes, no need to remind us) already has about the crappiest reputation that a newspaper (and, I use the term loosely) can have. So, perhaps this does little to harm their reputation. But what this absolutely does do is raise Cracked's reputation among lots and lots of people, for responding to someone copying their stuff with typical and fitting humor and wit.

And, really, that's a point that we've been trying to make for over a decade: when faced with these kinds of situations, so many people get so focused on "punishing" other people, without ever bothering to think about what it means for their own reputation. Yet, when there are opportunities to embrace those things to enhance their own reputation, so few seem willing to do it. Yet, as with so many things, Cracked has it right. The Daily Mail is a joke already. Rather than blasting off a DMCA notice or some sort of legal threat, just make the most of things by reacting humorously and boosting your own reputation.

Filed Under: copying, humor, response, takedowns
Companies: cracked, the daily mail

Ohio AG Gets Urban Outfitters To Pull Satirical Prescription Coffee Mugs From Stores, Citing His Own Lack Of Humor

from the free-speech-doesn't-work-like-that dept

If you take a hard line in your belief in free speech, you need to double that staunch stance when it comes to humor and satire, because they almost universally require an edge or offense of some kind. Quadruple your stance if that humor or satire is aimed at anything having to do with the government, since they're not allowed to be offended by our speech. Sorry, government, but that's the deal we made two-hundred-plus years ago: you get to pretend like you represent us and we get to make fun of you for it.

But apparently there are a significant number of attorneys general out there who are working hard to show you they don't have a sense of humor at all and they'll be damned if you get to laugh at a joke they don't find funny. At least, that's the conclusion I'm coming to after 23 AGs pressured Urban Outfitters, Inc. to pull their Prescription Line of products, which included a coffee mug dressed up to look like a prescription bottle. Ohio AG Mike DeWine appears to have led this conga line of stupid:

"People die from accidental drug overdoses in this state every day, and these products make light of the problem," DeWine said in a May press release.   "We don't find these products funny at all."

Unfortunately, Urban Outfitters caved and pulled the products, but think of all the things you could nix with this line of thinking: Many people are seriously concerned that they've been abducted by aliens, so we can't allow The X-Files on television. Hitler's Germany killed a buttload of people, so The Producers is not allowed. A certain percentage of the followers of Islam are offended by depictions of the Prophet Muhammed, so we can't show a satirical cartoon in...oh, wait.

And that's really the point: once we begin giving away our right for humor or satire in speech in favor of the comfort of the offended, we're lost. You might as well just outlaw humor altogether. This case shows that wonderfully, considering that nothing about a prescription coffee mug is directly poking fun at anyone overdosing or dying. Making that leap requires legs for which my mental faculties won't allow. Besides, I have to imagine there are better things twenty-three attorneys general could be doing than writing letters about coffee mugs.

Filed Under: drugs, humor, mike dewine, ohio, prescription coffee mug