Preamble:
Once upon a time, celebrities' cheeks only belonged to themselves and their fans, but now they have become the pets of countless "porcelain touchers".
Looking at those copycat advertisements that can be seen everywhere, fans hate it, but the celebrities themselves often have no better way to deal with it.
The question then arises, are these "porcelain touchers" really going to succeed? In this era of eruption of public opinion, is it really impossible to find a way to punish them?
As the mainstay of the entertainment industry, celebrities not only bear the responsibility of entertaining the public, but also often become the first choice for product endorsements.
Their every move will be noticed, and a positive image can undoubtedly bring rich advertising benefits to businesses.
However, driven by profits, some unscrupulous businesses have also taken advantage of the situation and used celebrity images for marketing without authorization, regardless of the rights and interests of others.
This kind of misappropriation of portraits is called "porcelain touching" in the industry.
It disrupts the market order and seriously damages the legitimate interests of artists.
Despite this, many celebrities have no better way to deal with it, so they can only let these "porcelain touchers" gain an inch.
In this era of increasing moral anomie, do business rules really not exist, and where is the legal system?
Andy Lau: He was "touched porcelain" 84 times a year, and the law avoided talking about it
In 2022, Andy Lau, one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of Hong Kong movies, will be "touched porcelain" again.
This time, it was a Northeast specialty called "New Pioneer Lactic Acid Bacteria Sauerkraut", and Andy Lau's portrait was used for publicity and promotion without authorization.
As soon as they heard the name of this product, no one would believe that the superstar Andy Lau would put down his body and endorse a bag of sauerkraut that only sells for 6 yuan.
But this is not the first case, according to statistics, this year alone, Andy Lau has been "touched" by various strange products 84 times.
84 times, a staggering number.
On this "porcelain" list, Andy Lau may be able to easily win the championship.
However, what makes fans even more angry is that these "porcelain touchers" almost never get the punishment they deserve, and they get away with it again and again.
This time, Andy Lau's studio finally couldn't bear it anymore and issued a statement on December 12, officially filing a lawsuit to seek legal sanctions.
This gave many fans a sense of relief, after all, the king also has a day of anger.
Fans expect the court to give Andy Lau justice and warn those bad guys with bad intentions.
However, while everyone was happily waiting for the judicial decision, the producer of the newly opened sauerkraut suddenly turned out a "life charm".
They claimed that they signed a contract to use the image of Andy Lau's character "Pan Chengfeng" in the movie "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", not Andy Lau himself, so there was no illegal act.
These words made people speechless.
Carefully tracing the picture of this endorsement, the main part does use the image in the movie, and only the words "Movie "Bomb Disposal Expert 2" and Andy are barely marked in the corner.
This becomes a talisman for producers.
However, this behavior is nothing more than a search for a legal loophole.
They knew that this would have a serious impact on Andy Lau himself, but they deliberately deceived.
Andy Lau himself did not make any response to this.
Perhaps, during the grief of his father's recent death, he did not have more energy to be distracted from these "porcelain" incidents.
This is not the first time he has encountered similar endorsement disputes.
In fact, in his many years of acting career, Andy Lau has faced too many "porcelain touches" so many times that he has become numb.
Only this time, an uproar from fans finally woke him up from silence.
Place of the crime: Zhejiang Crime: An Aries melon peel merchant
As early as 2016, Andy Lau suffered a serious portrait infringement incident.
At that time, a water purifier manufacturer called "Zebrafish Health Technology Co., Ltd." used Andy Lau's portrait extensively in the packaging and publicity of its products.
This company is located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and the main person in charge of the company is Hu from Aries.
It stands to reason that an Aries personality like Hu should be more optimistic and cheerful, with a sense of justice, and should not do such illegal things.
However, driven by profits, he chose to take shortcuts and use the superstar effect without authorization.
even placed large billboards in Beijing and other places with Andy Lau's endorsement advertisements, which were extremely blatant.
After Andy Lau found out, he warned many times to sue, hoping that he would stop the infringement.
However, Hu was not only bold, but also began to argue unreasonably.
He claimed that it was just a giveaway of the product, not Andy Lau's endorsement.
This is simply talking nonsense on the spot.
After a long period of court maneuvering, in 2019, the company finally lost the case and ordered Andy Lau to pay 500,000 yuan in compensation.
For a small company, this is already astronomical.
Hu also finally understood that it is not so easy to touch big porcelain brands, and there is a price to pay for deceiving people in the Internet era.
However, soon, after paying the fine, Hu made a comeback.
He changed his face and set up a new company, and he still went his own way.
It seems that it is not enough to punish money alone, and it is necessary to punish such unauthorized infringement at its roots.
Epilogue:
From these two typical cases, it can be seen that the phenomenon of celebrity portrait theft is still serious, and some commercial companies do not hesitate to touch big-name celebrities for the sake of profit, and bypass legal rules through various means.
This has caused great pain to the celebrities themselves and their fans, and has also seriously damaged the business environment.
To solve this problem, it is not enough to rely on celebrities to sue individually, and work needs to be carried out at multiple levels:
The first is to strengthen industry supervision.
At present, the supervision of the advertising industry is still weak, and there is a lack of effective punishment measures.
If we can establish and improve the supervision system, set up a full-time department, and vigorously crack down on all kinds of illegal advertising, it will play a good deterrent role.
Second, it is necessary to crack down on piracy and intensify law enforcement.
Existing laws and regulations explicitly prohibit the unauthorized use of other people's portraits for profit, but in practice, law enforcement is insufficient.
If strict investigation and punishment are carried out, so that pirates have nowhere to escape, the results will be huge.
The third is to increase the legal protection of celebrity portraits to protect their legitimate rights and interests.
In judicial practice, it is necessary to attach importance to the legal status of celebrity portrait rights, increase the intensity of academic research, and create a complete judicial remedy mechanism.
Only by taking a multi-pronged approach and leaving those lawbreakers with nowhere to hide can we fundamentally prevent such incidents from happening again and get the entertainment industry back on track.
At that time, the stars can finally raise their heads and raise their eyebrows.