EFF sues dinosaur Barney over free speech

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the company that produces the "Barney and Friends" children's television program, saying it has harassed the creator of a Barney parody Web site with "baseless legal threats."

In recent years, Lyons Partnership LP has threatened legal action against multiple groups for allegedly violating its copyright and trademarks for Barney. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the EFF asked the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York to rule that Stuart Frankel's online parody of Barney is protected as free speech.

A representative of Lyons Partnership said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

Lyons Partnership has sent multiple cease-and-desist letters to Frankel for a Web page that includes a depiction of the fuzzy purple dinosaur as Satan. In an October letter, Lyons demands that Frankel immediately take down copyrighted images of Barney. The company threatens to take legal action or contact Frankel's ISP (Internet service provider) if he doesn't comply.

"The Creature's tactic, for perhaps the first time, actually makes sense -- the Creature has been beaten up so badly in court that it has finally learned to try its case in a non-legal venue, such as an ISP," Frankel writes on his Web page. "Will the Creature succeed this time? It's difficult to care."

This isn't the first time the EFF, a civil liberties group, has tangled with Barney. Lyons Partnership sent a cease-and-desist letter to the EFF in 2001 for the group's link to another parody site. The EFF sent a letter back, calling the Lyons' claims "baseless."

Lyons Partnership has a "prehistoric understanding" of copyright and trademark laws, the EFF said on its Web site.

Parody Web sites are clearly protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, said EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann. "It's time for Barney to call off his lawyer armies and get back to entertaining children," von Lohmann said in a statement.