Now, my shirts were, at best, slightly amusing. They might elicit a smirk or on a good day a chortle. American Idol's cease and desist letter, now that's freakin' hilarious!

I'm just one entrepreneur trying to sell t-shirt in an obscure corner of the internet, yet American Idol is worried about me "diluting and tarnishing" American Idol's good name. If they were really worried about American Idol's good name they would have put a stop to Hung For The Holidays.

And when I say "trying to sell," I mean it. I offered the shirt for several months and I checked my records, I sold exactly one "American Idiot" t-shirt. That buyer was . . . me. So I made a total of zero dollars on that design. American Idol (A.K.A. Freemantle Media) spent more than I made on the shirts on the paper they printed my cease and desist letter on. Plus it was certified mail, so that's more cost there. But wait it gets better! The letter wasn't from American Idol, it was from the law firm that represents American Idol. I have no idea what a lawyer goes for hourly, but I'm going to betting it's some mad cash. They spent like hundreds of dollars sending me a letter to tell me to stop selling shirts, which I wasn't able to do anyway. That's funny!

What's even funnier is that they say my design is (quote) "likely to cause confusion" ... to me that sounds like they' think "the show" is likely to be idiotic.

So it occurs to me that parody is protected under the First Amendment. Can American Idol even legally make me cease and desist? So I did some research on the internet, as apparently search engines can be used to look for things other than cross referencing names of people you know with kinky fetishes.

It turns out that, the legal take on this (over simplified of course), is that true parody is protected, making money off that parody is more of a gray area. Parody, not for profit, is social commentary. Parody, for profit, can be viewed as profiting from someone else's work, if it isn't a "true parody." And it's up to the courts to decide if it's a true parody or not in that case. Since I can't even sell a lousy t-shirt, there's no way, right or wrong, I'm going to have money to contest this in court.

However, upon re-reading the letter, the way it's written, they're really only asking them to write them a letter and tell them I'm not selling "American Idiot" stuff anymore (and for that letter to be truthful).

Hell, I don't care about selling the shirts. I wasn't selling them anyway!

Further more they had neglected to put any sort of privacy/confidentiality statement on the letter, meaning I am fully within my legal rights to post the cease and desist letter anywhere I wanted. I hope the public posting of American Idol's legal strong arm tactics don't "tarnish" the "goodwill associated" with American Idol.

I may not financially be able to stand up to you in court, but I'll have my revenge on you trunk monkeys! As Randy Jackson would say, "Ya feelin' me, Dawg?"

And if you have some inkling that you might want to buy one of my other shirts, before I get a cease and desist letter about them, do it!

Email Me and tell me what you think of American Idiot . . . oops! I mean American Idol (I guess it really is likely to cause confusion), and I just might post it here.