The gist of this letter is that the existence of our website Completely BS Breaking News somehow harms CBS Corp's business, and that we should hand over the domain name cbsbreakingnews.com pronto.
The Cease and Desist mentions "unfair competition" and such.
This is surprising, because it implies that CBS Corp are also in the business of satire, parodies, and total BS. We do not watch CBS Corp's TV channel, so we have no idea what kind of programming they provide. Is it mostly BS, too?
Anyway, we are actually, despite physical appearances, fairly reasonable people, and requested to talk to a CBS Corp person. We got a call about a minute later. Here is basically how the conversation went.
"Who the &%$(#& is calling me at 2:00 AM? This better be Jenna. Or at least Eve."
"I'm calling from CBS about bla bla bla. Give us your domain name."
"Yeah, OK. Sure. All I want is that requests to cbsbreakingnews.com are forwarded, i.e. redirected, to a new replacement domain name I will get."
"No. Give us your domain name."
"The new domain name won't have 'cbs' in it. It would be something like, NicksCrazyNews.com or whatever."
"No. Give us your domain name."
"So... What are you offering?"
"You get nothing. Give us the domain name or we take it from you."
Ever since we first received the Cease and Desist, we had a small nagging suspicion that someone in the satire community might be pranking us. That kind of thing is bound to happen if you are in the business of messing with people's heads. But the arrogance, meanness, unreasonableness exhibited by CBS Corp's hatchet person was just too, too unreal to have been faked.
So, anyway, we stopped using "CBS Breaking News" on our site. It stood for "Completely BS Breaking News." The BS, of course, refers to male bovine excrement. We are no longer abbreviating throughout the website. It's a longer and uglier name for our site, but at least we won't be accused of unfairly outcompeting CBS Corp.
However, something tells us that the formidable legal machinery of CBS Corp isn't about to rumble into reverse. So we are initiating a blatant public sympathy solicitation campaign. After all, CBS Corp are an unfriendly group of suits, one of which made $57 million in 2010, whereas we are, plural first-person usage notwithstanding, just one
We should also note that, and this is critically important, our sister had a baby, but then she passed away, so we are taking care of it, but then it lost its arms, and its legs, but its growing, and fairly happy, but it's hard because we are working the second shift at the factory...
Anyway, the point of this post is to say that the right to free satire must be defended. It's in the Constitution, in the 428th Amendment. CBS Corp should be told to back off now. Moreover, if CBS Corp steam ahead and use their legal prowess to steal our domain name, links to fake news stories will connect to a domain name owned by CBS Corp, which would lend the stories (such as "Marshall Islands Legalize Cocaine") a degree of verisimilitude even we wouldn't be comfortable with.
Please add your voice, and tell CBS Corp to take a hike. You can contact the person at CBS Corp who made $57 mil here. Make sure you use the phrases "completely disgusted" and "utterly unbelievable" and "never, ever watch CBS" and "long-range rifle."
Thank you! In return, we promise to keep pushing the envelope, pulling your leg, and breaking the news like never before.
