Absolutely floored by this Coke viral that’s been floating across the internet for the past few days (my only little peeve is with the male voice-over that mentions global warming so explicitly, it would have been so much nicer if they’d just left the previous comment about them consuming CO2 hanging there subtly instead of smashing the dots together with a sledgehammer). As far as I can tell the video itself is portfolio work – details on the Purchase Brothers website are sketchy at best, and considering their iPod work, I really doubt anyone from Coke had anything to do with it whatsoever.
With that in mind though, I have a few questions that I can’t really resolve in my head. The video is spreading across the net like lightning – it’s only been up since the 9th and already it’s had almost 120,000 hits – awesome news for Coke (in this case). But what if the message behind the spot had been negative, and reflected badly on Coke, rather than being a fan homage? Sure, there are probably loads of videos all over YouTube preaching the evils of Coke, but at the end of the day they don’t look like they could have been made by Coke themselves (and it’s not just the quality of the video, but the use of the ‘Coke side of life’ animation at the end of the roll). What I’m trying to say is, is there a point at which this kind of fan-created content could become copyright infringement under the law? And could that point be somehow defined by quality? Let’s say the spot had misrepresented Coke, would they have had a leg to stand on if they had gone after Purchase Brothers based on the fact that the quality of the spot is so akin to their own ads and could therefore be easily construed as their own? And where would YouTube stand on this, and could they get embroiled in this sort of fiasco?
Any thoughts?
Found via ADivertido
Vital Signs 