IANAL, but given that the law says if you’re using something for the purpose of satire or parody, that’s under copyright by someone else, there’s fuck all the copyright holder can do about it, I don’t think the folks at The Onion need to bother filling out the correct forms.
This is clearly a “bunched panties” issue. Even if Dixon’s fully in the right about this from a legal standpoint, it makes the WH look like it’s filled with a bunch of humorless bastards. Given Shrub’s plunging popularity ratings, I don’t think that’s the kind of image they need to be projecting at the moment.
It’s not usually my role to defend the Whitehouse, but let me make one point:
The Onion is brilliant satire. I mean that not in the complimentary sense, but in the sense that their very best stories go just far enough in their ridiculousness to get over the line to be satire, while remaining uncomfortably close to some twisted version of reality. And the stories are packaged in perfect US media-ese.
There is some chance that unhip bozos might get the wrong idea of an Onion story. Putting the prez’s seal on such a thing is very different to putting it on the side of a plane in a movie.
Indeed it is; UncleBear helpfully provided a cite. The law prohibits use of the seal “for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof”.
Again, nobody in his right mind could possibly consider it “reasonable” to suppose that the Government of the United States has sponsored or approved these clips, or that The Onion intends to convey such an impression.
That said, I’m willing to chalk this up to stupidity rather than malice.
