The Man and his stupid copywrite laws.
OK, I know we have to protect the logos and hard creative work done by others, but I am faced with a situation currently on both my personal and business side that is making me wonder exactly what the logic is of these silly decisions.
First off the music industry.
I happen to love music, I am a big fan of all kinds of music and have a large CD collection of over 2000 CDs, as well as DVD videos of many of my favorite bands.
I used to be able to see all these bands on MTV and enjoy their videos and music, as well as listen to them in my car as I drove. This is my problem. I can’t hear the music of my favorite bands anymore, not legally anyhow. Radio stations back home have these programming directors that may or not play it. It seems at least in Canada these days we just don’t get the DJs that play whole albums anymore, it’s no longer up to them, I hear the US is the same way these days, not sure about the rest of the world.
The programing directors at the radio stations now decide based on the highest profitability of the radio station which songs will be played, instead of the music loving DJs of old, that just played what they wanted. The same thing has happened to MTV, its all about profit now, which is fine for them I guess, but I may not like what is popular and now I cant hear the music I like.
So what do I do? If I want to hear, or “try out” some music, I do what most people do, search the Internet for what I want to her. Very recently I searched for some songs from Nickleback. Even though they are one of the biggest rock bands in the world today, and I happen to like them. I search and I search but I cant find the official video. Ones that were put up by fans yesterday are gone today due to copy write laws.
Why on earth do these big bands no longer want their videos to be played. OK I know Nickleback and most other large bands have official stations on YouTube, and on their official website, however they don’t display all the videos, and I cant hear all the songs. Often the Websites are not as easy to use as Google and YouTube . If the songs I want are there somewhere, I cant be bothered to find them, after five minutes I just give up forever.
Basically to make a long story short, I used to listen to the music and then buy it. Now I can no longer listen to the music, so of course I am not going to spend my $20 to see if they have any talent left.
Music Company, Epic Fail.
Second of all Mickey Mouse
OK do we all know who Mickey is? I would say yes but barely, Disney is so famous with their protecting of copy write laws, I swear I am afraid just mentioning them here will end me up in court.
Now I loved Disney as a kid, and loved going to their movies, I made sure I saw every one ever made until about 10 years ago. Then I just kind of forgot about them. Though I sill watch their films with my son from time to time.
Anyhow here I am in Asia, and people tend to ignore copy write laws here, everyone is free to print a mickey mouse shirt, and sell it on a street corner for 5 dollars, people buy them cheap and wear them. On my ninety minute walk today I was met with his cute little face no less that four times. They have little mickey logos on polo shirts, he is on bags and hats etc. People like him, he advertises Disney, and they are doing it for free.
Back home no one wears mickey, its not that he isn’t cute, but the local Disney store from where I lived was about a 45 minute drive, and the shirts are $30 each. Why bother ?
I forget all about Mickey back home, good job copy write lawyers.
Epic Fail Disney (wonder if I will get sued now)
Third of all beer t-shirts.
OK lots of people love beer, and lots of people travel and would love to have a beer shirt from places they have been. But beer companies want to be the only ones selling their shirts. The shirts on most of the official beer company sites are quite expensive, say about $30 plus shipping. So I would assume generally the people don’t buy them.
I used to sell a particular beer shirt on my website and was forced to take it down. I had outranked their official site on the Google Searches and I guess they didn’t like that. By the way I had surfed there official clothing site four times or so and had found it very difficult to find the actual shirts, it was painful to look for them through all the graphics, not to mention I had checked there Internet traffic numbers and they just didn’t get that many people. Basically a really bad site with lots of good graphics.
Why on earth don’t they want people to run around with their beer logos on their chest? I mean they spend millions if not billions on beer ads, billboards and event sponsorship. When did these guys decide that free advertising was a bad thing?
Beer Company, Epic Fail
This is a common pattern in current international big business, they so busy protecting their copy writes they have forgotten all about maximizing profits. They don’t even realize they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Way to go big business, when I go get my beer tonight I will forget to get one from your company, I wont have a new CD to listen to as I drink it, and my son wont be bugging me to watch a Disney film or go to Disneyland tomorrow. I hope you have somehow made enough profit elsewhere to make up for a world that is no longer craving your items, and that you somehow survive in the future as more and more people forget you exist.
