Do Business Well

Because it’s so easy to capture, store, process, and redistribute digital information, it is becoming almost impossible to police trademarkand copyright infractions on the Internet. Consider for example, the problem of the Digital Fan.

The digital fan: Let’s say you own a major rollerblade hockey team, the Hanover Hippos. Your team has won the world championships three times in a row, and made you millions of dollars selling merchandise and information about the Hippos. You’ve created your official Hippo Home Page, and receive more than a million hits a week. But something is amiss. Many of your fans are starting to set up their own online fan clubs. They’re plastering the Hippo logo all over their pages and posting statistics and player profiles downloaded from your site. As well, fans of your archrivals, the Neustadt Nimrods, have set up anti-Hippo sites filled with lewd images which they have made by digitally altering your logo.

After a review of these sites, you realize you have to deal with more than 250 infractions of your copyright and trademarks. And more troublesome, half of the perpetrators are loyal fans — 20 percent of them are from Europe and Asia, and 65 percent of them are under the age of 14. Your lawyers tell you that you can take legal action, but it will cost millions and prove to be a public relations nightmare. You consider shutting down your Home Page, but you know it won’t do any good. Digital versions of your logo have become so widespread on the Internet that you will never be able to curtail their use.

The finger in the digital dike: As the case of the Digital Fan illustrates, trying to control the use of copyright material on the Internet is like trying to keep out the sea with your finger in a dike. In the days of mass media, it was much easier to enforce trademarks and copyright, and much harder to violate them. In the past, if someone wanted to use your logo, they had to reproduce it in some way or broadcast it over television or radio. If they wanted to use your text copy, they had to print a newspaper, or publish a book. The physical reality of traditional media made it expensive and time-consuming to infringe on someone’s rights. It also made it obvious who was breaking the law. As such, prosecuting violators was a possible task.

Not so with digital media. Anyone with a multimedia computer and an Internet account can go out on the World Wide Web and gather logos, pictures, music, videos, software programs, articles, and anything else of value to the original creator. Then they can take this material and rearrange it any way they want. Want to put a dress on Michael Jackson? No problem. Want to make Mel Torme sing songs by Nirvana? Easy. And most importantly, the digital pirate can broadcast these mutations over the Internet by e-mail, or post them to a Web site. As you can see, it’s almost impossible to control this black market in digital content. In cases of large infractions — by your competitors, for example — you might be able to take legal action and win, but it’s not feasible to round up every petty miscreant on the Internet.

As a digital marketer, you need to accept the fact that, in all but the largest cases, you don’t have a viable way to stop infractions, or seek damages. Because of this reality, consider making your trademark digital content freely available to the world. Create a section on your Web site which deals with the issue. Instead of prosecuting people, use the exchange of digital trademark material to develop closer relationships with your customers. Invite them to download your logo and place it on their Web site. After all, having your logo on computers all over the world might be a good thing.

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