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Boing Boing Raises Its Middle Finger to Ralph Lauren
Our friends at the wonderful (and newly redesigned) Boing Boing are raising a collective middle finger to Ralph Lauren after the clothier took issue with their display of an ad that a staffer had singled out for criticism.
On September 29, Xeni Jardin re-posted the disputed ad, which she'd seen at a site called Photoshop Disasters, along with her own reaction: "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." The implication, perhaps, was that the company's marketing people had tweaked the image to give the model, in the words of Jardin's colleague Cory Doctorow, "an impossibly skinny body."
Calling out such an ad for criticism or comment, Doctorow concludes in his followup post, is "classic fair use." But in their cease-and-desist letter, lawyers for Ralph Lauren claimed it was an "infringing image." The lawyers brought their complaint to Boing Boing's Internet service provider, which, rather than caving to Smartly Dressed Big Brother, passed it along so that BB staffers could discuss it. And they did. And the lawyers' complaint didn't pass their "giggle test."
"So, instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we're gonna mock them," Doctorow promises. He then issues a scolding counter-threat: That any time the fashion house attempts such a weak legal maneuver, Boing Boing will again reproduce the original criticism, publish and mock the threat to ensure it is spread far and wide, and, my favorite: "Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models."
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WTF?
If I were Ralph Lauren, I'd be embarrassed that anybody let that ridiculous ad out in public, and fire whoever did it.
All they managed to accomplish with their laughable threat was a "Streisand effect". I never would have even known it existed if they hadn't sent out that lawyerly nastygram.
Randall Munroe draws web comics over at xkcd.com with round heads and stick-figure bodies. Maybe he could sue Ralph Lauren for trademark infringement or something. Especially if somebody put a speech bubble next to the model's head so she's making a joke that only mathematicians or computer scientists would understand.
heading down the rabbit hole
It may be tempting to take the word of the uber-hip Cory Doctorow on this, but that "ad" was probably created by some bored Photoshop geek looking for strokes on the web site "Photoshop Disasters" (which has since taken down the image) and not ad designers for Ralph Lauren. I imagine the latter are angry because they didn't actually create the ad and this will come out soon. Does Mother Jones really want to look as stupid as Boing Boing and Doctorow are about to look?
I make this comment here because MJ actually gives a shit about how women are treated in the advertising world. Cory Doctorow and his band of over-sexed, ever-teen boy techs don't give a damn about that and regularly truck in sexist images and commentary.
If you're going to engage on the web, pay attention, would you please?
Hmmm
Me thinks that after realizing that hiring lawyers to take on the issue iwth a SLAPP, Ralph Lauren hired some web experts to troll the blogs and call this out as a fake. It is indeed fitting that this comment was posted by someone who wants to remain anonymous.
I'm not a troll and that image is obviously faked
This is clearly an RL image that has subsequently had a simple perspective transformation applied in Photoshop -- that's why (a) the version of the picture shown is trapezoidal, and (b) nobody can find an example of the original image in context. I'm not saying the original image wasn't also retouched (it was), or that RL don't use hideously thin models and then shop them to make them look thinner (they do). But this particular image is a homebrew, done to troll Photoshop Disasters.
It hasn't been
It hasn't been perspectivized in Photoshop, it's a photo of a display-item in a shop, taken at an slight downward-angle.
The reason it isn't online 'unaltered' could be as simple as the campaign never made it that far.
Strawman
The takedown notice from Ralph Lauren acknowledges that this image is, in fact, one of theirs.
And the original Boing Boing post came from Xeni Jardin, who is not a "boy tech."
Strawman FAIL.
Another example of DMCA abuse by G. Roxanne Elings?
Here is a link from another person who also received a bogus DMCA order rom G. Roxanne Elings of Greenberg Traurig on behalf of Ralph Lauren -
http://www.owenandemma.com/ralph/ralph.html
Looks like Roxanne and Greenberg Traurig like to try and bully people.
Censorship
There's another story here that's equally disturbing - Google removed the offending article from the Photoshop Disaster website (that site is on Google owned Blogspot) because of this DCMA claim. Buy doing this Google has become party to censorship on the behalf of Ralph Lauren.
With all of the power that Google has, they need to be more careful than this. And they need to be called on this fact.
If you get these articles
tagged as:- solution
If you get these articles high on the hit list for the lawyer's name that may be more effective in the long run. No lawyer wants to be publicly and legitimately known as a buffoon. And every client googles a lawyer's name before engaging them. There are enough aggressive advocates that potential clients will avoid lawyers that are over-the-top and can harm the client's reputation with legally-baseless antics. This in turn may discourage such behavior. Keep up the good fight protecting the First.
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