Multiplicity: the good, the bad & the ugly

I have been engulfed for almost 24 hours (okay, I haven't been awake for all of them) in an argument on Scamp's blog, between god knows how many people, regarding this ad for TfL (Transport for London).

Basically, it was done by an agency called WCRS and can be viewed here. However, it has been brought to several people's attention, (and what I find amazing is that I think it all came out on Scamp's blog first!) then to YouTube's for copyright infringement and now Campaign has an article on the issue, that it is an, almost to a T, copy of a copyrighted video that a professor in the states did, at the University of Illinois, in 1999. View the original here.

Where I stand is that they should have asked for permission, because they probably would have been given it, even for free. The word copyright on the website is fairly big. It's a crap site.

However, and this is a long shot, there is every possibility that many professors all across the world do that experiment and that the professor from Sussex, as stated in the original release of the ad, had just 'informed' them of it and explained how it works. Although, even though you do have basketballs in the UK, I doubt they're the easiest to get your hands on.

Now, a good way to "copy" an ad. Stop me if you've seen this before...

Pot Noodle gave props and respect to Guiness by attempting to redo their Domino ad, but in a completely different and clever way. You know they're doing it, the consumer will know they're doing it. It's as if they said, "hey Guiness, can we make the Domino's black sheep cousin?". Guiness said yes.

The Tipping Pot by AKQA

ps. People don't need to be so mean when commenting on blogs! Sheesh.