For the new year, Comedy Central updated their logo.
This looks disturbingly like the copyright symbol:
Now, Princeton’s symbol shows a bit of a flick on the c, but copyright is also represented without the hook on the C.
It’d be hard to argue that a moron in a hurry might not mistake these two things.
Now, to most people this isn’t a big deal. For those of us that understand the travesty that copyright has become, and how it has been abused to prevent most American’s from having legal access to materials that are out of print or would have been in public domain long ago, it’s a scary representation of Viacom (Parent company to Comedy Central).
For some who have been following the news, Viacom has been suing Youtube for DMCA safe harbor copyright violations. Dipping into this very briefly, Viacom claims that Youtube is not moving quickly enough, and that the Youtube/Google leaders knew about this, and allowed it to occur for there benefit. Youtube has plenty of measure to prevent this and pull down copyright content that isn’t authorized quickly, and sure enough a judge agreed [thanks to Techdirt for posting the whole ruling with Scribed]. Furthermore, the judge pointed out that simply having knowledge of infringement is not sufficient to remove DMCA safe harbors. Viacom appealed, and in December Viacom claimed the ruling would eviscerate copyright. In January Comedy Central’s logo changed, one could argue this is coincidence, but even at a coincidence, it’s plenty disturbing in a case for a billion in damages and a potential critical wound to users of Youtube.
Copyright interferes with all of us, and while it’s appreciated for protecting artists work, the balance is no longer about helping the public have access to material to learn from. If anything copyright is being used as a bludgeon against the public, and companies like Viacom appreciate and profit from it. That’s not to say the pirates are right, but if the copyright maximalists could be a bit more subtle about thumbing their nose at the general populous and treat them more like customers, maybe people would be more inclined to purchase.
That’s a lot to get from a logo, but the company connected does not make the copyright style logo any more comforting of a connection.