Friday Frivolity: The Joustin with Justin Edition!

So apparently there is an app in the iPhone called Joustin Beaver!  Here’s a pic of some of it:

Apparently the idea is that it is a light parody of the life of Justin Beiber where... well, let’s Kotaku explain it:

Joustin Beaver is about a beaver, who looks as much like Bieber as a cartoon beaver can, floating down a river swatting paparazzi and signing autographs, all the while trying to avoid being sucked into the “whirlpool of success”

You can even watch it in action, here:

(“Beaver Exposed”?  Really?  You had to go there?)

Yeah, so it’s kind of the usual silly stuff you see in the iPhone all the time.  I mean it’s not exactly Angry Birds or Jetpack Joyride (which is silly, but also a lot of fun).  This just looks silly and like a waste of a small amount of money.

So then Justin Beiber’s lawyers sent the game company a cease-and-desist letter and the game company responded by suing Beiber and his lawyers.

Now first you might rationally wonder “can they do that?” as in, can they sue preemptively this way, and the answer is yes.  They can do that to obtain a declaratory judgment—essentially what we would normally call an advisory opinion, but of course the courts have refused to give out advisory opinions so we call them declaratory judgments.  It’s a huge difference.  (Note: sarcasm.)

And I suppose there is value to that.  Would you invest in this game company knowing that they faced the threat of being shut down by Beiber’s lawyers?  So the game company has a good reason for wanting to get this issue settled.

But at the same time, this seems kind of dumb on the Beiber camp’s side.  The game is just enough “parody” to be protected speech, in my humble opinion, which means that I don’t believe their chances of winning are very good.  But in doing this, they have given something to the game company infinitely more valuable: publicity.  I am willing to bet that since the suit has been filed, their sales has been at least doubled.

This is what we talk about when we talk about the Streisand effect.  It means that the attempt to suppress speech ends up generating publicity that harms your ultimate cause.  And it is funny that it is a common enough mistake that we have a term for it.

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On the other hand, if you have a smart phone you should check IGN’s mobile site all the time.  They have constant app store updates telling you about tons of apps that are absolutely free that make this game look like the POS it probably is.  My favorite free game right now?  Jetpack Joyride, although I wish it had some of the humor of Halfbrick’s other classic (which also stars Barry Steakfries), Age of Zombies.  Seriously, there is very little reason to pay for most apps on the iPhone unless it is really vital to doing something important.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.