Apple is moving legally to stop Chinese manufacturers In Icons and Dragon in Dream Corp. from moving ahead with sales of an ultra-realistic action figure of the late Steve Jobs. Check out this video on YouTube showing the eerily realistic-looking Steve Jobs doll. What do you think about it?
Is it in bad taste?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think it’s in bad taste to offer a spookily realistic Steve Jobs doll. It could and probably should be considered a tribute.
Certainly those buying the doll aren’t mocking or insulting Jobs or his memory. To the contrary, they quite obviously treasure it.
What’s wrong with that?
And what’s wrong with the inevitable interest people have in books and articles stimulated by a big event, like the death of an icon?
This idea that people are profiting from a death or a tragedy is just silly. Profiting is not bad. Meeting needs and fulfilling wants is not bad.
It would be bad if you profited by killing the person — or if you degraded that person’s memory for no good reason.
We should all execute so beautifully in our lives that entrepreneurs want to honor us after our deaths. These are idea people 8000 miles away — crafting weirdly perfect plastic homages to Jobs. Others around the world will pay good money to get them.
I don’t know why people at Apple are so strongly against things like this that pay homage to one of my all time heroes. I think every Steve Jobs fan should have one!
I am on the fence about it. These are cool, but once Apple says okay, it has set a precedent. And then suddenly, people might do less attractive, more demeaning Jobs dolls. They might have to protect his visage just out of that!
gs
You make a good, but separate, point: Apple Inc. has to license, or forbid, all such representations, or weaken their intellectual property rights, under U.S. law. So they must act one way or the other.
The question originally raised, however, was whether this figurine was somehow a bad thing — an insult to Jobs’ memory, or taking advantage in some negative way; this is a different issue than Apple’ legal rights and obligations.