Who knew blogging could be so perilous – especially for aburger flipper? Los Angeles resident and former ground beef extraordinaire, Bill Poon (hold your immature jokes, please), reports that he was fired from his job last week because of a MySpace parody blog about the company president.
But he wasn’t just fired, he was accused of identity theft and threatened with legal action.
Poon (chuckle) wrote on his Live Journal blog that he posted an image of the undisclosed company’s president on a specially made MySpace blog in September of last year. He left the image up for a week, leaving comments for co-workers that said “go back to work” and “good job.” The blog, intended to be “hi-jinks highlarious,” was not so amusing to “the counsel” (council).
“Apparently, the humor was lost on the counsel’ (I’m rather flattered that the fate of a lowly burgermaker like me would be determined by a “counsel” I guess my burgers are that damn good) and said that the only recourse was terminationThe HR says blah blah blah blah and this is actually a criminal offense but they won’t press chargesI ‘m pretty kwai chang caine pragmatic about this. But the weird thing is identity theft?'”
Poon (hee hee) says his burger-making performance was exemplary and that the situation “was pretty fishy.”
Commenters on BoingBoing debate whether using a person’s image for parody can be considered identity theft. In New York, reports the second reader, recreational conduct is protected by law, which may protect bloggers from being fired for their blogs.
Poon’s next venture could be and endorsement deal for the orange-flavored beverage Tang. Stores, no doubt, wouldn’t be able to keep Poon’s Tang in stock.
My apologies.
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