What is it with politicians who push for “three strikes” and other draconian copyright laws always being caught infringing on copyrights themselves? We’ve already covered how Nicolas Sarkozy, who claims credit for the original “three strikes” plan, has been caught infringing on copyrights multiple times.
Now it appears the same may happening with Lord Peter Mandelson, the unelected politician in the UK (who had been forced to resign twice in his past), who suddenly started pushing for a similar three strikes law — after a UK study had outright rejected it — after dining with entertainment industry bigshots. From that came the Digital Economy Bill.
But it appears that even Mandelson, the great defender of copyright, isn’t above getting into a bit of trouble with copyright himself. It appears that there’s a bit of a controversy over a recent political ad put together by his Labour party — and Mandelson is taking responsibility for the ad. That was in response to the fact that the ad backfired and seems to have rallied opponents.
But, as PeteProdge points out, it also appears that the ad very well might infringe on copyrights. That’s because it takes an image from an old (popular) TV show in the UK, and replaces one character’s head with a politician’s head. The link here is a bit full of hyperbole, as it comes from someone who seems to be against orphan works legislation and in favor of even more ridiculous copyright laws. The BBC says that it never would have licensed the use of the program, however there are some questions over who might actually have the right to license the image.
I’m not entirely sure this is a big deal. One could probably make a pretty strong fair use/parody argument for allowing the use of the image here. However, for a politician who is so in favor of stricter copyright law, you would think he wouldn’t go around using other people’s works.
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