Let’s say you’re a company that strongly supports SOPA, PIPA, and any other act that’s made to protect intellectual property, a company like the NBC Network, for instance. Now, while the public may disagree with the aforementioned piracy bills, it actually makes sense for a company like NBC to support it. Granted, I think we would all like the entertainment content producers to adapt and evolve instead of holding on to an outdated business model, but the fact remains, it’s understandable why ABC would want to protect their shows.

So why would a SOPA-supporting entity like NBC outright steal their graphics from Apple? Is that in the spirit of what SOPA promotes? Of course not, but that didn’t stop them from doing so. TheNextWeb has the details, and it has to do with the graphics ABC used for their upcoming Home Transformers offering.

To put it plainly, NBC stole their graphic from Apple’s Xcode app development application. Visual evidence, again, courtesy of TNW. First, NBC’s graphic:

And now, a screenshot of Apple’s Xcode app:

Considering NBC’s commitment to SOPA, what gives? Does SOPA only apply when someone in another country doesn’t feel like waiting until their country gets the new episodes of 30 Rock, and so they download it from a TV torrent site? What about when NBC’s web designers decide they can use whatever graphics they like, regardless of what company uses it first? Is that when it’s fine to ignore them?

In other words, it’s apparently fine for NBC to take whatever graphics they see fit–SOPA supporter or not–but when someone downloads the latest episode of Grimm, the proverbial poo hits the fan, causing NBC to claim billions of dollars are being lost and threatening their job market. That sounds logical. In fact, it sounds like the exact opposite of hypocrisy.

Or not.

TNW has an additional take on NBC’s apparent “do as we say, not as we do” attitude:

The hubris is made even worse in that its not some artist’s logo off of Deviant Art, this is a graphic used by the biggest company in the world by market cap. If they don’t care about Apple, how much less to companies like NBC care about the rights of individual copyright holders, the same people that they profess to be out to protect.

That, folks, is a very good question. It’s clear NBC’s attitude is one of we’ll support SOPA as long as it protects our property, but we’ll completely ignore these principals when it comes to graphics we like.

And yet, these companies wonder why the public backlash against them, and these anti-piracy bills is so severe.