Harry Potter and the Copyright Battles

Brands go to great lengths to transcend their physical products and become an interwoven part of the culture. As a result, many brands have become an integral part of people's identities and lives. The phenomenon known as Harry Potter is a perfect example of this transcendence. It has evolved from a mere children's book to a multidimensional and multimedia industry. People wait for hours on the opening night of a new book or movie. Harry Potter toys, books, DVDs, fly off the shelves. It has become a theme park ride at Universal Studios Orlando. And at a recent college tour at Georgetown, the tour guide made sure to explicitly point out that Healy Hall looks like Hogwarts. The line between the Harry Potter brand and culture has been purposefully blurred. But this has created a problem between eager fans running websites and writing fan fiction and the companies (like Warner Bros.) who own the intellectual property.
Multiple lawsuits are being brought against fan created sites, but there is a clear difference between the innocent ones and the guilty ones. The first are fan fictions sites. While these sites may draw on the books for inspiration, they are mostly non-profit organizations. These sites aren't looking for financial gain, but to promote the creative writing skills of children. Also these sites allow children to create a fantasy world where they can sort through some of their real life problems. These sites also don't detract from the profits of Warner Bros. and if anything they vitalize and build up excitement about the brand which leads to higher sales. The other types of sites are those like "The Harry Potter Lexicon". This site was originally a non-profit that provided an encyclopedia of Harry Potter characters and events along with analysis. But the creator and RDR Books attempted to publish a print version for profit. After this, a lawsuit was brought against them by J.K. Rowling, who was also planning on writing a Harry Potter encyclopedia. This example differs extremely from the fan fiction websites, as the purpose is to make a profit.
So who owns culture? Historically it has been something that belongs to the people. Traditions, holidays, values, beliefs. Those things are intangible and can't be owned by an individual or corporation. But that has changed since brands, which are owned and copyrighted, have become the culture. In my opinion, people are still the ones who should own the culture. If they want to develop, expand, and immerse themselves into a brand (like Harry Potter) then they have the right to do so. But the line is crossed when people try to exploit that for their own personal gain. Companies are facing a challenging time. They don't know who to sue or where things like fan fiction are going so they sue everything they perceive as a threat. In a few decades, precedents will be in place to determine when copyright infringement occurs. But until then companies must use logic to determine who gets sued and who doesn't.

Works Cited:

The New York Times "Rowling to Testify in Trial Over Potter Lexicon"

Henry Jenkins "Convergence Culture"

The Persuaders

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Maintaining Dominance

Capitalism is based on the premise of free markets and competition. If you have multiple companies competing with each other, then eventually a higher quality product will be produced. The problem with this is that massive corporations hate competition. They undermine their prices, it hurts their profits, and if they don't have a monopoly then they can't determine the price of a product. As a result, businesses do anything to maintain their control over a product. Namely, lawsuits.

Recently Apple brought a lawsuit against HTC, a maker of smartphones. Apple is claiming that HTC violated multiple patents of their iPhone. This lawsuit is less about battling HTC and more about fighting Google, whose Android operating system is used by HTC. By suing Google's affiliates in the phone industry, Apple is hoping to limit Google's spread into the smartphone industry.

A problem with this lawsuit is that similar smartphones have been around since before the birth of the iPhone. Companies like Palm and Synaptics are believed to hold multiple patents in the smartphone based industry. As a result, many of Apple's patents could be found invalid by the courts.

Visually speaking, both of these phones are very similar. They are both thin, portable, and use touch screen technology. Even their capabilities are similar. They can both surf the web, use GPS, are voice controlled, etc. As Henry Jenkins stated in "Convergence Culture" the hardware is diverging, but the software is converging. This is a perfect example. Both of these phones do basically the same thing, but by bring about this lawsuit, Apple is hoping to keep the hardware from diverging too quickly.

Works Cited:

The New York Times "Apple Sues Nexus One Maker HTC"

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The Advertising Struggles of Facebook

We have read about the wave that is crashing through the media landscape. As Henry Jenkins asserts in his book "Convergence Culture" that the hardware is diverging but the content is converging. More and more, our devices are able to do the same things. Media itself has also taken this route of multimedia convergence. Social networking sites like Facebook are a perfect example of this. You can post videos, links, text, pictures, and even play games. These sites are insanely popular with Facebook having more than 400 million members. But despite this popularity, these sites have not found a way to be profitable as their advertising methods struggle.

When you log onto your Facebook account, there is constantly a column of ads on the right side of your screen. Over the past few years I have noticed that these ads have become increasingly more targeted. Multiple ads target me specifically for my music taste, interest in rock climbing, and for my age. While these ads do get my attention, they leave me with an uneasy feeling. Almost as if Facebook knows too much about me and that they are able to sell that information to other companies. Other ads seem so off topic and bizarre that I am turned off by them at the very beginning. According to a recent New York Times article, advertisers strive so hard to make their ads eye-popping and relevant that they end up making the ads too well targeted, thus turning off the potential customer. The vice president of business development at Facebook, Dan Rose, predicted that the quality of the ads on the site will improve as time passes and more business get involved.

People are incredibly susceptible to advertising. But people don't like to be aware that they are so susceptible nor do they like it when advertisers try to hard to target them. The immense amount of information on Facebook has been taken advantage of by advertisers. But ads struggle to find a balance between being too specific and too off color. Maybe the quality of these advertisements will change, but until then companies will struggle to turn Facebook into a revenue machine.

Works Cited:

The New York Times "Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key"

Henry Jenkins "Convergence Culture"

Class Discussions

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The Olympics: Old Advertising vs. the New

If we've learned anything in the past couple months, its that the media landscape is changing. A wave is barreling down on old media corporations, and when it meets them they must either adapt and ride it or be swept away to the undercurrents of history. One example of this transition is advertisements. Old techniques of selling a product no longer work to the desensitized consumer. To effectively move them, you must create ads that pull at their heartstrings. The success of advertisements during the recent Winter Olympic games exemplifies this new landscape in which new commercial strategies are clashing with the old.

You would have to be made of stone for that commercial not to move you. It epitomizes everything that the Olympics stand for (or at least what the media has told us they stand for). Courage, redemption, victory. Its that wholehearted, family friendly feeling that companies love to associate with themselves. And Visa isn't necessarily selling you anything, but the idea that Visa is linked with all of these powerful emotions.

Here's another good example of new affective marketing

Just look at the faces of all the athlete's as they accept those medals. You can see their emotions, all the hard work they've put in for that one moment. How all that sacrifice was worth it. In this commercial, Coke isn't an evil, self-serving corporation. They're allowing these Olympic dreams to come true. And if you buy their product, you're not just lining the pockets of those greedy executives, you're helping those athletes realize they're dreams too.

After watching the first two commercials, this one doesn't quite do it for me. It's not really selling you any emotion, so those strong feelings aren't going to be conjured up when you see McDonald's. It employs some famous athletes to sell their products, which is typical of old media strategies. But I mean really! Are we supposed to believe that Olympic athletes eat at McDonald's?

Old advertising methods used to be successful. Stick a famous athlete on some Wheaties boxes and BAM! You're guaranteed to make some money. But it reaches a point where we have to question some intentions. Do athletes only do these commercials for the money? Everybody has emotions and as such they are susceptible to affective marketing. In the years to come these are the advertisements that will be the most successful and will eventually become the norm.

Works Cited:

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A Stand Against Censorship

"Don't be evil". This is Google's famous slogan, but even after all we've read I'm still pretty skeptical. After all, I'm studying US history and if there is anything I've learned most large companies are evil and they don't get to be monopolies by listening to their morals. But after a recent hacking incident, Google threw down a challenge to the Chinese government, refusing to play along with their censorship policies anymore. This seemed like a really good, ethical move that I'm not used to seeing in companies. And after reading a recent article, comparing the way other internet companies are responding to China's censorship, I find myself thinking that maybe there is some truth to Google's slogan after all.
Take Amazon for example. On the surface it seems very similar to Google. Massive internet based company that offers its services in many foreign countries. Also like Google, they operate in China. But unlike Google, they submit to Chinese laws and censorship. As a recent article in The New York Times reported, any searches on Amazon.cn about former Communist Leader and democratic sympathizer Zhao Ziyang, the Dalai Lama, censorship in China, etc will bring up nothing. Amazon says that it must respect the laws of the countries it does business in.
Other internet companies, as well as human rights groups, investors, educational institutions, etc, are part of the Global Network Initiative. This coalition, which includes Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, have agreed upon a set of human rights including challenging foreign countries and their governments to defend freedom of speech and unlimited access to information. Microsoft, however, has taken the same defense as companies like Amazon, claiming that they must obey the laws of the companies in which they operate. This raises a paradox for many companies who have joined the Global Network Initiative yet continue to submit to foreign censorship.
Nobody can be completely good. Despite good intentions, some actions inevitably carry with them harmful consequences. Who knows if Google can be completely guided by ethics in years to come as they face changing leadership and the eventual decline in profits. But for right now Google does seem to be making some good, moral decisions, at least in comparison to their peers. And at least its a step in the right direction.

Works Cited:
The New York Times "New Scrutiny on Censorship Issues for U.S. Companies in China "
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