I have written previously about the “psychics” so popular in our culture, whose pretense of being able to speak to the dead and otherwise gain knowledge through supernatural powers wins them wealth and accolades from a credulous public and a shallow, sensationalist media, despite the total lack of convincing evidence to date that any of them can do what they say they can do.

One of the worst of the lot is Sylvia Browne. After agreeing on national television to take James Randi’s million-dollar challenge to prove her powers, she subsequently reneged on that agreement and has been avoiding it ever since. Browne’s alleged powers have failed her spectacularly on numerous instances, including when she erroneously claimed on the air that the victims of the Sago mine catastrophe would be found alive, although ultimately 11 of the 12 perished, and when she falsely told Shawn Hornbeck’s grieving parents that their son was dead, when in reality he had been alive all the time and was rescued from his kidnapper several weeks ago. She also wrongly predicted the discovery of a nicotine addiction vaccine, the return of American soldiers from Iraq, and the electoral defeat of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and told a 9/11 widow that her firefighter husband had drowned, in addition to many other errors.

In the past, blunders such as these would have made little difference: skeptics would have dutifully cataloged them and pointed them out to anyone who would listen, their effort would have been almost totally ignored by the masses who idolized psychic claimants like Browne, and media pundits and book publishers would have dismissed these annoying facts and continued to seek out and promote Browne and others like her. After all, what really matters in popular culture is not the truth or accuracy of a person’s claims, but only whether enough people believe those claims and are willing to support them – with their votes, their wallets, or whatever else. The lack of widespread understanding of the principles of critical thinking in our society makes it easy for psychic claims to take root. People’s desire to believe in supernatural powers and an afterlife leads them to concentrate on the hits and forget the misses. And media empires driven by profit and spectacle have no interest in debunking popular delusions and fallacies, but only in showing people what they most want to see, which will attract the most eyeballs and therefore the most advertiser dollars.

As I said, that was the way it was in the past. To a large extent, that is the way it still is. But there are some very encouraging signs that skepticism and critical thinking are finally gaining a foothold, however tenuous, in the media. On several recent occasions, Browne’s claims were forcefully challenged on national television – mostly by James Randi, to whose tireless efforts we all owe a debt of gratitude – on shows such as Anderson Cooper 360 and Larry King Live, and it seems she is feeling the heat. Hence, the blustery legal threat letter Browne’s lawyers have sent to StopSylviaBrowne.com, an excellent website that keeps track of her blunders. The letter claims that “Sylvia Browne” is a registered trademark and that the anti-Browne website is infringing her trademark by using it.

These claims are, of course, utter and complete nonsense. The bedrock legal principle of fair use specifically protects the use of trademarked names and logos for purposes of commentary, criticism and parody, as Stanford University’s page on fair use explains:

If you are commenting upon or critiquing a copyrighted work — for instance, writing a book review — fair use principles allow you to reproduce some of the work to achieve your purposes.

Browne’s threat letter is an especially risible and ridiculous disregard for the principles of fair use. If claims like this were accepted by the court system, it would be impossible to criticize any person or corporation that held a trademark on its name, because merely to mention that name without permission would be an infringement of the trademark holder’s rights. Such a dramatically expansive interpretation of the law would completely destroy the right of free speech.

But, as I said, that is not the law. Browne’s claims are without legal foundation, something of which her lawyers must be well aware. Clearly, the letter was not sent out of a realistic hope of prevailing in court, but rather was sent in the hope that their target did not know his rights and would back down in the face of intimidating language by a much larger and better-funded adversary. (It brings to mind the incident when Fox News sued political humorist Al Franken over his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, with Fox asserting that it owned the three words “fair and balanced” and that those words could not be used in that order without its permission. This claim actually did go to court, and was promptly laughed back out of it by the judge.)

Fortunately, that was not the case. Robert Lancaster, the author of StopSylviaBrowne.com, is well aware of his rights and has held firm, for which I commend him. His courageous and principled defense of the truth against cowardly tactics of intimidation deserves to be widely known, which is why I have written this entry. It also needs to be more widely known that Sylvia Browne is so fearful of open criticism and exposure of her blunders that she would rather try to silence her critics with lawsuits than respond to them. Such tactics are reprehensible and deserve nothing but scorn from good citizens and friends of free speech everywhere.

Addendum: After posting this, I found a resource from the invaluable Electronic Frontier Foundation, a steadfast defender of online free speech, addressing the exact claim made by Browne’s lawyers and pointing out that settled precedent flatly contradicts it: