"Litigation is a form of war and nobody really wins in war. "It was an example of ask and you shall receive," said Joseph Yanny, a lawyer who represents Corona. Lawyers for the beer, who called the site "very cute" in their informal letter to Bauman, reached an undisclosed agreement allowing him to use the graphic without facing further legal action. "It was material that was passed around on the Internet for five years," said Eric Bauman. In September of last year lawyers for the makers of Corona Extra beer sent Eric Bauman a letter to discuss the unauthorized use of the beer's trademark. Viacom was not the first company to find less than amusing. "We are seeing these legal issues more and more because when you are on the Internet you are awfully easy to find." "Before the Internet, people doing parodies did not have a kind of global reach," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties watchdog group. Poking fun at celebrities and corporations using protected material has long been the low-risk business of homemade fanzines generally distributed far below the radar of corporate lawyers. If this David and Goliath battle over cyberspeech materializes it will be the latest in the struggle between billion-dollar corporations and bedroom Webmasters over the use of highly accessible materials. We don't want to see our copyrights diluted." "We are a media company and that is what our whole business is about. "When we see that our copyrights are being infringed we want to do something about it," the spokesperson said. According to a Viacom spokesperson, both sides are simply still "in conversation." Neil Bauman says he expects to get a summons any day.
We want to see if big bad Viacom can shut him down." "This is a 23-year-old kid operating a Web site out of his father's house. "Right now we are calling their bluff," said Neil Bauman, vice president of the site and father of its creator Eric "eBaum" Bauman. The judge, the doc, the shock jock and the Saturday Night Live funnyman are still available for all your prank-calling needs. Phil, Howard Stern and Tim Meadows are not removed. Viacom threatened the site with a lawsuit if clips of Judge Judy, Dr. bills itself as "a hilarious collection of media for the masses."īut according to one media giant, it's not. The site contains some two dozen celebrity soundboards and a collection of calls made using them, along with a varied collection of photos, jokes and links. Hundreds of clips from the likes of Judge Judy to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Homer Simpson are a click away on sites like. Welcome to the world of "soundboards" - online audio samples that have propelled the time-honored tradition of prank calling into the Internet age. "Why don't you pay attention?" she snaps. "Hello?!" And then, "Do you take any prescribed medications, sir?" When you don't respond, she becomes impatient. Tell me your name," the acid-tongued arbiter says. (Court TV) - You pick up the phone and the unmistakable rasp of TV's Judge Judy crackles over the line.
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