waxy.org Stands Up Against the Pudding Onslaught

In case you haven’t seen it, Bill Cosby’s lawyers sent a cease and desist to waxy.org for hosting House of Cosbys (well, and for hosting an old Cosby record, but it’s not surprising that they’d want that off).

This is really reaching, and it doesn’t seem like the lawyers have a legal leg to stand on. The reasoning they give for ceasing and desisting is this:

As you are aware, you are not licensed or in any way authorized to use Mr. Cosby’s name, voice or likeness for any purpose whatsoever. Your use of our client’s name, voice and likeness in this manner violates our client’s rights of publicity as well as other statutory and common laws prohibiting the misappropriation of an individual’s name, voice and likeness and unfair competition.

Therefore, we demand that you immediately cease and desist from any use of our client’s name, voice and likeness in any form, including the distribution of the “House of Cosbys” episodes 1 -5 [sic] via your Site or through links to any third-party Web sites.

We are authorized to take immediate action against you if you fail to take the action demanded in this letter.

That argument just doesn’t make any sense from a legal point of view. Are they claiming that you now need a public figure’s permission before using their name “in any form”? Does that mean that by writing this post mentioning Bill Cosby, I am opening myself up to a threatening letter from his lawyers? Does this mean that Saturday Night Live and shows like that simply have to close their doors and call it quits, because they aren’t going to be able to get permission for every celebrity and politician they want to parody?

I don’t think the lawyers really think they have a case here, they’re just hoping that they’ll be able to get things removed by sending a letter. Luckily, Andy at waxy.org isn’t backing down, because he agrees that the episodes are protected, and he’s willing to fight for them:

But because it takes so little effort to threaten a small web-based artist (or the blogger who hosts their work), the Net is constantly targeted regardless of just cause. Justin Roiland, creator of House of Cosbys, and Channel 101 were forced to remove House of Cosbys because they couldn’t risk the possibility of an actual lawsuit.

But I know my legal standing, and I’m not backing down unless ordered by the court. This is free speech and creative freedom, and even though it’s just one guy’s goofy labor of love, that’s worth fighting for, dammit.

Now that’s awesome. Way to go, Andy. I can’t imagine the lawyers trying to follow through with this and continue trying to get House of Cosbys taken down with this argument, but we’ll see what happens.

And is it wrong for me to keep wanting to spell it House of Cosbies? I don’t think so. Maybe him and his lawyers are mostly upset at the spelling. If it was “Cosbies”, he’d be perfectly happy about the whole thing and send all of you gift baskets filled with pudding.

EDIT: Wow, I beat BoingBoing to the story by 2 minutes according to the Technorati timestamps. That’s probably only neat to me, since I get so much of my Interwebby news from them. So, basically, never mind.