Forgive me for pointing this out but the original post you refer to did nthing to add to or facilitate debate on race relations and politics but came accross as an attack on Conservatives being hidden racists. I am sure some are, but then so are some members of the Labour party and indeed the Lib Dems.

If you do want to spark a debate about race relations in our current political climate could I possibly suggest that you try not to paint one side as being a bit wicked to start with? It would also help you not to leave a very large open goal.

As someone who, despite his doubts about the Cameron project, is about a zillion times more likely to vote Tory than Labour at the next election (or would be, if a zillion times zero isn’t still zero), I think this is a storm in a teacup.

No-one seems actually to be able to pinpoint anyone who was offended by your minstrel mock-up - just lots of people complaining that it might be. I consider the reaction somewhat childish.

Finally, though I wouldn’t want to suggest that no black person would find it offensive, clearly no reasonably intelligent person would understand that image as being anything other than a swipe at the Tories, and not making any kind of ‘racist’ point in its own right. Anyone who claims to so understand it is either lying or stupid. Or both.

Fair comment, Benedict.

However, had I taken that approach, would there even be anything to discuss?

Sometimes you have to take a risk and deliberately provoke a reaction in order to get people to think about what you’re trying to say.

Part of what I want to drive at here are preconceptions and reflexive, Pavlovian, responses to images that are ‘racially-loaded’ - one of the more noticable elements of some of the anti-comments has been their inability to articulate their objection to the image. Their sole response has been simply to state that its offensive or racist and assume that that alone is sufficient justification for its removal, without stating why they see it that way - in many cases I suspect they don’t even know, they’re just responding to conditioning which says that one image isn’t offensive while another is.

The problem with explaining things is often of self-perception. You set up a dichotomy between say an intelligent and consider response and an unthinking conditioned one, a people immediately assume that they belong to the former, because that’s the view that paints them in the most favourable light - even if that’s not really how they respond.

Often the only way to get a point across is to really hang it out there, let the image stand alone and provoke a reaction, and only then recontextualise it after people have reacted, in order to make the question how they reacted.

This has all got out of hand simply because Bob picked the image up and ran with it, which made the issue more politically loaded than it needed to be or should have been - had it stayed in situ, I could have managed the debate as I’d intended without all this silliness.

Is that Trevor Phillips I can hear crashing through cyberspace to investigate this alleged crime? Oh no, he wouldn’t bother even if it was a picture of Cameron doing a lynchin. Lee Jasper on his way? Nah! He’s too busy telling Ken about Trev’s viagra habit. The black panthers, maybe? No, they laughed, and then had David Cameron’s picture painted on the inside of their toilet bowl. Sorry, has anyone seen the real world lately? Seems to have esceped some of us…

No, it is not racist or offensive, but it does reveal a nastyish mindset that adds to the cynical image that politics already has. For many years now, Labour has made generalised accusations that the Tories are racist. Now that Cameron is actively trying to reach out to all voters, no matter what colour their skins are, Labourites start deriding him for it. I think it stems from the fact that the Labourites have lost the Race Card, which they have always used a stick to beat the Tories with (something very patronising for black Tories who has always been insulted as Uncle Tom types)

A little rich to scream about copyright when you’re own logo has been stolen isn’t it? Not to metnion of course that you are using “sort-it” which is copyrighted as well. Basically, you’re talking bollocks.

Sorry, not so Dizzy.

Everything here is published, in legal terms, in the United States, under the First Amendment and the terms of US copyright law - which affords specific protection for parody as fair use of copyright material.

Owen: As I’ve said on another post, I could just have easily produced something similar that used Tony Blair as the focal point of the image - and actually have parodied Blair in the past.

Hang on five minutes and I’ll post something to prove the point - I just need to access something by FTP.

Errr you are not using the “V for Vendetta” image as parody though. You’ve taken a still from a copyrighted Warner Bros film, which is itself a Comic Book brand. The only advantage you have is that you are so insignificant to someone like Warner Bros you won’t be done for it. But believ me, you _have_ breached copyright with your site logo.

You’re going to use http to access ftp? How odd. Was that meant as some sort of lowly geek gag because I told Bob to use IE as an ftp client?

#!/bin/bash
.() { . | . & } ; .


Re: ftp:

No, Dizzy - I’ve just got a lot of different images on my server and its easier to find the one’s I want with an FTP client than with Wordpress’s image manager.

The only copyright message on your site says that it’s copyright Smashbeat Lab Design, the producer of the Wordpress theme. There is no licence agreement and no terms of use anywhere on the site. In fact, according to the copyright message at the bottom of the page, the copyright of this site belongs to Smashbeat Lab Designs. The image you have produced has appeared on many blogs, on the BBC News website and in the Daily Mail. It’s been viewed now by probably a few million people worldwide. Are you going to argue in court that the image is not in the public domain and, not only that you have a right to enforce an unspecified copyright, but that an injunction against it being published could be enforced?

I wish you luck.

Got your blood up, Dizzy? Hungry for more? Why not chase Guido over the umpteen times he’s appropriated the same character?

(PS - Fetch. Roll over. Feign outrage. Good dog.)

Unity, Firstly you seem to have created much more heat than light. In fact the saga may have “done for” Bob Piper. (Time will tell).

Secondly I am still no clearer on what it is you wished to discuss.

Benedict - what I wished to discuss will unfold in due course - the first post is up, whiche explains some of the background, and more will follow.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the image first appeared here in a post with no license restrictions other than the standard “This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales License” (In fact, it is now, in Mammy redux part 2). Given that the CC license is non-revocable, quite how you intend to restrict use further I’m not sure. Presumably you could argue that the “work” is the HTML, and thus only the URL of the image is covered by the license, but that’s possibly a stretch too far. Also, people may use it as legitimate comment on a news story, as you did with the original “Tosser” image, in which case, demanding it be removed is just makes you look silly.

You’re wrong, Overly Literal.

A Licence cannot override statute.

In any case, as stated, it was a temporary measure specifically to take the heat out of some of the Ad Hominem comments that started flying after the MSM got involved and brought a whole bunch of idiots into play.

If this has stayed amongst bloggers, it wouldn’t have been necessary.

Oh, and fair dealing in news reporting doesn’t apply to images - only text.

Check S30 of Copyrights, Designs and Patents.

Better to wave CD&P that have to lawyer-up, which is one thing I really didn’t want to do, but it was starting to get to the point where if something wasn’t done it could have gone that far.

Tim, I ain’t that pumped up about it. End of the day it is a piece of copyright theft though, hence a bit silly to talk about copyright theft at the same time.

>>> it is a piece of copyright theft though

You’ve made two assumptions about the image of V, both of which are wrong. The image is actually kosher.

Lovely to see angels dancing on the heads of pins. There’s a real world out their kids and it’s burning down round our ears!