Angle (Again) Threatens Legal Action Against Reid After He Reposts Her Old Website

NV Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R)
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Sharron Angle said today that she could potentially take legal action against Harry Reid — after he defied a cease-and-desist letter — for reposting her own old campaign website, maintaining that he has illegally taken her intellectual property.

“I don’t think Harry is above the law,” she said of Reid today.

The site, which she used during the Republican primary, was posted by the Reid camp in an effort to make Angle look like she was hiding right-wing views from the wider electorate.

“Well your website is like you, it’s your intellectual property. So they can’t use something that’s yours, intellectual property, unless they pay you for it or get your permission,” Angle said in a radio interview today, Greg Sargent reports. When asked by host Heidi Harris whether this would go to court, Angle responded: “Well we are going to pursue it. I don’t think that Harry is above the law. He needs to obey the law. If you and I need to obey the law, Harry isn’t immune. He needs to obey the law as well.”

After she won the Republican primary a month ago, Angle’s campaign took down most of its website, and later replaced it with a relaunched version that edited her more conservative positions. But the Reid campaign saved the old version, and put up a website called “The Real Sharron Angle,” reproducing the old content. Then last Friday, the Angle campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter, alleging violation of copyrights for Reid having reposted Angle’s old campaign literature. In response, the Reid campaign briefly took down the site — then made some slight modifications, such as removing some e-mail sign-up boxes that had been left intact, and put it right back up again.

As Greg points out: “However she decides to pursue this, the upshot is that it could end up drawing even more media attention to her original Web site than it otherwise might have received. It’s a curious strategy.”

It should also be noted that Angle’s case seems very curious from a First Amendment standpoint — that a candidate for office is trying to suppress the reproduction of her own past campaign literature, claiming that an opponent cannot use it without her permission in order to criticize her.

This post has been edited from the original.

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