A Limerick Ox - Blog Archive » Conservatives Accused Of Copyright Infringement

Conservatives Accused Of Copyright Infringement

So ironic, so hypocritical... it's "ironitical!"

Irony, or irony: (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity.

But honestly, seriously: a press conference led by Jim Prentice himself used For The Love Of Money by the O’Jays in a video presentation, and nobody in the party thought about securing the rights. Thusly, Warner/Chappell Music Canada Ltd. slapped the Tories with a copyright violation notice.

Right now, the Conservatives believe that the problem lies with the fact that it was broadcast on television, and since it was the news outlets covering the event who put the song on the air, it’s not their fault.

Conservative party spokes-man Ryan Sparrow declined to discuss the possibility the video violated Warner’s intellectual property rights.

“I’ve checked with our lawyers and our position is that we don’t comment on rumours of possible claims against the party.”

He said the video produced by the party was not an advertisement.

“The Conservative party has not released any ads containing the music in question,” he said.

However, anyone who has ever picked up a CD has seen the “unauthorized copying, public performance, broadcasting, hiring or rental is prohibited” warnings printed on the jacket in tiny letters. And those words mean that you can’t use a song during a public event without permission, regardless of whether you’re broadcasting it or not. It’s exactly the same situation which happened to Mike Huckabee when he was asked by Boston to stop using More Than Feeling at his campaign events. Huckabee wasn’t using it in commercials, but he was using it in public events without the band’s permission.

Oh, how I’d love to hear the Tories utter the words “fair dealing” in this case…

Via Michael Geist

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under canada, conservatives, Copyright, Music, News, Politics, prentice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.