After NRA Parody, Thousands Of Websites Taken Down

A parody website, ostensibly in the name of the NRA and gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, offered a buy-one-give-one deal, whereby if you bought a handgun, a free hand gun would be provided to someone in need of one in the inner city. The parody was “impressively detailed,” notes a post about it on the website TechDirt. A complaint from the NRA is said to have included an allegation of trademark infringement and resulted in a takedown not only of the parody site, but of thousands of other sites on the platform that hosted it. The episode puts some basic internet communications issues front and center – e.g., if a parody is believable in part because it appropriates a trademark, does it exceed the permissible boundaries of parody? What are those boundaries, and who marks them? And, in any case, what’s the responsibility of a “host”? This analysis from TechDirt is followed by some unusually thought-provoking reader comments regarding an issue that’s far from resolved and probably won’t be any time soon.