apple news/media reports
04/02/2007, 10:20am, EDT
Monday, April 2nd
Apple received 'cease & desist' over 1984 ad
The political anti-Hilary Clinton spoof based on Apple's legendary 1984 television ad may be violating copyright laws and could face a lawsuit from the copyright holders of George Orwell's classic novel '1984'. Rosenblum Productions, which acquired the rights to the Orwellian imagery, said that it is "monitoring the situation," but was unclear whether it was focusing on the creator of the video, YouTube, or both parties. The company, however, said that it has defended its rights successfully at least twice before, including a cease and desist to Apple over the original SuperBowl ad more than 20 years ago. "When the Apple 'Big Brother' television commercial was aired during the 1984 Super Bowl telecast, we immediately objected to this unauthorized commercial use of the novel, and sent a 'cease-and-desist' letter both to Apple and to its ad agency," said Gina Rosenblum, president of Rosenblum Productions. "The commercial never aired on television again."
Filed under: Apple
, 
, 14
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Or Demolition man ?
or Minority Report ?
or The Island ?
or any other depiction of a totalitarian idea ?
The Orwellians need to get over themselves_
And, by the way, how does it borrow from the novel, except for the part that says "1984 won't be like 1984?" The man on the screen does not look like Big Brother (Orwell's Big Brother has a mustache in the novel), there is no scene where a woman rushes into a theatre and smashes his face, nor are there any other such similarities.
It's an insignificant copyright holder, trying to fabricate significance by riding on the coattails of controversy. What else is new.
Oh really?
In the days after the original airing of the ad every major news programme on TV reported on it, most of them replaying the ad in its entirity.
Seems that Big Brother is a bit braindead.
Besides, as a number, or the descriptor of a year, the term "1984" could be argued to have no copyright in and of itself.
It would be a hard sell, besides, as the other poster above noted, by 24 January, the ad had become dated, and no longer needed to be run anyway.
snuffleupagus
It's obviously ridiculous on the face of it, though, as everyone has said. Apple aired the advertisement once by design, not because of some idiotic claims of copyright infringement. It was guerilla marketing at its finest. Apple pays a(n extraordinary) sum once during the Super Bowl, and then lets every news outlet replay the ad for free for the next month.