Chaos & Copyright Laws
Copyright laws exist for a reason. And if you infringe on copyright laws you have to pay actual money to the person you stole from. As you should.
In my normal job I work in print & marketing, and we, of course, follow copyright laws. It’s kind of a big deal, and they make it clear in orientation that YOU DO NOT VIOLATE COPYRIGHT LAWS. This seems pretty reasonable.
To be clear, copyright infringement includes you, not only directly copying someone else’s creation, and profiting off of it, BUT it also includes altering that work. So, if you make a slight change, it doesn’t negate the copyright.
We have a regular customer who often wants us to print banners for her that have copyright characters and logos. Copyright infringement is constantly explained to her, and she always argues. This has been going on for AGES. It’s a never ending cycle. One thing she likes to say is, “This other place did it for me!”. Well, they shouldn’t have, and because one place infringed on copyright laws, doesn’t make it okay for anyone else infringe on copyright laws. Also, if someone else did it for you, then go back to them, and stop harassing us.
Another thing she often says is that not everyone is telling her the same thing. For example, an employee might simply tell her, “We can’t do this, because those characters are copyright.”, so she comes back with the character removed, but with the logo there. So then someone has to tell her, “That is copyright as well. Everything related to this movie is copyright. The logo, characters, the name, etc.”, she flips and claims they should have told her that from the start. Rinse. Repeat. She does this over and over and over again. It gets old. I can only assume she is not THAT stupid, and she just thinks if they harass us enough, we will get sick of it and just give in to her demands.
Recently, an incompetent coworker, was slightly altering the copyright image for her. I told him we couldn’t do that. It’s still the logo/name of the movie, and we can’t use it. Photoshopping over a small portion doesn’t make it an original image. So, it’s still violating copyright laws. I go about doing my stuff. He eventually leaves. Later I notice an email interaction between him and the customer, where he told her the logo was removed (at her request), and he shared the altered image with her. He also said it was printed, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I printed it out.
The next day the customers wife came in to get the banner.. that’s when all hell broke loose. She starts flipping out on my coworker/friend (BTW, the guy that worked on her banner wasn’t there). She puts her wife, the customer, on FaceTime. My coworkers anxiety is bad and he has trouble with angry customers and just freezes, so I took over and CALMLY explained the copyright laws to her (something they already knew). They’re just yelling and screaming and refused to listen. Claiming there was no communication about what they were getting (there was , and I had proof). Then they insisted it was done for them before, at our store, just a couple months ago with the same movie logo (if you’re curious, it was Boss Baby). I calmly responded, “If it was done here before, it shouldn’t have been. It’s a clear violation of copyright laws.”. They didn’t care and just kept up about how we did it for them before.
Let me be clear, if someone did it for them before, IT DOESN’T MATTER! Just because someone (who should have known better) made a mistake, and did it for you once, doesn’t mean we should keep doing it! It doesn’t make it suddenly okay to violate copyright laws! For example, if I go to the bank, and ask the teller to give me money from someone else’s account, and the teller does it. Do you think they should keep doing this for me every time I go? No. They shouldn’t. That would be stupid, because it’s still against the law. The law didn’t change because someone was stupid.
So anyway, she repeatedly called me a bitch and said I didn’t know what I was talking about. Umm, no sweetie. That would be you, you’re projecting. Also, I STILL remained calm, even when she was calling me a bitch. I should not have to tolerate that. So I call the manager over, and she upholds copyright laws as well, and tells her we can’t print it with the logo. The customer keeps yelling for a bit, and my coworker tells her, “The best we can do is just give you this banner we already made. Just take it.” (without paying for it).
Here is where it gets funny.
The customers wife claims they are going to sue us for refusing service. Then bitched about how bad it would look for them to sue us, because they are a black owned small business. I’m not sure what that has to do with it, because the reason it would look bad for them is because they’re mad we refused to violate copyright laws for them. They are in the wrong, not us.
Think about how stupid that would look, “We want to sue them because they refused to put a copyright logo on our banner I wanted made for a customer… Which means I am making money off this copyright logo.”… Which brings me to another point: As a business owner, who “designs” and has us make banners, etc, for parties, shouldn’t she be well aware of copyright laws? She can’t violate them either.
But, like most people who act like entitled assclowns, she doesn’t care. And, they’re not gonna sue anyone. They’re all talk.
Also, it seems like someone did, in fact, print an ever so slightly altered, copyright image for her in September, with the same logo. Turns out, it was our supervisor, who should have clearly know better. He really shouldn’t have done that. Manager said she was going to talk to him.
Let’s normalize “firing” customers. This customer has long been a nightmare, who terrorizes the print and marketing associates. That needs to stop.
Companies need to stop allowing customers to abuse their employees. I don’t care how much the customer spends, it doesn’t change the fact they are an abusive customer.
