02 Apr 2023

Good Mockery

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From the legal substack Serious Trouble:

[T]he big story of the week.

I don’t think there’s been any week when we got so many emails from listeners asking us to address a story in the news as we got from you this week asking us to talk about Afroman. Yes, Afroman, famous for the 2000 hit single “Because I Got High.”

If you have not seen the recent news about Afroman, here’s the short version: Adams County, Ohio police raided his home last year, looking for evidence of drug trafficking and kidnapping. They apparently didn’t find anything related to that, and they didn’t bring any charges. But Afroman took video footage of the raid — some from his security cameras, some that his ex-wife shot on her phone — and turned it into creative content.

For example, [above] is the music video for his new song called “Lemon Pound Cake.” It’s about one of the more rotund officers who raided Afroman’s home, and a tempting lemon pound cake sitting on Afroman’s kitchen counter that seemed to distract him from his official duties. The music video contains quite a bit of that video footage:

This and other raid-related songs have racked up millions of views on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Oh, and Afroman also made t-shirts with the cop’s face on them:

A post shared by O.G. Afroman (@ogafroman)
Now, the cops are suing — not for defamation, but for misappropriating their likenesses for commercial purposes. They say you’re not allowed to take video of police officers who raid your house and turn it into songs and merch you make money off.

Is that right? We discuss how the First Amendment interacts with law restricting how you can use other people’s likenesses commercially. And we talk about the Streisand Effect: won’t the added publicity from the litigation only worsen a key problem the officers raise in their lawsuit, that is, that people keep making fun of them while they try to do their jobs?

Drug Prohibition is stupid. So stupid that even I find myself on the side of Afroman and against the police.

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4 Feedbacks on "Good Mockery"

JustMe

“Drug Prohibition is stupid.”

I am not a fan of making it all legal. Drugs are a disaster and I don’t think our country would survive all drugs being legal.

Would you allow prescription drugs to be sold over the counter?



Talnik

Natural selection.



JustMe

What I would suggest instead of making the use of drugs a criminal offense is to require drug treatment and a form of parole where they are tested regularly and if they are using again they get another 30 day (or more as required) treatment.

I know it is expensive but I understand that we spend $160 billion a year on illegal aliens and if we just decided as a country that they must be deported and no public funds can be spent on them then we would have enough to take care of our own.



SteveS

When Life gives you lemons, make lemon pound cake! I’m with Afroman. The cops look like whiny little bitches here.



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