

How Twitter and a community put a smackdown on Urban Outfitters - monirz77
http://www.myaimistrue.com/2011/05/urban-outfitters-ripoff-trending-topic/

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araneae
The irony is that it's not clear that the Etsy person that was "ripped off"
didn't rip off the designs herself:

<http://www.regretsy.com/2011/05/27/urban-outrage/>

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joejohnson
Of course, all art is derivative in nature. This artist is hypocritical to
claim that her idea is entirely unique.

~~~
woodall
I've built a lot of things I thought were "unique" only to find, after I'm
done, that they were not.

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fingerprinter
I don't mean to steal the thunder from the poster, but I highly doubt it
matters. At all.

Just like the indignation with Apple over the closed iPhone, or the terms of
service or a host of other things didn't really matter. Or all the flack given
to MS (bing stealing search results), or Oracle (mishandling the community,
Patent trolling) or Google (not releasing source code, ripping off open
source) or IBM (offshoring nearly their entire workforce), non of it really
seems to matter.

Everyone loves these stories, the little guy calling out the big guy and
showing them what's what. But does it change anything? Does it impact the
bottom line of that company? I can't think of a single time that it did,
either immediately or over time.

Don't get me wrong, I would like it to matter, but in an age of millions of
users, billions of dollars, 100s or even 1000s of people being aware of
something and starting grassroots campaigns will result in a speedbump at best
or a blip at worst for these mega corporations. Think of facebook and the guff
they got about their TOS, twitter and their killing off of competing apps. Non
of it mattered; people moved on continued to use those services because it was
easy, because it was what they knew and because, in the end, people will
default to cheap, cool and easy.

Just the reality of the situation, IMO.

~~~
rmc
_But does it change anything?_

In this case, Yes. The company pulled the infringing piece of jewlery.

~~~
fingerprinter
I would call that a soft win. Urban Outfitters is still in business, still
printing money, still going to infringe in the future and people will forget
their transgression in a matter of days.

Great, they pulled the particular piece because they got enough negative
attention. How many other things on their shelves are infringing that we don't
hear about? The point remains that an even if this one case was "won", it
won't change anything. Companies have, do and will continue to run over people
because the vast majority of people simply do not care.

~~~
RexRollman
The effort changed what needed to be changed. I really don't know what you
would consider a "win" but it was a win for the effected artist.

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lurker19
Ironic domain name "MyAimIsTrue", considering how off-base the accusation was:
<http://www.regretsy.com/2011/05/27/urban-outrage/>

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zalew
Fashion houses should somehow revise their chain of implementing creative
work. I don't know how it is in UO, but afaik from other news from last years,
where apparel companies sold copied flickr/blog/digart/etc creation, they
don't do such stuff in-house, they buy it from outside (some sort of
providers, companies or freelancers, don't know). I think it's a common
practice for cheap modern apparell - well, creation and production must be
cheap. Sometimes bought derivatives happen to be ripoffs, f.ex. look at this
example (it's in Polish, but just look at the images on the left)
[http://wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,101562,8016144,Amerykanka_oskar...](http://wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,101562,8016144,Amerykanka_oskarza_Reserved_o_kradziez_zdjecia.html)

Just look at those cases <http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?cat=5>
The case above is just one of dozens that are brought to daylight and probably
hundreds that don't. Of course the brand has to take full responsibility,
there's no doubt, so they made a good decision pulling back the jewelry.

On the other hand, fashion is an industry without copyrights
[http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...](http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html)
, so I wouldn't bash them from a moral POV.

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GeoffWozniak
> "A big corporation ripping off small businesses and independent artists is
> wrong."

That's pretty specific. Why not "Ripping off is wrong"?

I wonder the same thing when I hear "Violence against women is wrong". I tend
to think "Violence is wrong".

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adjwilli
Maybe it will make the artist feel better knowing that in Uruguay there are
fake Urban Outfitter stores in the malls.

