French Culture Minister Caught 'Pirating' Photo Off Of Website

from the copyright-ain't-so-cut-and-dried dept

We've noted in the past how it seems that those in favor of stronger copyright laws almost always seem to end up getting caught violating copyright rules in some manner or another -- often showing that they don't really understand why their push for stricter laws are so problematic. In France, where the current ruling party pushed through (at great effort) the first "three strikes" law, known as Hadopi, it seems that the party has a particular problem with following copyright law itself. This is the same political party that used a song in an (awful) lip dub that it did not license (in fact they were turned down when they tried to license it -- so it was willful infringement). They used the US band MGMT's song in a video totally without permission, and they mass "pirated" a documentary about President Sarkozy without permission from the filmmaker. In that case, they burned 400 DVDs without permission, and even deleted the original publisher's name on the version of the DVD they released.

So the following really shouldn't come as much surprise. Apparently the French culture minister, who (of course) was a major supporter of Hadopi, has been caught copying a photo from a blog entirely without permission (Google translation of the original French -- found via Glyn Moody).

The blogger claims they'd be happy to let the Culture Minister use the photo, but just wanted to point out how it's easy to grandstand and claim that copyright infringement is some awful thing, but situations like this show how it's really not so clearcut -- and even those who claim that copyright is so important and must be protected (with a potential penalty of losing internet access entirely) don't even realize how easy it is to "innocently" infringe on copyright while doing something that feels completely normal.

Filed Under: copyright, culture minister, france, hadopi