Photo: Wunderground.com
Steve Aoki has threatened legal action to Irish parody site Wunderground Music after including his image in their 'Shit DJ Impression' gag.
As Fact reports after the site included Aoki's image in a digital mockup of the t-shirt that you can see below, Aoki's lawyers threatened the site with legal action. Wunderground, being both very funny and veterans of similar scraps with the likes of David Guetta, decided to respond with an open letter..
In the lengthy letter, Wunderground Music founder Mikey Maguire explains to Aoki's California Law Firm: "We’re a satirical comedy website. I’m sure everybody in your office is much too busy reading the Wall Street Journal, chasing online comedians with cease & desist letters and eating Cronuts (and who could blame you all? They are little balls of heaven) to know what Wunderground is, so I’ll get your client to fill you in."
Maguire then takes the bold step of quoting Aoki's own words back to his legal team, citing an earlier post where the DJ explained "I want to make sure my fans understand that this piece is in fact a parody. And I’m stressing the word parody here: any humorous, satirical, or burlesque imitation, as of a person, event."
Maguire's letter then patiently explains that the t-shirt seen above never actually existied. "Your letter refers many times to the “infringing tee”. Unfortunately, there is no “infringing tee”. There never was. The image you refer to is simply a digital mock-up. In fact, all of the Wunderground Apparel range on the indiegogo campaign you refer to were simply digital mock-ups." Maguire also references the fact that only eleven people requested the T-shirt.
Maguire seems to be treating the threat of legal action with typical good humour. "Basically, Steve isn’t too keen on Wunderground because we like to poke fun at him every now and again. To be fair, we poke fun at pretty much every electronic music act, including everybody from Tale of Us to David Morales, from Disclosure to Maya Jane Coles. We’re an Electronic Music comedy site, it’s kinda what we do."
Gigwise's view? All power to Wunderground. Now we're off to read Producer Who Sampled Entire Song And Released It As His Own Wins Nobel Prize For Balls.
