Techdirt: Every time you think that lawyers may have finally caught on to the fact that sending out ridiculous cease and desist letters to silence things they don't like will backfire on them, you hear of yet another case of it happening. This time it's tobacco giant Philip Morris, who sent a cease & desist letter to artist Brad Troemel for some artwork he had up on his Etsy page.
8 comments:
I understand that sometimes second parties infringe upon a larger conglomerate and end up making a lot of money or misrepresenting the original creator/company etc. However, I think that there has to be a line drawn with how much of a threat a person is. I went to this guy's Etsy page, he also seems to have products from, Yankee Candle, FIJI water, and Adidas. All of these seem to be relatively harmless and honestly, not that impressive. So I dont know why Morris would be wasting his time with this one. I highly doubt he has taken such a hit to his industry due to people giving up smoking that he has to take $6.00 dollars away from this guy.
The entire copyright system is so flawed that it's pointless for me to try to only respond to the scenario this article depicts, but it's way too daunting for me to try to tackle the entirety of the problem. Besides, I'm not nearly informed enough to give a really accurate assessment of the problem or begin to propose a real solution. All I know is that our definition(s) of intellectual property and our system(s) of protection for said intellectual property are deeply flawed and need to be completely broken down, examined, and rebuilt. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen in the near future as our government has a few more pressing matters to attend to, namely the train wreck that is our economy.
Not sure how I feel about this article. My first impression if a little bit on the side of PM because I have connection to PM. Then quickly moving past my emotional high, I just do not know.
My thoughts go to the new company who starts to and has there image changed or distorted. Yet again this is a big named company who has been around for a long time. So some of me just seems to say get over it. Where are the lines drawn, and where do the lines need to be drawn.
I never understood cease and desist letters. Copyright is screwed up in the way that following the laws can sometimes be bad for business. If your brand shows up somewhere, people are going to pay more attention to it. As long as it isn't being sold illegally or given away for free, I don't really understand the need to stop it. Someone is enjoying this art, and maybe they're a smoker. Maybe they're then inspired to buy a pack of Marlboro's over their usual brand. Or someone sawa video they enjoyed on YouTube, and now want to buy some of that product or look into that brand because it interested them. Copyright needs an overhaul when it starts to backfire on itself.
I have really mixed feelings here. What actually makes me want to side with Philip Morris is the fact that their product is being exploited and marketed to the wrong crowd- an inappropriate crowd considering the type of product. On the other hand, there has to be a line drawn to allow some representations of products such as these cigarettes in works of art. If a paparazzi takes a picture of a celebrity holding these cigarettes and it gets sold to a magazine, wouldn't Philip Morris be happy for the publicity? How are these Etsy products any different, other than the way they are being marketed and the other products/companies they are being associated with? While I understand Philip Morris' not wanting to have their product associated with certain things and marketed to certain groups, I also think they should appreciate the fact that people are recreating and representing their products and spreading their popularity. Also, I agree with Sonia...is this really worth the time, money, and effort, Philip Morris??
Full disclosure: if it's true that, as the article states, "Philip Morris believes its consumers are complete morons," I agree. Philip Morris' customers pay $12 a pack for a product that even the manufacturer now admits will eventually kill them. Second disclosure: I myself smoke from time to time. If A=B and B=C, then, yes, I think I'm a moron. And being a moron, I suppose it will come as no surprise to you that I would like to say that ownership is a farce, especially of ideas, images, art, words, and most especially logos. Our national obsession with ownership and branding and public image is based on a fabrication that any of us are entitled to ownership of anything. Just as Mr. Faulkner was not the first human being to think that "The past is never dead," Philip Morris was not the first entity to put two red triangles next to a white triangle and dream of cowboys and freedom and profit. What makes the whole proposition even more ridiculous to me is that Philip Morris isn't even a person, it is a corporation, and therefore logically incapable of having an idea in the first place! Put a million monkeys in a room banging away on a million typewriters for a million years and they will produce every novel, every song, play, religious screed and cigarette logo ever created by human beings and our precious corporations. So why the hell do we think they're so goddamn special? Philip Morris has made enough money off our foolishness, I don't see why they should get their papers in a twist about some poor sap who thinks he's an artist making a few bucks on Etsy with "their" logo. I wonder how much they paid the illustrator who first penned that logo anyway. Probably a coupla packs of smokes, and he was happy to get it. (For further reading on this topic of intellectual ownership, in your free time, if you're interested, there's a really great story by Borges called "The Library of Babel" that takes the monkey-typewriter metaphor to another level.)
So this is obviously ridiculous. Maybe their lawyers just needed something to do to justify themselves? It sounds like they're trying to make the argument that the artist can't use anything with their logo on it. This wasn't explicitly stated, but it seemed like there was an implied 'reselling' argument. I feel like this is *close* to making sense, but it just doesn't. What about having a used box with a target logo in some art? A Trader Joe's bag in a picture of something else? What if it's so old it's a logo that isn't used anymore? It seems like there are too many grey areas and blurry lines for this cease and desist to hold any water.
It's a bit hard to decide which party to side with here. I mean, yeah, I want to be with the cool artist protesting tobacco products on his etsy; he's doing the right thing, and being independent and whatnot. The thing is, Morris is in the right; his brand name is being slandered. Yes, you will say, but what about free speech? Well, I don't know. I don't know where free speech overpowers copyright infringement, and I don't think anyone really does. So I guess I just agree with everything Pia said.
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