UPDATE: 5-3-10
The Daily Variety is still suing the Vandals. They are a bum out. People ask me what you can do to help. We will be uploading more info about the law suit later to show people how ruthless and unethical this law suit is, but in the mean time, let Variety Editor Timothy Gray know that you don't appreciate supposed journalists using abusive lawsuits against small punk bands to stifle their free speech rights and shake them down for money. tim.gray@variety.com. Ask him the same things we've been asking his lawyers. What harm has been done to you by the Vandals? Name one example of damage. What do you think of the Fair Use Doctrine?
A message from the Vandals:
In response to inquiries, yes, it is a matter of public record now: The Vandals have been sued by The Daily Variety (Hollywood trade newspaper). Here's the public link to the lawsuit:
This was filed in Delaware on order from a guy named J.Paul Williamson from the law firm Fulbright and Jaworsky that has 950 attorneys on staff. The named Plaintiff is Variety's parent company Reed Elsevier. They have about 32,000 employees.
We are looking for a Delaware attorney that will help us remove this abusive lawsuit to California where all the parties are located and we can be abused closer to our homes.
If you know a Delaware attorney, please email Joe at joe@vandals.com.
We also need other help. The Daily Variety claims that our old logo for Hollywood Potato Chip, which is a parody of the Daily Variety logo commenting on the materialistic culture of Hollywood, is still on the Internet and they are suing us for this. We agreed not to use this logo anymore and we have no product for sale with this logo so their claims that we are intentionally using it and harming the Daily Variety are ludicrous.
We do not have this logo, or any other of their logos on any of our sites under our control. They are telling us that it is still on the Internet but they wont tell us where it is. Instead, they have demanded a HUGE sum of money. I mean HUGE, OUTRAGEOUS, and IMPOSSIBLE TO RAISE; and $25,000 for their attorneys to cover all the damages they have suffered from what they call a breach of our settlement agreement.
We have breached nothing. We are just a punk band and a small insolvent record label trying to keep stuff on the shelves and pay royalties to other artists.
Now they are in the process of punishing us with an abusive law suit filed in Delaware, where none of the parties reside or do business, because this will cause us the most financial harm and when we get sick of it, and realize we can't afford to fight them, we will pay them the money. That is our opinion of what is going on because we cooperated in every way to try to take the images down, but they filed the suit anyway…. in Delaware.
So we are asking for your help. If you see a logo from this album, or from the Kung Fu Records compilation "Gone With The Wind Of Punk Samplers" that is on a site that we control, please notify joe@vandals.com so we can take it down. Their last letter told us there were logos on myspace and youtube. We can't find them, and The Daily Variety refused to point them out so we could fix them, then they sued us. We are baffled.
Anyone that find's one will get two tickets to an upcoming Vandals show planned as a benefit concert to raise money to pay the legal fees involved in fighting the Daily Variety (Hollywood trade newspaper).
Other than the irony of a newspaper (supposedly devoted to serving artists) suing a small punk band over a free speech issue, this is very serious so we need a Delaware lawyer right away and we need to find any of these "infringing" marks and get them off the Internet.
Thanks. The Vandals. www.vandals.com
