Big Business Bob

The image of Bob Marley is one of the most recognizable of pop/cult images out there. On par with Che Guevarra's famous rebel face. The Marley family, which includes notable musicians Stephen Marley, Damian Marley and Julian Marley amongst others, has hired a legal firm to get control of the image.

Rights issues are nothing new to the Marley's, even Bob had his music essentailly stolen by on several occassions. To this day many of the recordings out there have been stolen over and over through either outright thievery or shady deals with old Bob affiliates.

According to several articles the Marley empire is worth about $600 million worldwide. Legal sales were said to be around $4 million.

The Outrage

Bob stood for love, peace and music. He was a walking Woodstock Festival, but more pure. People are expressing outrage that he stood against commercialization and capitalism and to copyright and reign in on his image and products would be against his whole philosophy. I suppose in some ways it would. But, if you are one of his potentially talentless kids, would you not want to try and squeeze some dollars out of this for yourself? Would you not be entitled to it? I don't know.

"It's a free-for-all out there with all the fakes, all the piracy," she said. "It's important to continue getting his real message out like when he was alive, because the world is in a crisis and Bob Marley's lyrics provide a solution." said Lorna Wainwright who owns a popular Marley store called Tuff Gong.

The plan is not to hunt the Rastas who sell t-shirts and incense, but to brand a new line of products and guard those. So you can still get your Bob incense holder and beanie at your local reggae festival, but the plush commercialized stuff will only be available through the House of Marley product line for Frat boys and Abercrombie graduates. I'd rather have the hand woven beanie anyway.