A restaurant owner is being threatened with arrest by FIFA because he has a hand painted ball with the number 2010 on it displayed in his restaurant window. This is just one example of ridiculous legal action being threatened by FIFA, there are many others all around our country.
I think the world is gone mad when we as a people can allow a corporate to go around intimidating and bullying people for silly little things. Do they think that the public would believe that the restaurant is somehow linked to the world cup and/or FIFA. I am sorry, even a damn retarded monkey would not make that link.
I recently noticed a Bafana Bafana soccer shirt being sold at a sports store which carried a warning that you may not alter the garment in any way or run the risk of being sued by FIFA. This may seem like small insignificant issue now, but the future looks bleak for consumers and civil society in general if we continue in this way. One day you are going to wake up in pyjamas that can only be rented and has an attached contract that is the length of an encyclopedia. You may laugh at this idea but 15 years ago I would have laughed at anyone trying to sell a garment that had small print determining what you can and can’t do with it.
There is certainly a need to protect intellectual property but only in as much as required to ensure that there is fair return on your ideas. That is, no one else should be able to sell your idea as his own and that is as far as it should go. All ideas are built on other ideas, there are no truly unique ideas. So just like the genetically modified foods license the seed to farmers, they should be licensing the original DNA that they reverse engineered from nature to the world and pay for it.
The legal world only really works for corporates because to fight a legal case requires great deals of money. Ordinary citizens dont have the time, energy or resources to take these bully’s on individually and so they know they can bully us. We need to join together as a society and revolt against selling our world to corporates. Society! Wake up to corporates owning everything in your lives and let us change it before it is to late.
This reminds me of a story, the details may not be exact but the idea is important
“First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.” – Pastor Martin Niemöller
So what can we do? Well first we can vocalise our disapproval of the behavior, then join together in our disapproval and lastly speak collectively with our wallets and not buy their products. It is with tears in my eyes that sacrifice my annual FIFA soccer game and vow not to purchase another FIFA product. Hello Pro Evolution Soccer……