Once More, With Feeling: Copyright Is Not A Welfare System For Musicians

De Beers About To Learn That The Streisand Effect Is Forever

from the let's-explain-how-this-works dept

Wed, Nov 26th 2008 8:29am — Mike Masnick

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?

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Filed Under: intermediary, registrars, spoof, streisand effect
Companies: de beers

14 Comments

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Paul, 26 Nov 2008 @ 8:59am

Lawyers need to do something
Im sure they have lawyers who only get paid when there doing something, thus even when it hurts the companys the lawyers are proactive in doing things to get there numbers up so thay can charge more.
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Freedom, 26 Nov 2008 @ 9:04am

Any publicity is good publicity
To me, the fact that De Beers has had plenty of bad publicity already and that people still actually buy this over-priced and over-hyped shiny stones indicates that just being in the news isn't a bad thing.

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
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Nate, 26 Nov 2008 @ 9:24am

Ha ha!
You're wrong! I'm never buying another diamond again! Satire like this and the attention the diamond industry has been getting over the last 5-10 years has started to make a real dent in people's perceptions of diamonds -- my wife told me she feels guilty wearing them, and, she adds, "Zirconia are just as good, cheaper, and nobody has to die for them."

Picking the scab, DeBeers, picking the scab...
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The infamous Joe, 26 Nov 2008 @ 9:30am

Re: Any publicity is good publicity
I think the more distressing fact is that these lawyers, whose job is to know the ins and outs of the law are threating people who have no fault on the matter.

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
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Lucretious, 26 Nov 2008 @ 9:47am

This family of vile scumbags who exploit destitute 3rd world workers for their worldwide monopoly should be happy that this is the worst they're getting. The whole lot of them should be lined up against a concrete wall and summarily executed.
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Greg, 26 Nov 2008 @ 9:48am

The Onion
Apparently De Beers has never heard of The Onion, either. I'm just waiting for a parody of De Beers on theonion.com.

But, they'll probaby sic their lawyers on them, too.
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Shohat, 26 Nov 2008 @ 10:06am

You think THAT matters ?
Da Beers don't give two shits about such micro-bad publicity. Seriously.
It's like that joke about Hitler killer 6 million jews and a clown.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 10:24am

Re: You think THAT matters ?
*decides to participate in this known and hilarious joke*
What? Why a clown?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 10:39am

Never saw this fake ad before. Thanks De Beers!
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another mike, 26 Nov 2008 @ 10:41am

fine line between insanity and genius
Every time one of these stories comes up, I always have to wonder, have they never heard of the Streisand Effect? Or are they marketing geniuses who know exactly what they're doing?
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.
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slimcat (profile), 26 Nov 2008 @ 11:45am

Amen Brother!
For all the sorrow, pain, death, social and physical destruction they have caused, they certainly deserve it. But,as my homicide detective sister points out to me, it is still illegal to eradicate scumbags. I would, at least, like to see their company crushed by social pressure.
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Christopher L. Jorgensen, 26 Nov 2008 @ 11:50am

Diamonds Are Forever
Yep, I would have entirely missed the ad if they hadn't brought it to my attention. Must be nice to be sued.

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.
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Allen (profile), 26 Nov 2008 @ 5:39pm

Re: Diamonds Are Forever
"That's probably their real intention"

That's what I was going to go with. Even bad publicity is publicity.
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Kev, 7 Feb 2010 @ 6:54pm

Ice Road Truckers
Stick to Canadian diamonds. De Beers don't get their ugly faces in so far as I know, and with the exception of a few frostbitten truckers, no-one gets hurt. Canadian diamonds are the clean end of the market. The kind of excesses, and human rights abuses, routinely practiced in Africa are unknown here.
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