by Paul Alan Levy
CafePress has responded to our letter to the political action committee Ready for Hillary by agreeing that Dan McCall's Ready for Oligarchy parodies are protected by the First Amendment as well as by the doctrine of fair use; it is in the process of restoring the parodies to its onlne store. It also provided is with a copy of Ready for Hillary's actual takedown letter to that company, revealing both that its principal claim was copyright infringement, and that the immediate target of its takedown command was a different parodist, whose crime was to pair the words "Ready for Hillary" with the words "to Explain Benghazi."
Zazzle, regrettably, has yet to respond, and neither has Ready for Hillary acknowledged its overreach and recinded its claims of infringement. We have, therefore, reminded its counsel that the deadline to avoid an action for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement is fast approaching.
