THE TIMES BACKS OFF….I’m a little late on this, but I blogged on Saturday about Robert Cox’s New York Times parody and the heavyhanded response from the Times, which ordered him to take it down and threatened to have his entire site shut down via a DMCA complaint. Yesterday the Times withdrew its objection and sent Cox the following email:
Thank you for responding to our complaint. By adding the bold-faced disclaimer at the top of the faux Columnist Corrections Page, you are no longer confusing readers and as a result of this change, we agree that the page is now a parody which is protected under the First Amendment. We are copying Verio on this e-mail in order to inform them that we no longer have any objections to your site.
Good for them. It’s the right thing to do on a whole bunch of different levels.
What’s also interesting is that I got an email from their new Public Editor (or, rather, from “The Office of the Public Editor”) telling me about their change of heart. Presumably they sent this email to anyone who blogged about this, which means they were eager to get the word out that they had backed off. That’s also the right thing to do, once again on a whole bunch of different levels.
