Advertising

Here the rules on advertising are pretty lax, meaning that copyright is not really a big issue.

A couple of examples from around town:

I was talking to one of the interns, and he was so frustrated that another book company would decide to steal a book already published. Apparently there was a big lawsuit about it at one point in time, but the wider point here is that copyright laws are not so great as to prevent someone from taking a popular book and re-publishing it (the book is called Autobiography of a Yogi if you’re interested in reading it).

I’ll try to get a picture of this one eventually, but there is a shop with both a coke awning and Pepsi products sold inside it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens often. Perhaps brand loyalty is not really common here.

Another thing that is not really common is the rights of people to their own image. One example is a famous film star, Shah Khan (on the right of the advertisement). His picture is pasted all over many advertisements, without his permission. Although companies would have to pay him to wear their specific product, his image still shows up everywhere. Maybe it’s all just false advertising (something that also happens all the time here – there is a dentist we pass by a lot, and there’s no way those before-after pictures on the sign are the same person).