CANADIAN LIBERAL CANDIDATE ILLIBERAL WHEN IT COMES TO PARODISTS

There’s a storm brewing in Canada. The IPKat learns (via boingboing) that the writers of PaulMartinTime.ca, a site parodying Paul Martin, the Canadian Liberal prime ministerial candidate, have been threatened with legal action by the webmaster of paulmartintimes.ca. The people behind the official site, while acknowledging the parodists’ free speech rights, have said that the parodists have gone too far because, in basing the design of their site on the official site, they have appropriated Paul Martin’s copyright-protected art work, graphics and the style sheet. They have told PaulMartinTime.ca that its writers are free to express their opinions but this freedom does not stretch to the right to invade other peoples’ property rights. The parodists were told to make the necessary changes by 5pm on 24 December or face legal action.

The IPKat notes that the appearance of the two sites is very similar, but the parody would not work nearly as well if they weren’t. He thinks that free speech will sometimes justify encroaching on the property rights of others. It’s not just important to get the content of the message across, but also to bring it to the public’s attention. This may be achieved more effectively by a parody of the object of the parody’s style, even if this means allowing the parodist to copy copyright-protected code that lies behind the way a website looks.

Learn more about Canadian politics here
Other parodies here and here


CANADIAN LIBERAL CANDIDATE ILLIBERAL WHEN IT COMES TO PARODISTS CANADIAN LIBERAL CANDIDATE ILLIBERAL WHEN IT COMES TO PARODISTS Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, December 29, 2003 Rating: 5

No comments:

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.