Recently a colleague of mine sent around the office a PodZinger Video that shows a kid fooling around in his bedroom, parodying the very same company I work for –PodZinger.com– Some folks in the company asked the question if this kid is infringing PodZinger’s copyright on its brand and should his video be take down from the site. I thought the reaction generated internally was fair for after all, the kid did change PodZinger’s logo to “PooFlinger” on his home video, and went on to describe in quite detail, the art of flinging poo.
I say before PodZinger considers taking down his video from its site, and send the kid some type of “friendly” letter explaining what he’s doing wrong, that some serious thought is given to this issue and determine if it’s worth joining the YouTube’s of the world, and start taking content down just because some one deems the content is infringing PodZinger’s copyright.
PodZinger is not alone on this online phenomenon. Just last week BusinessWeek ran an article describing a similar scenario to PodZinger’s PooFlinger. In the BusinessWeek article, an amateur filmmaker who created a spoof on MTV’s The Real World and uploaded it on YouTube, got his video taken down from the popular video site per request of MTV’s parent, Viacom. It was only after he wrote letters to just about everyone at YouTube, MTV, Viacom pleading his case, that his video spoof was restored on YouTube. In his pleadings, he stated to the media behemoths that “Copyright infringement is a crime” and if they’re planning to accuse some one of such crime, that they better do their homework and make sure it is a crime.
In the eyes of some, it’s reasonable to assume the PooFlinger kid committed a crime by spoofing the PodZinger name, and should be punished, fined or spanked by his parents for doing so. However, I don’t think we’re sure whether or not he committed a crime. So unless we’re 100% sure, I say we let the PooFlinger go about his business on the PodZinger site.