Best Buy REALLY Doesn’t Like Parodies
In this second half of the the weekly lesson on stoopidity, Stoopid Saturday, we examine why it’s not a good idea for an electronics store to send nastygrams to bloggers.
Hey, Look! Boom! Bang! Wham! I’m Sendin’ Out a Nastygra~aaam!
No, it’s not code for a spam email with links to an “adult site”. It’s legal action, baby!
Best Buy sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Scott Beale (Laughing Squid) for having had the audacity to blog news that prankster/comedy troupe Improv Everywhere selling t-shirts that were a parody of the Best Buy brand. Whether or not the parody is legally in the clear is one matter, but Best Buy nastygramming Beale for simply blogging about it — not selling the shirts or participating directly?
The Plain Truth Is Often The Stoopidest One
This was just plain stoopid of Best Buy. Why the f@#$ would you kill the messenger? Sure, it makes for good cinema (300), but not good PR.
Plus, the blogger had nothing to do with the actual infringement. Honestly, this was a pretty good prank. The people who pulled it off had reason to celebrate by not even profiting off of some shirts.
Well, it was better than that Jell-O in the high school pool one Mari thought of for her senior prank, anyway…
“Take that! Haha, I’m the greatest. High five, man.”
Now Mari is going to Circus City to get an external hard drive (if Mari does indeed end up getting one this year). Take that, store that never has what Mari’s looking for anyway! *high fives all readers in the manner of some jock pumped up on steroids*
Oh, by the way, they apologized the next day.
The first half of this week’s stoopidity lesson.
Previous Lessons in Stoopidity:
- First Lesson: In Which Mari Delivers A Double Whammy of Stoopid - Star Wars vs. Harry Potter & I Can Has Cheezburger
- Second Lesson: In Which Mari Has Nothing Intelligent To Write - Random is Funny(and Mari is NOT)
- Third Lesson: In Which Mari Makes A Half-Hearted Attempt At Sounding Intelligent - Internet Fighting
- Fourth Lesson: In Which Mari Writes of The TSA - Knife=OK, Pudding=Confiscated
- Fifth Lesson: In Which Mari rambles about a local episode of stoopid - On Bridges
- Sixth Lesson: In Which Mari decides to post about pirates for no particular reason - Pirates arr Funny
- Seventh Lesson: In which Mari details the stoopidity and cruelty of a local man - Man Stabs Dog
- Mini-Lesson: In which Mari details a small fraction of her own stoopidity - Bad Behavior Blocked Mari
Activism, Blogging, Online, Stoopid Saturday 
15 December 2007, 00:15
bad pr, best buy, c&d, cease and desist, copyright, copyright infringement, nastygram, stoopidYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I don’t live in America so I can’t really relate to this topic but it is very much stupid to take legal action and apologize the next day.
Lmao, that is stupid XD
aww… that doesn’t seem right. For a corporation to tell someone that they shouldn’t be blogging about something interesting is wrong.
Shesh, what an awesome way to make yourself look like a jacka$$. Honestly, I don’t care much for Best Buy myself, and after reading this, I think even less of the store now.
If he makes them look bad enough, maybe they will shut him up with a widescreen HD TV.
That IS STUPID of Best Buy. Geez, the guy only blogged about it…
The last time I went to Best Buy, a sales chick was basically chastising me for wanting to buy something she thought was inferior to the one she was plugging (higher price).
Yeah. Your WP tutorial helped me a lot.
That’s so stupid, but the prank was hilarious. I was just reading the blog post on Improv Everywhere. So funny.
Dude. What the frig. xD
We don’t have Best Buy here, but that was really stupid of them.
I’m not a huge fan of Best Buy since being employed by them a few years back. The suck.
I remember hearing about this improv group.. they did some funny stuff in a Home Depot as well!
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