Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Mistakes were made

Well, updating last night's post on Nike's Minor Threat rip-off - apparently, Nike apologized some time yesterday - I guess you'd call it sincere. They blame the skateboarding team, not their advertising firm. Hey! they're probably telling the tuth! Still, it's nice and gutless... It's good that Nike didn't fight it, bad that Nike feels free to do this sort of thing.

Now - the truth of this is that I think copyright laws are too harsh - the Sonny Bono law strikes me as being utterly ridiculous and probably evil. It is telling, though, that these laws are used so blatantly to serve the powerful against the less powerful - to stop an individual artist, say, from appropriating Donald Duck, while leaving it very difficult (in some circumstances - not this one, apparently, which is a happy ending) for someone like Minor Threat or Dischord to stop Nike (or something like them) from doing the same. Anyway, it is good to see that this time, the bad guys backed off quickly.

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