Royal Family Bans Satirical Coverage Of The Big Wedding
from the they're-british,-right? dept
You may have heard that there's some sort of big royal wedding going on in the UK in the near future. There's been a fair bit of press coverage about it all, apparently. And, of course, there will be even more coverage of the event itself. Down in Australia, comedy/satire troupe The Chaser boys had been planning to cover the wedding in their typically satirical manner, but the royal family has officially stated that video from the event may not be used for satire. Specifically, the rules are that the footage, which is being offered to a ton of TV stations, cannot be used "in any drama, comedy, satirical or similar entertainment program or content." And I thought the Brits liked satire...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: royal family, wedding
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(Caution: the above may not be serious).
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But how about a 3rd party taking the footage off the broadcast and do a non-commercial satire?
BTW, does the British has some law against making fun of the monarchy like in Thailand?
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There's no fair use in the UK...
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I'm inspired to provide some satirical coverage, but then I'd have to actually watch it. Plus I'm not nearly funny enough to get the attention it would deserve ...
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Significantly more limited than fair use...
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As far as limiting the use of television footage there is precedent, the proceedings of the House of Commons were only televised on the grounds that the footage not be used for satire. Whether a third party could take this footage and then use it for a spoof as far as I know has never been tested but might make an interesting YouTube project for some enterprising soul. Be interesting to see them formulate a take down notice for that one.
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The royal family and the whole british caste system is ridiculous.
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Daily Show/Colbert?
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Re: Daily Show/Colbert?
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Move along, folks...
"Two relative unknowns were wedded recently in an understated and sparsely attended ceremony open only to close friends and family. The new couple signed the marriage certificate at the courthouse before piling into their '87 Grand Prix to take a quick celebratory drive to the conference room of the nearest Days Inn for the reception.
A local DJ took requests before handing over the controls to the best man, who was both bigger and drunker than the unfortunate entertainer. Shortly after 9:30 pm, the new couple drifted off to their room while the best man wandered around trying in vain to a.) score some more drink tickets and b.) challenge various part members to an arm wrestling match.
Just a day like any other (give or take a wedding) in the lives of the British royals."
[Copies of the unedited wedding footage are available on Megaupload. Contains some swearing and adult situations. And about 10 minutes of the camera man trying to get his cat to play the piano.]
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Monty Python
And good luck telling the gang at SNL to not satirize it in their weekend update segment.
I hope Comedy Central didn't agree to that, or they'll miss out on a wealth of material.
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Can someone educate me on the state of royalty in England?
The other thing I don't understand is why any American would be infatuated with England's royalty. We took this land from them 200+ years ago so why do we care about them now? I sure don't.
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Re: Can someone educate me on the state of royalty in England?
But really that's a whole other can of worms...
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Re: Can someone educate me on the state of royalty in England?
The Queen holds a ceremonial place in government, signing bills into law, opening Parliament etc. Technically she is still empowered to select a Prime Minister, but the reality on the ground is she picks whoever can command a majority in the House of Commons, so in effect the PM is chosen by elected MPs, not the Queen. The Queen also does a lot of diplomatic stuff as she is head of state, and don't forget all the time posing for pictures that end up on currency and stamps almost everywhere.
I'm a republican (in the UK sense not the US) so I'm all for the dissolution of the monarchy, but as for stripping the wealth of the Crown it gets problematic as to who owns what? Dot he Duchies belong to the state or the royal family? Where do you draw the line in protecting private property? It would be a complicated issue should it ever arrise.
It's probably not going to do so for the lifetime of the Queen as she's quite popular and seems to know what she's doing. If Charles were King it may be a different story given that he apparently doesn't understand that the best thing he can do to avoid provoking a constitutional crisis is to shut the hell up and stop interfering in things like agricultural policy and planning applications. Who knows, maybe the monarchy is unlikely to finish out the century, this is certainly my preference.
As for why the US loves the royal family as much as it does, your guess is as good as mine. Might be some kind of reality TV/celbutard culture thing, might be the fact that the US is such a young country that the populace craves 'venerable' institutions.
Either way, this whole wedding thing is a giant pain in the arse because most of the freaking shops will be shut tomorrow.
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I wonder...
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Perhaps some enterprising soul will spend some time on xtranormal...
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speaking of satire
http://www.ustream.tv/jayandsilentbob
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so. fed. up. of hearing it.
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The fact that they've actually told us we're not allowed to, well, I think this will work as well as the superinjunctions.
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They do realize...
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But they aren't English
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Never underestimate the great tradition of British drag.
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royals suck royally
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