Surface Unsigned's PR Pratfall
Threatening email backfires on Surface Unsigned
A heartwarming tale of the underdog giving the Man a cheeky kick in the knackers.When Surface Unsigned (a national battle of the bands competition) encountered a slightly critical article on an independent arts blog they dived in with both feet, threatening prosecution from their 'copyright infringement solicitors' if the whole post was not removed by Thursday 22 May 2008.
Unfortunately for Surface Unsigned they'd picked on the wrong website. Created In Birmingham is a Guardian Media Award winning website with a loyal following of web-savvy mother truckers. After mentioning the company's actions to its readers yesterday news spread quickly, with supportive articles appearing all over the place.
But y'see Surface's real problem wasn't to do with copyright - only one paragraph from their terms and conditions was quoted. Their problem was to do with the results that appeared in Google when searching for 'Surface Unsigned' or 'Surface Unsigned Festival' - that original CiB article appeared low down on the first page. Now, after prodding the bees' nest, their problem is a lot worse.
At the time of writing the contributor who was threatened with (hilariously unjustifiable) legal action has not received an apology.
The lesson here is... meh, who needs one? Sometimes it's just nice to see a bully get a beatdown.
Disclaimer - the author of this piece is the editor of Created In Birmingham.
Posted on 20 May 2008 by Chris Unitt
Share this news item:
 Digg |
 Facebook |
 StumbleUpon |
 Del.icio.us |
 Reddit |
Article Feedback
| bjorn cyborg wrote: | |
| I don't understand this | |
Posted on 20 May 2008 at 11:25
| |
| Anonymous wrote: | |
| Easy - 'Surface Unsigned' is a national battle of the bands competition. Someone from the company googled themselves and found an article they didn't like. They demanded it be taken down and threatened prosecution. That wasn't very nice of them so now, if you google 'Surface Unsigned', there are lots of negative articles about them. Power of the interweb, innit. There's a whole other discussion about whether their pay-to-play business model for unsigned bands is fair and whether their phone votes are being managed properly. That's not for me to say though. | |
Posted on 20 May 2008 at 12:33
| |
| Anonymous wrote: | |
| I guess you can understand from a commercial point of view those restrictions. The whole 'unsigned' concept has been stretched so far now that very few ventures will make any money from them. Surely we're getting to the point where an unsigned band is just that - unsignable? | |
Posted on 20 May 2008 at 13:07
| |
Post a Comment
