De Beers About To Learn That The Streisand Effect Is Forever
from the let's-explain-how-this-works dept
It would appear that the lawyers at diamond conglomerate De Beers are unaware of the Streisand Effect. As you might have heard, a week after the US Presidential election, some prankster put out a spoofed version of a future New York Times. It got plenty of attention for a few days and then people moved on. Well, apparently not everyone. De Beers is upset that the online version of the spoof contained a fake De Beers ad. Rather than recognize that this was a spoof (ha ha) that everyone had pretty much forgotten about, the company had its lawyers send off a threat letter. However, rather than target the creators of the spoof, or even the hosting firm, De Beers threatened the registrar who handled the domain registration for the site, demanding that it take down the site or face a trademark infringement lawsuit.Of course, as the EFF notes at the above link, intermediaries (third party service providers) are clearly well protected against liability for the actions of their users in the US. And, of course, there's the whole issue of parodies being protected from infringement suits. However, even more ridiculous is the fact that De Beers is now calling more attention to the ad. The spoof of the entire newspaper did get some attention, but that attention quickly waned, and it's unlikely that too many people paid attention to the spoof banner ad on a spoof website for the NY Times. I hadn't even heard about the ads. Almost all of the attention was on the spoof stories. Yet, now that De Beers is threatening to sue, a lot more folks are going to know about and see the ad. How is that possibly a smart move on the part of De Beers?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: intermediary, registrars, spoof, streisand effect
Companies: de beers
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Lawyers need to do something
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Any publicity is good publicity
Besides, this isn't like DRM in Spore or similar, the actions by De Beers has little to no direct effect on actually buyers of their product. As such, it just gets their name in the news and draws more attention to them and the ad as you noted. The real question is, is that a bad thing and for their market I would say no.
For the few people that it would negatively effect, they probably weren't going to buy the silly rocks in the first place. For the others, it gets them thinking about shiny rocks again which might actually lead to increased sales.
Freedom
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Any publicity is good publicity
Assuming that they do, in fact, know the law-- that means they are diliberately misusing the law, which should be punishable, if it isn't, and enforced if it is.
note: IANAL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ha ha!
Picking the scab, DeBeers, picking the scab...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Amen Brother!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Onion
But, they'll probaby sic their lawyers on them, too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You think THAT matters ?
It's like that joke about Hitler killer 6 million jews and a clown.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You think THAT matters ?
What? Why a clown?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fine line between insanity and genius
I mean, you've got to know by now that if you don't like something online, ignore it so it doesn't gain traction.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Diamonds Are Forever
Oh, wait.
That's probably their real intention. Perhaps the registrar will kill the domain because they don't want to stand up to the diamond cartels. It could happen. Depends on how much protecting one customer matters to them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Diamonds Are Forever
That's what I was going to go with. Even bad publicity is publicity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ice Road Truckers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]