The Red and Black, the school newspaper at the University of Georgia has a story about an escalating hullabaloo between the school’s administration and a student group that advocates the decriminalization of marijuana.  The University of Georgia is claiming that the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) violated the University’s copyrights by printing a cartoon bulldog on 50 shirts and the group’s website without prior approval.  Reports Carey O’Neil:

[The program adviser of the Center for Student Organizations] said after Legal Affairs notified her of the problem, she sent e-mails to the student officers, asking them to return unsold shirts and remove the image from their Web site by the following evening. . . “There were two opportunities for the group to take action,” he said, but when the logo was still on the Web site at the deadline, Legal Affairs was notified and Enterprise Information and Technology Services was asked to block the site.

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[The leader of NORML said]: “If you prosecute us over this image, it would be like prosecuting Andy Warhol for his painting of Campbell’s Soup.” Stone said at the hearing that he didn’t look at University images as inspiration for drawing. “For my primary model for my version of the bulldog I used a Looney Toons version,” he said. [The student leader] said anyone who saw the drawing would immediately recognize it as a parody or satire. He said his group was being unfairly targeted.

The hearing ended Tuesday evening without resolution and will reconvene next Thursday.