Oxscam

Charity shops are an oddity to me. From what I see it boils down to a jumble sale in a shop where the laws appointed to retail take a back seat. None so evident as the laws obtaining to copyright. Whilst scanning the shelves of one of my favourite jumble sale buildings I came across this little beauty- a clearly forged copy of “the Queen”. Either that or the design department and QC crew we’re having a particularly “off” day.

First let’s check out the cover. Not sure how evident it is in the photo but it looks like it was printed on an HP inkjet printer from 1998- the small writing is so fuzzy it’s almost unreadable.

Hey! Check out that spine eh? Beauty! Fits like a glove…like a motorcycle glove on a toddler. Also loving what you’ve done with the logo there to make it fit. Approved!

Now that’s what I call a back cover! Bold, concise and thoroughly unreadable. The font is spot on too- totally fitting of the rest of the design work. Proper gear.

Well they’ve at least spent a bit of money on the disk- the image is printed on and not stuck on with a label, which means if they were going the whole hog they would have got proper pressed DVDs with the silver backs..

Oh no, my mistake- it’s bright purple. Just like real DVDs you find in the shop yeah?

This little number would set you back £2.50 in the charity shop, which is a whopping £1.50 inflation on top of what the shifty bloke in soho originally sold it for. So what’s the crack here? Who’s culpable for some copyright backfire? The bloke who donated it? Or the nice old lady who’s now going to sell it on at market value bound by retail laws? Me thinks charity shops need to step up their vetting process when it comes to material like this- and it’s not like this is the first one I’ve found either, nope there’s been a few. If I find any more, they’re going right here…and they will be mocked.