Monday, January 14, 2008

On the other hand: Copyright Madness and Absurdities

Via Adrants:
Ford Slaps Brand Enthusiasts, Returns Love With Legal Punch » Adrants: "While brands certainly don't want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club created a calendar which contained images of club members' cars photographed by the members themselves. Ford didn't take kindly to this and asked CafePress, the service the group had chosen to print the calendars, to kill the project claiming all the images in the calendar are the property of Ford...including the Black Mustang Club logo."
So pictures of your kids in the tub are property of Kohler's? Pictures of my office infringe about ten thousand copyrights cause I collect junk? So the shot of me working on a photograph is infringing the Canon copyright cause I am wearing my OWN FREAKING CAMERA?

This kind of bullshit makes it so much easier for the nitwits who want to have open access to our IP. It is stupid, petty and takes such a swipe at the loyal customers who love their product. You want to drive public opinion away from your stand? Just do incredibly lame stunts like this.

Ford: Find the idiot attorney who started this. Fire him/her. Sue them for causing you a lot of grief, cause you're gonna find the blogosphere less than interested in your back-pedaling and spinning.

Sheesh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of when Harley-Davidson went after people who'd tattooed the H-D logo on themselves.

Yeah, customers who are so freakin' loyal, they tattoo your brand on themselves. Sounds a like ripe area for litigation.