DialIdol Served With Cease and Desist Letter

Interesting.

Goliath (as they will be known for the purposes of this bulletin) sent this “David” a cease and desist letter yesterday claiming that DialIdol infringes on copyrights they own. I am not sure how they think I infringe and many of the allegations they made in the letter are false but in order to protect myself I am taking DialIdol down while I consult with the appropriate resources.

Goliath is very upset with the entire premise of this web site, particularly the way DialIdol “measures the busy signal” to predict the results. Given this I find it highly unlikely that I can change a few logos/colors/names to satisfy their concerns.

I think the webmaster might be overreacting a little bit there. The DialIdol site’s original logo was clearly based on the American Idol logo: a blue oval with script inside. From what he’s written there, I’m guessing the cease and desist letter claimed he was infringing on their copyright by adopting the look of American Idol’s copywritten content. They may also be complaining about the use of the word “Idol” in the name.

It sounds like he’s just assuming that if he changes the site to answer their complaints, they’ll still find things to complain about because they don’t like the idea behind the site, rather than assuming that they’ll have no choice but to let him keep running if there’s nothing they can complain about. It may be that legally he’s ok with using a logo that’s so closely based on American Idol’s logo, but why go down that road? Just change it to something original.

Now, I may be wrong about their demands, since he hasn’t posted a copy of the cease and desist letter. I’d recommend that he at least send a copy to Chilling Effects so they can archive it, if not post it on his site so we can all see what their complaints are.

Especially since he’s now asking for contributions to his legal fund. It only makes sense to post their complaint so we can see whether it’s something easy to fix (colors, logos, the name, etc) or whether they’re really overreaching (as in the House of Cosbys cease and desist against waxy.org)