{"id":24339,"date":"2014-02-19T08:58:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T13:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24339"},"modified":"2014-02-19T09:00:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T14:00:18","slug":"nsa-and-dhs-admit-that-parody-is-allowed-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/19\/nsa-and-dhs-admit-that-parody-is-allowed-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA and DHS admit that parody is allowed after all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/hillicon-valley\/technology\/198652-nsa-dhs-drops-complaint-against-parody-mugs-shirts\" target=\"_blank\">Julian Hattem<\/a> reports that the NSA and the DHS have dropped their complaint about parody mugs that they initially claimed were violating some sort of &#8220;special legal protection&#8221; for certain US government agencies&#8217; seals:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The NSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are abandoning their protests against a line of mugs, hats and shirts that mock official government insignia, settling a lawsuit filed by the consumer interest group Public Citizen on behalf of Dan McCall, a Minnesota activist who sold products poking fun at the government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is an important win,\u201d said Paul Levy, a Public Citizen lawyer involved in the case, in a statement on Tuesday. \u201cCitizens shouldn\u2019t have to worry whether criticizing government agencies will get them in trouble or not. This settlement proves the First Amendment is there to protect citizens\u2019 rights to free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McCall\u2019s site, <a href=\"http:\/\/libertymaniacs.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">LibertyManiacs.com<\/a>, sold bumper stickers, shirts, hats and other goods featuring a series of parody images. One graphic featured the DHS seal with the words \u201cDepartment of Homeland Stupidity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, the NSA and the DHS sent cease and desist letters to Zazzle, which printed McCall\u2019s designs, claiming that the images violated special legal protections for the agencies&#8217; official seals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The LibertyManiacs site shows a selection of &#8220;Censored by&#8221; items on the front page (I imagine they&#8217;ll be getting quite a sales boost from this case):<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/libertymaniacs.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LibertyManiacs-front-page.jpg\" alt=\"LibertyManiacs front page\" width=\"853\" height=\"398\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LibertyManiacs-front-page.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LibertyManiacs-front-page-150x69.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LibertyManiacs-front-page-480x223.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian Hattem reports that the NSA and the DHS have dropped their complaint about parody mugs that they initially claimed were violating some sort of &#8220;special legal protection&#8221; for certain US government agencies&#8217; seals: The NSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are abandoning their protests against a line of mugs, hats and shirts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,84],"tags":[913,463],"class_list":["post-24339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-government","tag-nsa","tag-parody"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6kz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24343,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24339\/revisions\/24343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}