Ralph Lauren Tries To Censor BoingBoing

After Xeni Jardin complained about an ad from Ralph Lauren that had apparently been photoshopped to make the model look ridiculously skinny, the fashion company sent the popular blog a take-down notice asking them to remove the photograph of the ad.

In the initial criticism Xeni simply said ‘Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis’ and a month later Ralph Lauren sent BoingBoing’s ISP a legal letter.

In a follow up post on BB, Cory Doctorow says:

This is classic fair use: a reproduction “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,” etc.

However, Ralph Lauren’s marketing arm and its law firm don’t see it that way. According to them, this is an “infringing image,” and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada’s Priority Colo. One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don’t automatically act on DMCA takedowns. Instead, they pass them on to us and we talk about whether they pass the giggle-test.

This one doesn’t.

More here: The criticism that Ralph Lauren doesn’t want you to see!