The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published its latest “Takedown Hall of Shame” installment, listing three companies that used baseless and stupid legal threats to censor the Internet. The current crop includes Kern’s Kitchen in Louisville, which claims a trademark on the common term “Derby Pie” and threatens bloggers who post their family recipes for the classic desert — they also target WordPress.com for their threats (one victim changed the name of the recipe to “Mean Spirited Censorship Pie“).
Another inductee is Time Warner Cable, who went after a critic who put up a site making fun of the company’s terrible customer service, trying to get its YouTube, Twitter and other social media sites taken down.
Finally, there’s Fox, which earned a place in the Hall of Shame by sending out fraudulent takedown notices over my bestselling novel Homeland, swearing on pain of perjury that it represented me (it doesn’t).
Takedown Hall of Shame Inductions, May 2013