Sambodian Satiricon: Satire Icons Suppressed!

An obscure Brazilan blogger is sued by the UOL Internet portal and its part-owner, the Folha de S. Paulo metro daily, for trademark infringement, and is forced to take down two satirical Web stickers calling for a boycott of the two vehicles.

He (she?) is part of an apparently small but vocal movement of <sem-mídia> lambasting the Folha for allegedly aiding and abetting a ham-fisted smear campaign worthy of Donald Segretti.

See

• Motormouth Rohter Redux: The Lula Buggery Backlash

I just wonder what would have become of my warped little mind if Mad magazine — fershlugginer! — had labored under similarly draconian limits on satire when I was growing up.

Remember those parody product stickers you used to cover your lunchbox with?  For example:

Now, I happen to like Progresso soups — split pea with ham! –but calling it Progreaso is directly analogous to calling the Folha the Falha (failure) de S. Paulo.

And why not? I wish the ombudsman of the daily fishwrap would explain this to me better.

Lucky for me I live in a country where Xerox failed to prevent the verb , meaning to photocopy generally, from entering the dictionary and hence the public domain. Otherwise, having used the term — and with good reason, I would argue, based on hard evidence —very freely in my early blogging, I might be doing hard time now.

The situation reminds me of a book I have on the wild early days of the São Paulo press: Preso Por Trocadilho (Imprisoned for punning.)

I translate, as always, in haste pra inglês ver.

Acabo de ser notificado extrajudicialmente por escritório de advocacia representando a Folha para que retirasse os selos da campanha #CancelandoFOLHA #CancelandoUOL, sob pena de processo por suposto uso indevido das marcas. Sendo assim, retirei imediatamente os referidos selos. No momento não poderei desenvolver um post explicando melhor o caso, mas deixo aqui meu protesto por mais este ato de censura contra blogs.

I have just been notified … by a law form representing the FSP that the stickers I made for the Cancel The Folha and Cancel UOL campaign must be unpublished, on pain of being sued for trademark infringement. At the moment I cannot publish a post explaining this better, but I want to register here my protest at another act of censorship targeting blogs.