I was irritated and disappointed when I received notification from Cafepress that my design, ‘Dumbledore’s Army – Serving with Pride’, had to be removed because of suspected copyright infringement. Yes, as a non-U.S. citizen, I had no idea that according to U.S. law the mere use of the word ‘Dumbledore’ already constitutes an infringement (and honestly I can’t understand how the parody tees work because they mention other brand or product names all the time!)
While I am left with no choice but to let Cafepress remove my design, I can’t help wondering if this has anything to do with my design being PRO-GAY. According to Cafepress’s explanation, Warner Bros. “holds the rights to all the images, words, or ANY CONTENT generated from their movies”. Well, I did a search on Cafepress for HP-related products and guess what? There were quite a lot of them! Some of them bore the D.A. logo, the stag petronus, Hogwarts flag/emblem etc.. I strongly suspect those designs did not have WB’s permission either!
Did other designs survive there because they’re HP-related but NOT GAY-HP-related? I wish I knew the answer!
