Office Depot DMCA

Background

On April 5th, 2013, Redditor heisenberg69 submitted a post titled “TIL that the Nazi swastika fits perfectly into the Office Depot logo” to the /r/circlejerk^[4] subreddit, which linked to an Imgur page containing a logo of the office product supply retailer Office Depot with a swastika drawn inside of it.

Then on November 6th, 2013, Office Depot sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)^[1] notice to Reddit, requesting the removal of heisenberg69’s “racist, hateful and violent” post from the site.

Notable Developments

The same day, the tech news site Tech Dirt^[2] mocked the unfounded basis of Office Depot’s copyright infringement claim in an article titled “Office Depot Sends World’s Worst DMCA Notice To Reddit.” The article was subsequently linked to the /r/technology^[3] subreddit, where it received more than 19,600 up votes and 1,600 comments in the first 24 hours.

Also on November 6th, Redditor RalphiesBoogers submitted a post titled “Googled ‘Office Depot CEO.’ Was not disappoint” to the /r/circlejerk^[6] subreddit, featuring a screenshot of a Google image search results page for the keywords “office depot ceo” containing images of the Nazi Germany dictator Adolph Hitler (shown below). In less than 24 hours, the post garnered upwards of 7,400 up votes and 200 comments.

As of 3 p.m. (ET), November 7th, at least 275 discussion posts ridiculing Office Depot’s DMCA notice have been submitted to the /r/circlejerk^[5] subreddit.