Comic strips

CBLDF Protests Removal of Nick Anderson Trump Cartoon from RedBubble – update: VICTORY

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Daily Cartoonist Staff May 27, 2020 1 minute 0 comments

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is standing up to the Trump re-election campaign’s removal of a Nick Anderson cartoon from the online marketplace RedBubble.

From the CBLDF site:

On May 18, the Daily Kos reported that Redbubble removed products featuring Anderson’s cartoon “The Trump Cult,” based on allegations of trademark infringement from Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. The Trump Campaign has misused Redbubble’s reporting mechanism to suppress political expression in the form of parody, critique, and satire protected by the First Amendment.

update:

CBLDF [partnered with the] Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, American Library Association, Office For Intellectual Freedom, Authors Guild, Freedom to Read Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, and PEN America call upon Redbubble to reinstate Mr. Anderson’s product listings to affirm its commitment to its sellers’ — and its own — First Amendment rights.

Though as Nick Anderson says issues remain:

Still, there are some troubling issues raised.The cartoon was removed less than 24 hours after I posted it. I hadn’t gotten a single order for it. I doubt anyone had even seen it yet on the Redbubble site. This reveals that the Trump campaign has a system in place, trawling for material they find objectionable. If it happened to me so quickly, it likely has happened to others. How much other content has been removed this way on Redbubble and other sites?

Also, when I received the first notice of the take down, I followed Redbubble’s instructions to protest the decision. I honestly thought the original decision was probably made by some underling, with little knowledge of copyright or trademark law, or perhaps it was even made by a bot without human eyes evaluating it. It took more than a week before Redbubble responded (in contrast to the quick response for removal). I was quite surprised that Redbubble didn’t reverse the decision. In fact, they doubled down and refused to reinstate the work.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund reports.