SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) supporter NBC Universal has announced another new reality series, (because that’s what we need ANOTHER reality series,) named “Home Transformers”. Sounds a lot like ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, but in television imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, (and ratings.) But what’s that on the page of the website? Looks like the icon from Apple’s developer tool, Xcode!
TheNextWeb via MacDailyNews:
NBC Universal has even set up a nice little website that it is using to stump for designers and builders to apply for the show this weekend. They want people who have a ‘great personality’, who are ‘the best’, etc. The page is honestly pretty boring, with an overly lens-flared logo and a standard WordPress theme.
But wait, what is this clever hammer-and-blueprint logo that they have displayed on the page? That looks familiar.
Yup, that’s the logo for Apple’s Xcode, its application development suite used by app developers across the globe. It’s been in use by Apple since Xcode’s introduction in 2003.
NBC is one of the biggest supporters of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). It was even caught strong-arming its suppliers into supporting the act, which has since been stalled by online protests.
There probably isn’t anything malicious about NBC using the Xcode icon. It may be a case of a subcontracted web design firm just grabbing an icon from somewhere because an intern thought it was cool looking, and fit the construction theme.
But, as TheNextWeb said, “This kind of casual copyright infringement, with no malicious intent, is exactly the kind of thing that SOPA was after. If people are outright stealing from content providers and selling their wares elsewhere, hey, that’s wrong. But SOPA covered so many cases of fair use, remixing, commentary and satire that it would have made a good number of the websites in the world immediately vulnerable to being taken down at the whim of ‘content creators’ like NBC.”
NBC is showing some cojones by ripping off a logo from one of the largest companies in the world. If they’ll do this to Apple, how much regard would they have for individual copyright holders? You know, the same people they claim SOPA was supposed to help protect.
“SOPA is designed to punish you — and other people — if you — or they — rip off our stuff, but we are exempt from SOPA when we rip off other peoples stuff.”
Just checked the site and they have taken it down.