French Pres’ Party Caught Infringing Copyright Once Again

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87426/french-pres-party-caught-infringing-copyright-once-again/

For the third time this year French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, has been accused of and admitted to copyright infringement.

First it was accusations by US indie band MGMT that the UMP was using its popular song Kids at the party’s national congress and in two online videos and political advertisements without permission.

“We are dealing with acts of counterfeiting, an infringement of intellectual property,” said the band’s lawyer, Isabelle Wekstein, at the time.
Then France’s presidential audio services, the Service audiovisual de la présidence de la République, was exposed making some 400 unauthorized copies of the documentary A visage découvert : Nicolas Sarkozy.

The DVD’s producer, Galaxie Press, had apparently only shipped 50 copies to the govt agency, well short of what was needed, so it decided to make additional copies on its own, even going so far as to replace the Galaxie Press logo with its own.

The UMP is now facing renewed accusations of copyright infringement from the Canadian Musicor Quebecois record label for using a song in a lipdup video without permission.

The party apparently had permission to use the original 1976 version of the song “All those who want to change the world,” but members decided to use a much more hip, modern remixed version played by Marie-Mai for the Star Academy Quebec.

The problem with that is that the “UMP had contacted the producer last October 8 for the rights of this song and they said no,” says Christine Me Maestracci, the record label’s lawyer. ” Luc Plamondon had agreed, but surely not for such use. Musicor does not want to allow artists of our group to be used for political purposes.”

The UMP says it “regrets” the “mistake” and has already agreed to pay $45,000 Canadian dollars ($42,000 USD), an amount similar to what it paid MGMT, to settle the matter. Musicor and Star Academy have in turn said the money would be donated to charity.

It is Sarkozy who is the driving force behind the country’s controversial “Creation and Internet” law, first proposed back in June of last year, and initially ruled unconstitutional by the country’s Constitutional Council before being revised and passed by the country’s parliament last month. Sarkozy and his party have been the driving force behind the country’s controversial “Creation and Internet” law which was finally enacted this past September.

It’s worth mentioning because if they’re the ones responsible for establishing a “three-strikes” graduated response system for dealing with online copyright infringers, the third strike being disconnection from the Internet for an unspecified period of time, shouldn’t the UMP be facing a “third strike” of its own? “It seems that those who led the charge against Internet users are not the most respectful of copyright,” said Wekstein back in May.

I guess copyright laws don’t apply to those in charge.

Hypocritical or what? 

[GhostShip]

This shows once again that politicians are merely paying lip service to the letter of the law and yet feel free to jump on the little guy who in most cases merely wishes to do something as simple as format swapping the music they have paid for, law breaking and corruption seems to run to high office in France.