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Re:Apple wont let bad guys use iPhones in movies, director says by favorited on Thursday February 27, 2020 @03:28PM (#22437427)
It's a brand thing. If you see an Audi in a film, it's because Volkswagen AG paid for it. All the Oracle stuff in Tony Stark's house was paid for by Oracle. Square Enix didn't put Beats headphones advertisements in the FFXV movie for nothing.
Re:Apple wont let bad guys use iPhones in movies, director says by endorphone on Thursday February 27, 2020 @03:50PM (#22437677)
There are paid promotional situations. That doesn't mean that everything is a paid promotional appearance. Sometimes the product just makes sense in the situation.

e.g. BMW occasionally sponsors their vehicle to be in a premium film (e.g. Mission Impossible), often doing in-kind marketing agreements. Yet there are many films where BMW vehicles appear with no sponsorship whatsoever because it's logically a good candidate for the car in the situation/conveys the right image. Ford Crown Vics were every film cop car despite Ford's lack of involvement with that. And iPhones appear in a lot of situations where the most likely real-world phone would be an iPhone.

And to dispute a common misnomer, it is entirely within fair use to show brand logos presuming you aren't maligning the product in some way. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from showing a villain with an iPhone presuming you don't pretend the phone is a bomb or something, beyond Apple objecting to giving you free products.

So why do films/shows sometimes occlude the brand? Usually because someone else paid them to show their brand and they don't want brand confusion.

As an aside, elsewhere someone mentioned a show saying "promotional considerations provided by Apple". That specifically means free product, and excludes monetary sponsorship.