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Culture

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Jun 25th 2007 10:03pm





Yet Another Example Of What Happens When Lawyers And Marketers Disagree

from the there-they-go-again dept

Just last week we wrote about reasons why lawyers shouldn't be making business decisions, which generated a bit of controversy. However, the examples keep on coming. With the ongoing practice of various entertainment companies sending takedown notices to YouTube over parodies and mashups, apparently some marketers are realizing that having lawyers send out takedown notices may not actually be in the best interest of the company's marketing strategy. 20th Century Fox's lawyers sent a takedown notice for a music video praising the popular Die Hard movie series, since the video was mostly made up of clips from the first three movies. However, now that the fourth movie in the series is coming out, suddenly marketing execs at Fox are paying the band to put the video back online. Of course, when you see stories like this, it makes you wonder how the entertainment industry can get away with claiming that other such videos cause "irreparable harm."

9 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 12:05am

    Man. I wish i had a differnt pet peeve. This whole 'hating hipocracy' thing is making it very hard to check out ANY news anymore.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 4:24am

    Re:

    hypocrisy

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Me, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 4:34am

    Hypocrisy. Man I wish I owned the patent on that one!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Synonymous Coward, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 5:38am

    I, too, hate the elite hippopotamus ruling class and yearn for a return to the days of the hungry, hungry hippos.

    To arms, comrades!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Rational Beaver, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 10:12am

    We've all been had! They obviously set this up to take advantage of the Streissand effect...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    SFC, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 10:17am

    Get your facts straight

    Before writing sucessive articles on the subject of lawyers making business decisions, perhaps the author should consider if the there is any indication that the decisions was taken (or even advised) by a lawyer. The fact that a letter is signed by a lawyer does not even mean that said lawyer thought the letter was a good business decision.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    everydayjoe, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 12:50pm

    Re: Get your facts straight

    There's some fine logic for you. That's two bad business decisions, and a complete lack of personal responsibility.


    ...lawyers, - I'll say it again:

    "Lawyers are like HIV; you're only "happy" with them when the eventualities could be worse."

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    yer' ol pirate, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 12:52pm

    Avast Mater, yer'all sho' them land-lovers what we w'nt! Tall'ho

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  
    identicon
    Anon2, Jun 26th, 2007 @ 2:53pm

    Yes, you get it exactly right -- lawyers should not be making business decisions for their clients. But if a client makes a foolish business decision, but one that has merit from a technical legal standpoint, it's not the lawyer's job to refuse to do it. The lawyer may well question the client's wisdom, and may well even tell the client that, but at the end of the day the lawyer works for the client. So in this case, blame the marketers, the distributors, the content owners, but not the lawyers who sent the takedown notices -- they were just doing their jobs.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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