Yesterday, I wrote about how MEP Julia Reda resolved the mystery of ways the European Parliament got here to supply a batshit smear-campaign video selling the new Copyright Directive and smearing the opposition to the Directive (along with signatories to the most important petition in human history): it grew to become out that the video were produced by means of AFP, a large media business enterprise that stands to make hundreds of thousands if the Directive passes. Now that is bad enough, but studying Mike Masnick’s Techdirt insurance of this issue reminded me of some thing else about AFP, the ones campaigners for the strongest feasible copyright regime:
lower back in 2010, AFP used a photographer’s pictures of the Haiti quake without permission or compensation, and whilst the photographer complained, AFP sued the photographer, arguing that every one photos posted to Twitter are presumptively lawful to re-use and searching for a judgment maintaining this view. (AFP lost and needed to pay the photog $1.2 million). The factor being that AFP has a highly selective form of copyright fundamentalism: in relation to copyright guidelines that would pad its backside line by using millions, no cost is simply too high. But while it’s far playing rapid-and-free with others’ copyright, it’s going to threaten and try to bankrupt the aggrieved birthday party.