PARRON LAW ® | Entertainment and Sports Blog

They say that all publicity is good publicity, but a recent high-profile PR fight -- as well as a court case that erupted in its aftermath -- would seem to challenge that. It would seem to, but in fact it actually might prove the old maxim perfectly. By now you probably know about the very clever, very public fight that's been going on between popular clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino of MTV's Jersey Shore . Just in case, here's a quick recap: In August of last year, A&F made headlines when it claimed openly that it didn't want to be associated with Sorrentino or any of his Jersey Shore castmates and actually offered to pay "Sitch" a tidy sum of money not to wear its clothes. Anybody with a functional brain could see what the company was doing and it was indeed a pretty brilliant plan -- highlight the negative publicity supposedly brought to Abercrombie & Fitch by Sorrentino and his fellow sel...

If you're looking to raise capital for your media project, the U.S. government just inadvertently did you a big favor. Early last month the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, act, was signed into law and it received something we don't see much of in Congress these days: bipartisan support. The goal was to make it easier for budding businesses to acquire the cash they need to get off the ground and it does this by, among other things, relaxing regulations that have been in place for years. See, for a long time startup companies were prohibited from trolling for venture capital with a wide net, essentially soliciting potential investors cold; the rule was that you had to at least have some kind of a relationship with the people you were asking to take a chance on you and your idea or there existed stringent guidelines that they had to meet as "accredited investors." But with the rise of the internet and social media, it became obvious that technology had sever...

It almost feels like a waste at this point to spend too much time talking about the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, at least in its present incarnation, only because it's pretty much dead in the water -- as is its counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act. An astonishing display of power this week by what seemed like the entire Internet has rendered the whole proposition radioactive, with members of Congress who were all gung-ho about the measures just a few days ago quietly backing away from them, the White House giving it a thumbs-down and, as of today, the Senate announcing that it's canceling a vote on PIPA and will completely redraft SOPA. Depending on which side of the fence you're on, this is either a huge victory for online freedom or a knee-jerk reaction by lawmakers cowering in the darkness of an unprecedented digital blackout, but the fact is that it was necessary -- because both measures amounted to a distressing overreach by both the government a...

How embarrassing is too embarrassing? Sure, we've seen Snooki, Sitch and the rest of the cast of MTV's reality juggernaut Jersey Shore , get drunk, fall down, get up, get drunk again, fall down again, fight, have sex, get even more drunk -- you get the picture. But at some point the behavior that doesn't fill them with the least bit of shame (inexplicably, some would argue) actually does embarrass those who put up with or flat-out enable the insanity they wreak. Like, say, the state of New Jersey itself. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made headlines Monday axing a $420,000 television subsidy which his state was granting to MTV to keep the shooting of the Jersey Shore cast's shenanigans safely in place. The tax credit for the upcoming season of Shore were announced a couple of weeks ago and instantly decried by Italian-American groups, who've maintained since day one that the show promotes the worst kind of stereotypes. And with that no doubt in mind, Chr...

At first glance it's the kind of thing that probably leaves you wondering where she gets off -- how someone could dare to try to prevent another aspiring female star from even looking like her. But take a second look, in more ways than one, and the $20 million lawsuit that Kim Kardashian is now bringing against Old Navy is a little more complicated than that. In the end, it may very well have merit and, regardless, it says plenty about the state of fame in our current culture and the fierce drive by those who have it to protect it. If you're not aware of the case, Kardashian is suing Old Navy over a new commercial that she says features someone who looks uncannily like her, a casting decision that she believes was anything but accidental. Kardashian's attorney calls it a violation of his client's intellectual property -- in this case, Kardashian's very image -- and aims to hit Old Navy hard for the infringement. While to the average person the suit may seem fri...

So, what have we learned this week? Here's a hint: It's something New York Congressman Anthony Weiner learned the hard way (no pun intended). If you want to keep something private, don't let it get anywhere near the Internet. At this point, no matter what your politics are, I don't think anyone would argue that what Anthony Weiner did was monumentally stupid. We could debate for years what drives supposedly smart people in positions of power to somehow believe that they'll never get busted engaging in behavior that someone with the IQ of a hush puppy would know is a personal and professional cataclysm waiting to happen. Who knows, maybe if you insulate yourself for too long at the top and breathe only the thinned-out air up there you forget that everyone has to yield to the laws of physics; no one is immune to them. Maybe Weiner convinced himself that as a firebrand politician the camera seemed to love, he could talk his way out of anything. Maybe he just wasn...

If you're planning on being one of the millions sure to see The Hangover Part II over the long Memorial Day weekend, great news... it's actually going to open as scheduled. A good portion of the movie-going public probably never knew this but there's been a legal battle raging behind the scenes that was very close to stopping the Warner Bros. tentpole film in its tracks. And it all had to do with a tattoo. The fact that it happens to be a tattoo that's instantly recognizable and which plays an integral part in both the movie and its promotion was precisely the point; it's why such a stink was being made in the first place. Basically here's what the trouble was about: A tattoo artist named S. Victor Whitmill, who used to work in Vegas but who now lives in rural Missouri, sued Warner for violating his copyright by using the Maori-inspired tribal art he designed for Mike Tyson's face on another character in the movie. (If you've seen the trailers, you k...