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Let Your Fingers Do the Gesturing

A long time ago this old codger was working in a major metropolitan newspaper - well, at least the myopic staff thought it was a major newspaper anyway - the most extraordinary thing happened.

Some clever clogs - probably me - came up with a headline that played on words used in ads by a certain large telephonic organisation whose initials are Telstra.

It was something along the lines of "let your fingers do the surfing" for an Internet yarn. Not brilliant, but better than the average run-of-the-mill twaddle dreamt up by mediocre scribes.

Anyway, within a day there was a letter from Telstra telling us not to use those words as they belonged to Telstra and they would take legal action.

Without going into all the details, it is fair to say that as cowering hacks we immediately took notice of Telstra's threat and proceeded to use similar phrases in just about every headline we could because, as we thought, Telstra minions clearly had their heads so far up the boss's clacker they couldn't think clearly.

Own phrases of English? Can't use our own language? Up yours you tossers!

Anyway, that was a while ago, but I was having a squizz through an advertising mag the other day - some derro had left it on a park bench - and what do I see, but bully-boy Telstra trying to play hardball again.

This time around it is an insurance firm that is being sued for featuring the famous Goggomobil - first used by the big T in about 1992 - and the actor who made the ads. They also have the temerity to have said the car name "Dart".

The Big T is reported to have said the Goggomobil is seen as being Telstra's and it is fighting for "intellectual copyright and the Yellow Pages brand."

Now, I may be old and silly, but as far as I am concerned you cannot copyright entire phrases of the English language.

I mean it would be a bit silly if all of a sudden you couldn't say "Hi" because some wanker at Telstra has used the word in an advert.

Or how about being banned from the phrase "I love you" because a massage parlour has used the phrase - I'm not quite sure how, but hey, I'm making a point here.

Or what if you couldn't all of a sudden say to Telstra and other self-inflated corporate jerks "s*** my ****" because I had spent a little bit of dosh to "brand" it as my saying.

So Ziggy Stardust - or whatever your name is Mr Big Cheese of Telstra - I'll paraphrase. Blow me!

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