This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Business News Legal
Conservatives’ Corbyn attack video taken down due to copyright infringement
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 16 September 2015
As well as thinking that paying to see live music is beneath him, David Cameron is also a prolific user of The Pirate Bay. Perhaps. Well, probably not. But his respect for copyright protected material doesn’t extend to stuff he just finds lying around on the internet. Which is why a video attacking new Labour leader Jeremy Corbin was removed from YouTube yesterday.
Clearly put on the back foot by having to engage with someone who has principles, the Tories quickly launched their attack video after Corbyn won the Labour leadership election at the weekend. In an attempt to put the willies up the British electorate, they took short clips of things that Corbyn has said in the past and removed the surrounding context in order to make him look bad.
Problem is, in their haste to throw all of these clips together, they hadn’t asked for permission from at least one of the clip owners to use said material. Maybe they thought asking left wing activist Adrian Cousins if they could chop up a video he filmed last year, in which Corbyn calls for Nato to be scrapped, wouldn’t go down very well. And they were right, because as soon as he noticed he submitted a DMCA takedown request to YouTube. Something you might say is slightly more embarrassing than just being refused access to the footage in the first place.
The offending video has now been restored, though with Cousins’ footage removed. So, a lesson from the government there: It’s okay to steal stuff, as long as you try to hide it when you get found out. I feel so secure.
