Posts tagged satire
On Copyright and Occupying the Wall Street Journal
Susie Cagle interviews the creators of various “Occupy” newspapers to see what reactions they’ve received from established brands. The question is whether appropriation of corporate logos, brands and marks is protected free speech or copyright infringement.
In Oakland, the Oakland Tribune sent the Occupied Oakland Tribune a cease and desist letter. In New York, the Wall Street Journal has remained silent about the Occupied Wall Street Journal.
In Chicago, there appears to be some absurdity going on.
Via The Atlantic:
A source with knowledge of to the Occupied Chicago Tribune’s legal situation who preferred not to be identified said the Chicago Tribune’s lawyer had pushed hard in the company’s demands in informal negotiations.“Occupied Chicago Tribunesaid okay, we’ll use ‘Chicago’s Occupied Tribune.’ The lawyer objected. So they said okay, we’ll change it to ‘Occupied Tribune,’ and the lawyer objected. They said okay, we’ll change it to ‘Occupied Chicago Times.’ The lawyer objected again.”
“Then he allegedly said something like, ‘You cannot have anything that has a T in the name.’ And that’s when finally it had reached such a point of absurdity that they decided to fight back.”
Image: Inaugural issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, via Marcus Franklin.
What Privacy Policies (Really) Want to Say
With user frustration over endlessly changing end user licensing agreements and privacy policies from the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple among others, Skipity, a startup search/discovery engine, spells everything out quite clearly.
Among their 10-point privacy policy:
1. We are the company that cares about your privacy. Specifically, while most other companies are concerned with protecting your privacy, we care about profiteering and violating it when expedient or useful.
2. You may think of using any of our programs or services as the privacy equivalent of living in a webcam fitted glass house under the unblinking eye of Big Brother: you have no privacy with us. If we can use any of your details to legally make a profit, we probably will.
5. If the opportunity arises to sell or otherwise use this or any information, data or meta data about you or your world, we will jump at that opportunity like a pitbull on a fresh steak.
9. Cookies: We like chocolate chip cookies. You agree to furnish any employee or associate of our company with fresh chocolate chip cookies upon request. That’s the price of using our programs and or services (in addition to any other price we come up with).
Always good to know where you stand before using an application or service, no?
H/T: Forbes.
Our Ads Make a Mockery of Your Site
We’d laugh if it weren’t so true:
DEARBORN, MI—Ford Motor Company officials chastised news and commentary website Masthead.com Friday, conceding they were embarrassed to be associated with a publication that would allow the entirety of its award-winning content to be hidden behind splashy, distracting ads for the Ford F-150.
According to the car manufacturer, Masthead ’s decision to allow the “garish” full-screen advertisement—in which a red pickup speeds across news articles, overrunning them with tire-tread marks until readers manage to find the tiny “close” button—suggests the media outlet has zero respect not only for itself, but also for the amount of work that goes into its astute political and cultural coverage.
“They should be ashamed of themselves for letting us come in, plaster our logo everywhere, and, for a measly 50 grand, pretty much destroy the reputation they’ve worked so hard to build,” said Erin Robertson, an ad buyer for Ford who scoffed when Masthead immediately agreed to all of her terms and even suggested its creative staff could write articles mentioning the F-150. “Their coverage of the debt crisis has been pretty insightful, but then they cheapen it by allowing us to completely obscure their writing with a video of a truck bounding over sand dunes.”
Via… The Onion, of course.
11/11/11 - Happy Nigel Tufnel Day from the FJP
Currently Reading: The Unpublished Nigel Tufnel Interview from Guitar World.
Bonus Points: the Nigel Tufnel Theory of Music.
I’ve long been grateful to The Onion for its September 26, 2001 issue. Most simply, it allowed me to smile again.
Pictured above from that issue (and with apologies to the source since I’ve forgotten where I downloaded it from): God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule and US Vows to Defeat Whoever it is We’re at War With.
In a 2004 interview, Zack Stalberg, Editor of the Philadelphia Daily News and former Pulitzer Prize judge, told Editor & Publisher that he put The Onion up for consideration for the prize’s commentary category:
“As it went around the table, you could see that people were blown away by this work,” Stalberg said about the entry, which included the paper’s mock Sept. 11 coverage. “But it was a little too different, a little too risky. I voted to make it a finalist, but nobody else did.”
Why are more Americans turning to fake news sources like ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report,’ as well as satirical rag ‘The Onion?’
At the Fast Company Most Creative People in Business event last week, Onion editor Baratunde Thurston said that today’s real news is farcical, and the lack of trust is so great that the audience has decided to cut out the middle man (aka the mainstream media), and go straight to the source.
If you’re a Map Geek, the BBC Beauty of Maps series is on YouTube.
In this episode, the Beeb explores the history of satirical maps.
Run Time: 10 minutes.
