Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Mark Twain once sent a Connecticut Yankee back in time to King Arthur's court..." (more)
Key Phrases: spurious copyrights, copyright maximalists, fair use rights, First Amendment, New York, Supreme Court (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Imagine if today's far-reaching laws on copyright and trademark were sent back in time to the days of William Shakespeare. On the opening day of Romeo and Juliet, the heirs of first-century Roman poet Ovid would surely have filed the case of Estate of Ovid v. William Shakespeare, alleging that the Bard had made unauthorized use of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is also based on two lovers from warring families. The legal conflict would have scared off theaters, and the play would have dropped into obscurity. It might seem ridiculous, but David Bollier, author of Brand Name Bullies, says this scenario is common under today's copyright and trademark law, which he calls "replete with tales of the bizarre and hilarious."

Bollier is co-founder of Public Knowledge, a non-profit group that aims to defend the "information commons." In Brand Name Bullies, he argues that creativity and free speech are being shut down as entertainment conglomerates and other companies push intellectual-property law to unprecedented extremes. The result is a sweeping privatization of culture and knowledge with the connivance of Congress and the courts. It is a dangerous development, Bollier suggests, because science and creativity are built upon what others have done before us. At the heart of his book are dozens of real-life stories he says show how silly things have gotten. In one case, Warner Bros. threatened young fans of the Harry Potter movies with legal action after they created Web sites to celebrate and discuss Potter. In another case, Disney challenged an anti-pornography group for quoting a single line of Walt Disney's in a brochure. Bollier also cites filmmaker Spike Lee's suit against Viacom over its Spike TV network. Even though there have been many other famous "Spikes" in American culture, Lee claimed Viacom chose the network's name to trade on his reputation. He won an injunction against the company, which agreed to an out-of-court settlement and said it incurred $17 million in losses in the case. Through these stories, Bollier succeeds in making a knotty but important legal issue both accessible and relevant for readers. --Alex Roslin

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Society’s growing mania to "propertize" every idea, image, sound and scent that impinges on our consciousness is ably dissected in this hilarious and appalling exposé of intellectual property law. Bollier, author of Silent Theft, compiles a long litany of copyright and trademark excesses, many of them familiar from brief flurries of media coverage but, in his view, no less outrageous for it. Music royalty consortium ASCAP sought fees from the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the campfire; McDonalds threatened businesses with the Mc prefix in their names; Disney threatened a day-care center that painted Mickey and Goofy on its walls; and Mattel sued a rock band that dared satirize Barbie in song. Nor is it only corporate megaliths that resort to this petty legal thuggery. Martin Luther King’s estate forbids unauthorized use of his "I Have a Dream" speech (but rents it to Telecom ad campaigns), and the author of a completely silent composition was asked for royalties because it allegedly infringed on avant-garde composer John Cage’s own completely silent composition. Bollier is a sure guide through the thickets of intellectual property law, writing in an engaging style that spotlights capitalism and its supporting cast of lawyers at their most absurd. But he probes a deeper problem: as the public domain becomes a private monopoly, he warns, our open society, which depends on the free, collective elaboration of a shared "cultural commons," will wither away. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471679275
• ISBN-13: 978-0471679271
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #785,292 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exposing copyright's crazier side, February 19, 2005

By	J. D. Lasica "open media" (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For the past few years, intellectual property law has been the playground of lawyers, geeks and scholars. Now comes <a href=http://www.bollier.org/>David Bollier</a> to explain why this seemingly arcane field should matter to the rest of us.

In "Brand Name Bullies," the author of <a href=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415944821/qid=1108780150/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-9587947-0895350>Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth</a> is back with a painfully comic look at how big corporations are bullying the little guy and locking down culture with the backing of one-sided copyright, patent and trademark laws.

Bollier has written a darkly funny, accessible account of horror stories and outrages both large and small. A few years back, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers send out letters to 288 camps in the American Camping Association, demanding that Brownies and Girl Scouts stop singing copyrighted songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" or "Row, Row, Row" unless the camping groups ponied over thousands of dollars in licensing fees.

The press had a field day with the story. Pro basketball player Shaquille O'Neal offers to pay a camp's royalties for 10 years. BMI offered to license its 3 million songs to the Girl Scouts for nothing. Duly chastened, ASCAP backed down.

Some of these issues - such as mash-ups, fan fiction, The Grey Album or the Eldred decision - will be familiar to those who have followed the recent shenanigans in IP law. (Indeed, as I write this, I'm listening to John Coltrane's My Favorite Things - a melody that would be outlawed had it been recorded today.) But Bollier's chief purpose here is to introduce these stories to a wider audience. Few of the tales have the happy ending that the Girl Scouts enjoyed.

For example, remember how a zillion TV stations used to air Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life around the holidays? That was before Spelling Entertainment entered the picture. Even though the film's copyright owner failed to renew the copyright on the film, Spelling argued that the film remained under copyright because the short story that was the basis for the film and its musical score were still under copyright protection, and so the film had not entered the public domain after all. Spelling warned broadcast stations that they risked legal action if they aired the 1946 Jimmy Stewart classic without permission - and payment.

The book brims with such tales. In 1998 Fruit of the Loom threatened a Web parodist for suggesting alternative names for the underwear, such as "Fruit of the Loins" and "Banana in my Briefs." Bollier describes how Netizens forced the company to retreat:

Rather than capitulate to Fruit of the Loom's intimidation, Styn fought back. Within forty-eight hours he had contacted more than a hundred independent Web publishers who pledged to support his cause. Banner ads reading "Freedom of speech doesn't end at an elastic waistband-Support your right to be funny" and "Rotten Fruit" images appears on hundreds of Web sites, along with links to the Prehensile Tales site.

Styn estimates that fewer than 1,500 people had seen the "Meat of the Loom" parody in the eight months it had been posted online. But within two weeks after he launched his Web crusade against Fruit of the Loom, more than 250,000 visitors had check out www.prehensile.com.

What to do about all this? Bollier proposes "a new language of the commons." He writes:

"At bottom, the challenge is not just to shore up the boundaries of fair use, the public domain, and other public rights, important as those rights are. What is truly needed is a new discourse that can escape the restrictive intellectual categories of copyright and trademark law."

He nails it.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take this book seriously, February 23, 2005

By	Michael W. Perry "Michael W. Perry, author of... (Author of Untangling Tolkien, Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Take what this writer has to say seriously, All the branches of intellectual property law (copyright, patent and trademark) are in a dreadful mess, driven that way by the usual suspects--powerful interest groups and greedy lawyers. Heck, even the fact that I just used an expression from the 1942 movie, Casablanca, "usual suspects," could get me sued. Someone lost a copyright dispute because they used two words of business jargon someone else claimed to own.

I know this from personal experience. I spent fifteen months fighting one of the most deep-pocketed literary estates on the planet, that of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. And while Tolkien himself was a decent and good man, during my lawsuit his estate's lawyers claimed that they had the right to dictate who can or cannot do a reference work on Tolkien's fiction. The fact that my book is the first book-length chronology of The Lord of the Rings and stands alongside other standard Tolkien reference works, encyclopedas and atlases also published without the permission of the estate, did not deter them. From the start their attitude was, "We're big, you're little. You can't win."

I'm stubborn. I fought anyway and, just as a federal court judge was about to rule in summary judgment, probably against them, they threw in the towel and agreed to settle out of court. The judge, bless her heart, then drove the final nail in their coffin by dismissing their lawsuit "with prejudice"--legalese for "don't dare bring this case before me again."

I had won, but I had also spent most the Lord of the Rings film series fighting them. The estate's lawyers, of course, got rich, and that was perhaps the point of this entire sad and sick episode.

--Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exposing copyright bullies, April 25, 2005

By	Jessica C. Friedman (tech savvy) (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

I've recently begun reading up on the subject of corporate efforts to take control of our culture,. While the material here may be familiar turf to many , it was eye opening to me. I had no idea that copyright law had been distorted and bent against the interests of those it was meant to serve: the public (for it's a bargain between the creator and the public, not simply a property right interest, as many people commonly assume).

Bollier's book brings these issues to light in an entertaining, enlightening way. Imagine, ASCAP going after the girl scouts for singing songs around the campfire! Imagine charging royalties for croonng "Happy birthday" at a public event.

If you're not familiar with these issues, "Brand Name Bullies" is a good primer. Read up, get educated, get mad, then fight back!