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And Finally Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #20: McFly v The Gays
By Andy Malt | Published on Sunday 30 May 2010
This is a strange one. McFly’s management company last week asked a popular gay message board to stop their users from posting (often half-naked) pictures of the band for other board-users to ogle at.
This is presumably not the same McFly who once stripped naked on stage at GAY to celebrate their single getting to number one.
Though, to be fair, it wasn’t the general distribution of half-naked photos by fans – gay or straight – that was specifically bothering the band’s people. They were seemingly pissed off that some private photos of the band had got online.
In fact the letter to FM Forums, asking for the ban to be put in place, apparently concluded: “We are continuing to investigate how these pictures leak out”.
Helping in that regard, said moderator observed: “I think you’ll find your band members are posting them on Twitter!”
This week, McFly’s management backtracked on their demand a little, possibly because of some moderate outrage from users on the FM Forums website, and possibly because someone pointed out that distributing half-naked photos of band members to their female and gay fanbase is at the heart of most of McFly marketing campaigns.
Instead of seeking an all out ban of photos of the band on the FM Forums, they asked that moderators filter out some specific photos – seemingly an official photo shoot that is not yet meant to be public, and some personal snaps posted by the McFly boys on their closed social networks. While stressing about the distribution of any photos online these days probably isn’t worth the hassle, the band would, at least, probably have a legitimate copyright claim over those photos.
If you’re new to sharing semi-naked pictures of McFly online, here’s one to get you started, taken from, er, McFly’s official website: www.mcflyofficial.com/gallery/popit.php?id=302
This Beef Of The Week comes from this edition of the CMU Weekly. Subscribe to the CMU Weekly here.
