Oh, the irony and hypocrisy… It appears that celebrity gossip blogger Mario Lavandeira (aka Perez Hilton) who rose to fame for his mean spirited commentary about celebrities and his blatant disregard for the copyright of the images he posted on his site has come running and crying to the copyright police. He issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a video with footage of him someone lifted off his blog (that looks to actually be fair use).
Copyrights & Campaigns blog has the story:
Perez Hilton né Mario Lavandeira may be the unlikeliest copyright enforcer on earth. The blogger rose to fame by posting photos of celebrities — without permission from the copyright owners — and defending himself from the inevitable lawsuits by claiming that his crude scribbling of penises, cocaine, and semen on the subjects’ faces rendered his conduct fair use.
Well, the times they are a changing. Lavandeira, who has morphed into a gay-rights activist, has now issued his own DMCA takedown notice over a TV ad posted to YouTube by the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-same-sex-marriage group. The ad still available on NOM’s web site focuses on the recent Carrie Prejean/Miss California USA imbroglio, in which Lavandeira played a starring role. The 30-second NOM spot uses about 3 seconds of footage from Lavandeira’s video blog where he says of Prejean, “She’s a dumb [beep], OK?” As NOM describes its spot:
The ad highlights the efforts of same-sex marriage activists to silence and discredit pro-marriage advocates, calling them “liars,” “bigots,” and worse.
6 Comments
With a name like Lavanderia,.. the boy should clean up his act.
The sad truth for me is this will keep PH’s name in the buzz swamp for a few more days. Pretty soon we will be regularly subjected to scheduled performances of his persona claiming more than his 15 nano seconds of fame all over the WWW, just like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin do right now. The more hypocritical and ludicrous the better for the insatiably vapid, needy people, the ones without real lives, to live through in the most vicarious of manners.
The sad truth for me is that this will keep the NOM ad, and its crackpot assertions, in steady circulation. By challenging them, PH is playing into their hands and promoting their frame. Now who’s the stupid b***ch?
He was using my image in his logo for a while and when my client, who had exclusive rights to it, threatened him, he actually stopped using it and changed his logo… I may be the only photographer that’s happened to. :-)
why even prolong Perez Hilton’s 15 minutes of fame with a post like this or any mention at all?
[…] pageant judge and celebrity gossip blogger Mario Lavandeira (aka Perez Hilton), long known for his unethical journalistic practices and Ms. Prejean’s subsequent submission to the extreme evangelical right-wing of the GOP […]
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