Juan Carlos to Hugo Chavez - unintended consequences
On November 10th, I wrote about
Spain's King Juan Carlos telling Venezuela's Chavez to “shut up”.
Well, it turns out that quite the cottage industry has grown up out of those wonderful words. From the
UK Guardian:
King's outburst generates £1m-worth of ringtones
When the Spanish king Juan Carlos turned to Hugo Chavez and said to him, a touch irritably, "Why don't you shut up?", little did he know that his breach of diplomatic protocol would become a smash hit across the country.
Were the king to claim image rights over his less-than-diplomatic outburst, he could find himself a nice little earner, as those five famous words have become a multi-million euro business, selling ringtones, mugs, T-shirts and websites.
According to David Bravo, a lawyer specialising in IT law and intellectual property, "the use of the sentence 'why don't you shut up?' in ringtones ... is a violation of his image rights".
An estimated 500,000 people have already downloaded the ringtone, generating around €1.5m (£1m), but many companies have circumvented any potential problems over rights by using an actor's voice instead of the king's.
Over 700 videos have appeared on YouTube, with parodies ranging from a Benny Hill sketch to a Nike advert featuring the Brazilian star Ronaldinho, which ends: "Juan do it. Just shut up."
Meanwhile, the Peña brothers, who run a small T-shirt company, have found themselves overwhelmed with orders for their design inspired by the king. They normally expect to sell 800 T-shirts in a year, but in the week of the king's outburst their orders reached over 1,000.
Heh... I'd get a Tee Shirt
Posted by DaveH at November 18, 2007 9:00 PM
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