Coca Karma, plus a good dose of surreality.

[thorfinn]

Hadn't seen this (Coca Karma, and the corruption of the US Judicial System) until recently myself, and thought it was definitely worth posting about. So much for the vaunted "US Judicial Independence".

And to counter that rather sobering and unhappy reading, here's a fun surrealist thingy:

thorfinn is a television set that mows your lawn! It has an alarm setting.
nuclear hand grenade is a saucepan that bounces up and down! It crushes ice and has a built-in calculator.

See? Nuclear hand grenades are perfectly safe! I should be allowed one! Especially since I mow your lawn and have an alarm setting! Erm. Well, okay, both of those bits are lies... but the nuclear hand grenades should be PerfectlySafe™!

Comments

Hey, neat-o!

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

wiz is an MP3 player that helps the medicine go down! It is voice-activated and comes with a variety of coloured fascias.

leadgend

[leadgend.livejournal.com]

leadgend is a wireless network device that's only visible under ultraviolet light, has a built-in alarm clock and plugs into your wireless network device.

Cool huh? :)

[anothertwilight.livejournal.com]

Read the Coca-karma article.

Damn I long for balanced journalism. The situation as presented is compelling, but it is so biased. I am more than happy to believe that the US judicial system is rotten through (NSW has had similar problems since it was colonised, with far less effort and organisation, I see no reason to suspect the US would be exempt), the CIA link accusations have been around for years and are entirely plausible but explaining Coke's clout as being due to some sort of 'pass' rather than the far more likely expedient of simply being owed favours by powerful people is a little paranoid. Then there is the lapsed copyright issue and claim to it by the defendant. I'll pay the first, stuff like that happens all the time, but the claim sounds a bit dodgy.

[thorfinn]

No - IP law is full of oddities like that, actually, *particularly* US IP law. The 28 year thing is definitely real - the renewal of registration being allowed is a *recent* invention - in fact, a recent one basically created to allow Disney to retain copyright over its works.

Every time anything Disney appears to be reaching the end of US copyright lifetime, the laws get changed to allow a longer and longer period of re-registration... 28 years was the original maximal length of copyright in the US, even if the original creator was still alive. Ie, 14 years, then 14 years if re-registered, and that second only allowed if the creator was still alive.

Short copyright time is pretty crucial to encourage creativity - if things never come out of copyright, there are very very strong disincentives to variant innovation - it's difficult to develop *anything* new without treading on all sorts of copyrights.

The problem basically is - the US political system is structured (*all* branches, Executive, Judicial/Legal and Congress, degrees varying) towards being extremely influenceable by anyone with very significant amounts of money. That basically boils down to "large corporations".

[anothertwilight.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's not the part that seems far fetched. While ignorant of the particulars, I was (vaguely) aware of the nature of copyright to lapse. I was more concerned with the claim of rights to the image as part of a derivative art that coincidentally ocurred with the add campaign. Especially as, while years are given, no dates as to the expiry of the original and the copyright application of the derivative are given.

Seeing Coke lose it's sole rights to a particular image is not unbelievable. Having someone claim them several years after the fact is looking a little suspect.

As for the sale of legislation, the gun lobby and th 'war on drugs' is another fine example of law on demand. The tobacco companies, the paper industry ...

[thorfinn]

No no, that's exactly part of the details... If Coke's copyright ceased and somebody created and registered a new work (even if based on the old one), then that new work is copyrightable *on its own*.

That's the point of lapsing of copyright - the original owner *no longer has any claim over the original material*. A "derivative work" is thus copyrightable in itself... and later copyrightable works based on that derivative work is a nono.

And Coke used a derivative of the derivative...

[bunnikins.livejournal.com]

I was expecting to be horrified by the Karmacola thing, based on the little I'd heard about the case, but although it was fascinating, none of it was surprising. Coca-Cola is a humungous corporate superpower, and I expect those to be at least slightly dodgy if not downright evil. All a bit depressing, but the Random Product thingie made up for it - that's the funkiest thing I've seen all month.

"bunnikins is like a normal answering machine, but it contains a tinier version of itself."

"tyggerjai is like a normal spanner, but it emits a constant high-frequency whine."

"rabbit's pointy thing is a kettle that detects explosives! It smells of flowers and anticipates your every move."

...this is going to amuse me for hours.