For years we've turned the other cheek as the LibDems have wilfully broken
copyright in order to gain political advantage by misrepresenting our material.
Now the time has come to say enough is enough. Yesterday we provided formal
notice that we required the copyright infringement to cease, but were
disappointed to note that despite an acknowledgement of our request, they
actually continued to distribute their copyright infringed material. We have
therefore had no alternative but to ask solicitors to draft proceedings which
will be presented when the Court opens on Monday morning. Under the
circumstances we will be seeking an injunction and damages. It's quite wrong
that the LibDems don't seem to feel that they should be bound by the same
copyright laws as everyone else.
Costs are expected to run to around £10,000 according to the Tories. In the meantime, the Tories are distributing this leaflet, which those in the know, looks very much like a LibDem one. Great stuff!
I have to say as a Tory that it is nice to see the LibDems get a taste of their own medicine. Whatever the result of this by-election Grant Shapps and his team have drawn a line in the sand and taken on the LibDems in a way which has rarely happened in the past.
43 comments:
Absolutely fantastic stuff!
Over the past 10 years, as either Agent or Campaign Manager, I have defeated 32 incumbent LibDem councillors (last May added 12 scalps to my tally).
Whenever I take on a LibDem I park our tank right on their lawn and simply "out campaign" them. In one marginal ward whenever they distributed a newsletter I sent out another two days later entitled "Out of Focus" in which we corrected their factual errors.
LibDems are hypocrites and blowhards. Hit them back and they soon collapse into a heap of self righteous pomposity.
But is a leaflet with betting odds likely to go down well in Ealing Souhall?
Love the not-so-dodgy bar-chart. :)
Nice to see a propoer fight back against Lib Dem leafleting irregularities. I hope they squeal and squeal and squeal
if we are so cofident why have we not commissioned an opinion poll from a creditable company? this is so obvious I am amazed it is not done.lib dems do well in by elections because they convince the anti labour voters they are in second place.if we could show convincingly that we are in second place we would hoover up the abnti labour votes and actually gain a seat in a parliamentary by election, something we have not done for an amazing 25 years.
Is this real? Are they really contemplating a writ?
Must be said that the legal advisor on this one may be an ass. Where's the pain? Obviously the Lib Dems are a right royal pain in the ass. But going to law? A good judge _might_ award 1p damages and no costs to the Tories. Which would be a double whammy. The longer reps of both parties are in court the happier Labour will be.
I expect the next LibDem leaflet will have another picture of Mr Lit , the one with him standing next to Tony Blair a few weeks ago donating £ 5,000 to the Labour party .
Pity about the F..k up with the 7p Booze Tax, and the £5 charge to get into Art Galleries and Museums.
The electorate has remembered when they respondef to the Polls!
Do you think Tom Watson will sue them for using the photo of Tony Lit with Tony Blair at a recent Labour fund-raiser from his website?
Sky - "frontpage" - have a copy of the 'tory-LIT(e)'(sic) at the labour fundraiser with TT- Tory Tony.
The latest Conservative leaflet in the Ealing Cleveland byelection has a pic of the LibDem candidate . Clearly breach of copyright only concerns them in one part of Ealing .
Wheels are falling off the Lit wagon at an alarming rate . An embarrassing interview by him on Sky tonight . Wasn't it Hank Marvin who sang 3 whhels on my wagon .
Oh dear Iain. i suggest you check out Lib Dem voice. They are running a story about how the Tories in Sedgefield have done exactly what the Lib Dems have done in Ealing.
http://www.libdemvoice.org/iain-dale-1016.html
It does make the whole of your story seem rather CCHQ placed ????
"Love the not-so-dodgy bar-chart. :)"
Oh, you mean the one that, er, *doesn't* show the results from the last time the people of Ealing Southall voted for an MP?
Anyway Iain, copycat leaflets rarely work.
Your weekend before the General Election leaflet, on yellow with a fake Lib Dem logo on it in North Norfolk went down like the proverbial lead balloon and David Prior's fake Labour leaflet four years before trying to put people off tactical voring similarly failed spectacularly.
Looks as if your golden boy has been funding the Labour Party to the tune of Five Grand.
I hope he is excommunicated. What a rat.
Is this the best that Tories can do?
Hey Iain:
I've got a couple of Lit-related photos.
Is Grant going to try and sue me?
well done unity.
"(Tony Lit) He assured them he had always voted Conservative and was an instinctive Tory who believed in the core values of family and hard work."
So, what's a lying bastard doing as the Tory Candidate?
Any chance of seeing your yellow general election leaflet Iain?
Same old Tories. Same old lies.
Iain, what's your response to this post on LibDem Voice?
http://www.libdemvoice.org/iain-dale-1016.html
I am interested to see that in the council by-election in Ealing the Tories have used a Lib Dem copyright photo of our candidate.
In Leicester South we didn't use any copies of photos from our opponents, until the Tories regularly started doing it to us.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Wrinkled Weasel is correct.
Iain
Have you noticed how in the 20th Century tories in power = workers on the dole? My generation in the 80's & 90's shared the fate of our grandparents in the 20 & 30's - isn't it simply the case that the tories are the party of the selfish rich?
Anonymous at 2.41am - your generation suffered nothing at all comparable to those in the 20s and 30s. Go learn some history.
Mark Senior 11.00pm: I thought Hank Marvin was a guitarist with The Shadows? Maybe you mean Lee Marvin - he of the gravelly voice and Wandering Star fame.
Let us be clear. It is not a fringe of copywrite to publish of a photograph of anyone. If you take the photo, then you own the copywrite. Thousands of pictures each day are taken of the guards outside Buckingham Palace but the guards do not own the copywrite. Copywrite is own by the photographer. So in all these instances, it all depends who took the photograph and did that person then sell on their copywrite or sold a licence to use the photograph.
It is one of the biggest problems that has faced the PR/Media world since the advent of the internet.
I am not sure, but I believe it is still illegal to reproduce a cheque or a photograph of a cheque.
The Lib Dems in Cardiff North at the recent Assembly elections said they were the only challengers to Labour (eventual result Tories: 45%, Labour 31%, LibDem 12%). They did this by using the number of councillors on Cardiff Council as a guide of strength (not councillors in Cardiff North either). When the Tory candidate sent out a leaflet that said that Cardiff North voters elected a majority of Tory councillors (they did but two have become Independent since) a Lib Dem woman rang up our man's agent with a bollocking.
The Lib Dems are deceitful, ignorant lightweights who consistently fail to realise that most people know what party has the incumbent and what party has the challenger and that your typical voter knows that this hardly ever includes the LibDems. The Yellow Peril's attitude stems from their smug liberal hatred of the general public. Give 'em hell in Southall.
newwelshright said, "The Lib Dems... consistently fail to realise that most people know what party has the incumbent and what party has the challenger".
Good. Because in Ealing Southall the incumbent party is Labour and the second-place party is the Liberal Democrats. Thank you for this opportunity to point that out AGAIN. The Conservative candidate in 2005 (who, I am guessing, was not a Conservative candidate whilst also being a Labour donor) came third.
And, this time the Conservative candidate - in addition to being a big donor to the Labour party - does not even live in the area.
"Grant Shapps and his team have drawn a line"
- not something for Tory MPs to sniff at?
Iain are you deliberately trying to wreck the miniscule reputation you had for being a source of news with this king of Tory HQ planted nonsense? It really is a joke.
so, why elect a horse?
I can't help wondering WHY the LibDems wanted to use a picture of Tony Lit and where they distributed this leaflet. The normal behaviour of parties in by-elections is to ignore opponents, except for the purposes of squeezing the third party vote. Given my own knowledge of LibDem campaign tactics, I am guessing this leaflet was distributed only in predominantly white areas, probably on council estates or in bedsit areas. Not so subtle message: look the Tory candidate is Asian; hint, hint. Vote for us instead.
You guessed wrong Quention. Not true in the slightest. But at least you had the decency to admit you were guessing :-)
have just seen the 1st serious reporting of this by-election on the crystal-set broadcast media [C4News 6.30pm Sun.] and it does not look good 4 Dave.
Also, at the end of the report C4 put up the official list of candidates & it appears Tony Lit is standing for a party called "David Cameron's Conservatives."
who the fuck are they?
From someone who's actually had one of the Lib Dem leaflets delivered to me...
They've actually scanned a page of the Conservatives' literature - showing not only the photo of Tony Lit but also the Conservative logo and part of the text of their leaflet - and stuck it on their own literature. They've done the same to Labour.
Since all the leaflets carry an imprint, surely they must be protected by copyright?
Quentin Langley, are you so viciously anti-Lib Dem that you've failed to notice that ALL the major parties in this election are Asian-origin? Both in name and colour. So your silly partial (Tory?) proposed tactics would be a useless waste of time. Time-wasting, whether in such an unethical form as you propose or otherwise, is NOT advocated by m'Lord Rennard!
"In one marginal ward whenever they distributed a newsletter I sent out another two days later entitled "Out of Focus" in which we corrected their factual errors."
We do the same. We call it "Out of Touch" and it highlights how lazy some Tory councillors are. For example, two-thirds of Tory councillors in Westminster hold no regular surgeries for local people.
"if we are so cofident why have we not commissioned an opinion poll from a creditable company? this is so obvious I am amazed it is not done."
Election Watcher, probably because it would blow the budget. Spending is limited, you know.
"I can't help wondering WHY the LibDems wanted to use a picture of Tony Lit and where they distributed this leaflet."
Quentin, I can think of one photo of the Tory candidate that will be used between now and Thursday - the one of him standing next to Tony Blair taken last month after he'd just handed over a cheque for £4,800 to Labour party funds. I wonder how many Labour leaflets in Ealing Southall were paid for with that. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Dearest Iain,
You are so quiet about Tony Git that it is earth shattering.
Oh yes, he didn't know it was a Labour fundraiser. For sure it was just an Asian thing that he liked to support. His hand slipped and he got his dad to sign a cheque for nearly five grand and then some,and of course it wasn't five grand cos then it would have to have been declared.
for heaven's sake, stop playing into the hands of all those who think you are in love with DC and post your thoughts.
(Francis Maude is unwell)
As is pointed by Duncam Borrowman and LibDemVoice, mr. Dale is not above using other parties leaflets on his blog. They point specifically to the July 3 caption competition, that features a lib Dem leaflet.
All together now..
Iain Dale is a hypocrite
Iain Dale is a hypocrite
Iain Dale is a hypocrite
Iain Dale is a hypocrite
Iain Dale is a hypocrite
http://tinyurl.com/yox3ak
clearly no party should infringe the election rules, but i can;t help but feel that:
a) if the tories are doing this now they must feel threatened by the Lib Dems.
b) the voters will lose out because the story risks becomign about a spat rather than about a serious policy debate
c) it risks making the tories seem petit and small-minded.
i'm in no way endorsing, encouraging or condoning any rule breaking but cant we just have a by election that is fought cleanly on local issues? i was more annoyed about hte silly prezza on the LD website saying that the tories have admitted they can';t win the by election - a story based on what i think two tory mps sauid anonymously to the torygraph. it's just silly petit stirring which i guess looks good on a focus leaflet, but which on closer inspection by the least discerning of voters, is seen to be highly suspect. that said, i'm camapigning tonight in ealing to fight the good fight (although i'll closely inspect the leaflets i'm delivering!)
Olly Kendall
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