Pres. of Variety "Appears" on Joe Escalante's Legal Show

This is a historical revisionist construction of what Neil Stiles, President of Variety Magazine Group would learn if he called Barely Legal Radio. It's too bad he didn't get the advice he needed. It would have been free. To learn more about why this Hollywood trade publication and their parent company Reed Elsevier filed a frivolous law suit against the Vandals, please visit www.vandals.com.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Neil Stiles
• Variety
• Daily Variety
• frivolous lawsuit
• lawsuit abuse
• Vandals
• escalante
• Josh Freese
• dave Quackenbush
• warren Fitzgerald
• Reed Elsevier
• Fulbright & Jaworski
• J. Paul Williamson
• Tara Vold
• Peter Bart

[joeescalante]

The Daily Variety and their parent company Reed Elsevier, inc. are trying to bleed us dry. They will spend whatever it takes to cause us harm. Their case now boils down to proving to a jury that The Vandals have control over individuals with youtube accounts all over the planet. And that the Vandals control the images associated with the Myspace MP3 retail store, even though it says in black and white in the Myspace Terms and Conditions that the bands have no control over this.

[joeescalante]

Thanks Cheddar21! The latest is Variety filing a motion in court to object to the fact that we are representing ourselves in Federal Court. They managed to puke out a legal argument that we should be required to spend real money on attorneys. It's just not fair that we aren't spending the kind of money they though they could force us to spend. Can you believe these guys? And they call themselves journalists for the arts?

[kingster911]

@VandalsOfficial Thank you for the quick response! You sort-of clarified what I suspected with the Myspace thing, and as to the BK, good point. I was just thinking back to those ramshackle t-shirt shops in Berkeley/SF that have such things like that. I get the feeling that it's small/independent enough manufacturers of such defaming and/or parody tees that the big corporations probably don't take notice. You say you had an agreement not to use the parody anymore, did you change the cover?

[VandalsOfficial]

@kingster911 Re: Burger King. Each case is different. Is it a parody of the original copyright/trademark? That's what it's supposed to be to qualify for protection under the Fair Use doctrine of the copyright act. Rat Food makes a comment on Burger King's food quality, theoretically. Burger King could argue that it is defamation with no factual basis however.

[VandalsOfficial]

@kingster911 They are saying two things. #1 is that our album infringed on their trademarked logo. They don't recognize parody like the rest of the world does. #2. When it appeared on myspace music, it was a breach of our agreement not to use the parody any more. The problem is that we don't provide images for myspace music. they are a 3rd party distributor of MP3s so they are not part of our agreement not to use the parody.

[kingster911]

@joeescalante whoa, are they saying something about The Vandals' album art being on Myspace or are they saying Myspace "infringed" on the DV's font? And also, this just made me connect this whole hoopla to something else: shirts for example like ones that show a Burger King logo but with the words "Rat Food" or something like that, since they are completely parody that's what makes them allowed to print it?

[JMC78666]

Why is this still in litigation?

[cheddar21]

I'm never saying a kind word about variety magazine. Good luck stepping through their mountains of bullshit, theVandals! Burn the bible of hollywood!

[sneegro]

Ridiculous lawsuit.

[greedyhips22]

This is such a ingenious skit and I didn't know about this lawsuit until I saw the video, it really pisses me off