My Beef With CafePress and Cowbell

From CafePress Home Page (May 04)
Originally uploaded by candy.

My husband did a very nice design for a "more cowbell" t-shirt. It features a cute cartoon of the character of Bruce Dickenson and yellow letters that say "More Cowbell" on it (if you don't know about this, it is a skit that appeared on SNL about 5 years ago, and his been a craze ever since) Anyway, a couple hours after my husband put it in his store, he got an email from cafePress. They claimed the image was a likeness of Christopher Walken and could not be used. Well, first of all, it's a friggin cartoon, second of all, what about the shirt that's on their own homepage featuring a cartoon of Will Ferrell as his character from this skit, banging away on a cowbell? What hypocrites.

"Dear Anne C.
I have several stores that have been successful through CafePress for many years. I host the Online Christopher Walken Fan Club and I am Jonathan's wife.

I am highly disappointed that you would put this particular design into pending status from my husband's majaNATION store. Of course, it's your company's right to choose not to print something, but it is my opinion that banning a cartoon illustration or any kind of caricature, especially when it doesn't have the person's name on the design, is being highly overprotective, and it's also kind of hypocritical when I see some of the designs that you do allow. It is especially hypocritical to display a similar design with a cartoon likeness of the character played by Will Farrell in the Cowbell skit on your home page! (see attached .jpg, pulled from your home page today) It is almost suspicious that you have a shirt with a "cowbell" design on your homepage and you are banning another similar "cowbell" design. I don't mean to imply anything, but you have to realize how that looks to your customers.

I just wanted to offer a point of perspective on this. If you think of how many people imitate Christopher Walken - on radio, TV, stage, etc... I really doubt Chris or ICM would take the time and money to sue because of a cartoon. And, I can guarantee that he wouldn't even consider this an image of himself, it resembles an image of the character he played in the skit. Again, I understand that you have the right to ban whatever images you want, but it's a complete waste of potential income for you and everyone at cafepress, from a completely harmless design. And, by implying that it was okay (by featuring the attached image on your homepage,) it was a waste of my husband's time on this design.

If you're truly worried about infringing on intellectual property, you should consider removing any and all "more cowbell" merchandise (I believe there is something like 950 products that come up in the search) because the phrase "more cowbell" was written by someone at Saturday Night Live, therefore it is intellectual property. But, I wouldn't personally think that you'd need to act on that, any more than you need to remove my husband's design.

I hope that you can revise your system for banning images in the future as I think it is lacking consistency, fairness and common sense.

Thanks for your attention
Candy Rosenbaum
www.walkenfanclub.com


UPDATE: Ah, the power of the pen. They just sent Jonathan an email saying "after further consideration we have restored the image." so, without further adieu, here it is!!