There’re three types of people I try not to trifle with. The police, for reasons that need no explanation. The Mexican cartel, as their brand of punishment is influenced with a certain macabre poetry.
The third would be SI’s lawyers. Because if they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it big.
TMZ reports:
Nobody photoshops fake nude photos of Kate Upton and gets away with it ... a lesson the Sports Illustrated model wants to teach a joke website called Celeb Jihad.
The phony photo features a photoshopped pic from an SI shoot with the headline, "Kate Upton Naked Outtake From SI Swimsuit 2014."
It's clearly a fake ... but Kate's legal team doesn't care -- they fired off a letter to the site threatening to sue if the post isn't taken down, STAT.
In the letter, Upton's lawyer complains, "One of these photographs has even been airbrushed."
SI understands the importance of brand management. You can't have shady websites coopt the sterling multi-million dollar brand that is the SI swimsuit issue and parade it about as a cheap knock-off by grafting Kate's face on another women’s knockers.
Especially when pics of Kate in states of undress are so plentiful.
I can see why SI lawyered up. Celeb Jihad is the kind of site that makes you thankful that you keep your anti-virus software up to date. The site is chockfull of anti-semitism and lacks an ounce of common sense. Unless it was their strategy all along to pick a fight with SI for the free publicity. Like you, I never heard of them before they got served.
TMZ ran the same play last year when it leaked a two-year old video of Kate topless on top of a horse to similar acclaim. The video was removed, perhaps because TMZ learned the same lesson that Celeb Jihad is learning now.
You don't mess with Kate.