When you order a coke at any fast food place, they give it to you, cold, full of ice, ready to quench that thirst. You go over to the supply counter, you grab a straw and place into the the little hole in the middle of the cap. What do you do next? Drink the liquid? No, we generally move the straw up and down just to “make sure” everything is well mixed; that the ice is well distributed inside the cup.
Did you ever notice that? The other day in a casual conversation, someone told me that McDonald’s did. I tried searching for it and found nothing concrete about the matter. But let’s just say it’s real. Even though you can do that with any given cold drink from any given fast food restaurant, no one else had noticed but the Golden Arches. So what did they do? Register that little sound made by the straw when you mix in your drink; that “whooshy” sound… it’s property of McDonald’s.
Now my real question is… is that ridiculous or just plain genius? To what extent have we come to fight for copyrights? Perhaps one may glance at it first and think of it as nonsense. A simple sound made by a reflex in all of us. But standing on McDonald’s point of view, or of any other company or entrepreneur for that matter, it’s about having a more global vision about all the possibilities one has.
Defending intellectual or copyrights are the only defense we have today against piracy. Thus, even though this example may sound too out of line or illogical, in the end it’s all we have against the copies. Granted, a straw sound is hardly a masterpiece of creation, but that’s just the extent to where large companies have been pushed.