There's been quite the dust-up between Spocko's Brain and KSFO/ABC Radio/Disney going on for the last month. I reported just a touch of it and it's gotten more interesting as time has gone by. Spocko's Brain set off Disney by recording some clips of KSFO radio "hosts" doing their right wing blather, blather that contained some pretty inflammatory speech, stuff I'm not going to repeat past noting that it involved lynchings, requiring Muslim blaspheming of callers, slightly veiled assassination threats and sending it on to KSFO advertisers and asking if that's what they intended their brands to be associated with. Disney's lawyers filed a Cease and Desist on copyright grounds and intimidated Spocko's blog host into shutting him down. Keep in mind that these were clips of radio broadcast.
Enter Daily Kos and Mike Stark to stir the pot. Mike got copies of the clips and distributed them to any who wanted them and a list of KSFO advertisers. Bloggers came out of the woodwork and began doing Spocko's gig for him. Electronic Frontiers Foundation began doing free legal work for Spocko and he found a Blog host who'd put him back up. The current toll for KSFO in advertising is confirmed as : Visa, Master Card, Bank of America, FedEx, and Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Some of the bigger players attracted to this dust-up are: San Fransico Chronicle, Media Matters, CBS KPIX, Atrios, Americablog, EFF, and a heck of a lot of other bloggers.
KSFO's Melanie Morgan claimed this has all gone through Media Matters since Spocko has been "joined by some very dangerous and frightening fringe-left groups in this country." She accused Spocko of using "these audio clips which are out of context, old, or in some cases just outright lies," without bothering to explain why age or context had anything to do with their nastiness and how exactly their clips were lies. Is this Orwellian enough language to bring to mind another right wing *******, the President and Co.? Online Media gets what's happened just so by noting, "Disney is now left with the option of playing a virtual game of "Whack A Mole," as the Rodent Empire's lawyers will need to slap citations against a series of sites as swiftly as they pop up." KSFO doesn't seem to be able to get it, yes, you can say what you want up to pretty extreme limits, but that doesn't mean that you can't get slapped for it. By a bunch of people who pay perfectly good money for you to do it.
Disney/ABC jumped all over the BushCo bandwagon awhile back, just about in time for that star to begin to slip. Now you have to wonder if Disney's family friendly brand being linked to hate speech is a real good business move.
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