Harry’s Place announces an exciting competition – a Takedown Notice Race.
Back in February, Arthur Kemp, the British National Party’s former foreign affairs spokesman and webmaster devoted considerable amounts of his time to having this picture removed from the internet:
Arthur Kemp is a Nazi, yet for some reason appears ashamed of having been photographed with Nazi memorabilia. Therefore, to suppress this evidence, he came up with a wholly implausible and nonsensical story about his wife having somehow faked the photograph. He then issued a series of so-called “takedown notices” to ISPs, claiming copyright in the photograph. The allegation that the photograph had been faked is most unlikely to be true – Photoshop experts looked carefully at it and it appears untampered with. In any event, on Kemp’s own account of the origins of the photograph, he does not own copyright in it, and therefore has no right to ask for it to be taken down.
Nevertheless, all ISPs have complied with Kemp’s demands. I expect that we too will shortly receive another ‘takedown notice’.
In a similar vein, The Guardian’s cartoonist, Steve Bell appears to have demanded that The Community Security Trust, an anti-racist organisation which monitors and guards against antisemitism, take down his cartoon of Netanyahu. Perhaps he objects to the CST pointing out that the imagery echoes that of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and countless other antisemitic cartoons, which depict Jews as puppetmasters, controlling world leaders.
(CST Blog featured the cartoon, but it has now been removed at Bell’s request. The rest of CST’s analysis remains, however and is here. Bell’s cartoon is still here on the Guardian website.)
Well, here’s his cartoon again.
By demanding that these illustrations are taken off websites, both Arthur Kemp and Steve Bell are disputing the right of anti-racists to draw attention to their association with Nazi imagery.
So, which one of them will be first to us with a demand that the picture is removed?
HP adds: Hat tip Shmoo-El in the comments.
