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Dirty Tricks? Look-Alike Websites Lure Congressional Donors
First time accepted submitter AdamnSelene writes "Forbes reports on a National Republican Congressional Committee sanctioned campaign worthy of the NSA: fake candidate websites that use identical or similar pictures and color schemes to solicit donations to defeat the Democratic candidate. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the NRCC initially refused to refund the contribution from a Tampa Bay doctor who caught onto the scam, and he had to contact his credit card company to challenge the charges. The National Journal reports that the NRCC-sponsored effort may run afoul of Federal Election Commission regulations, though it expects that the bipartisan FEC will be toothless when it comes to enforcement. However, I have to wonder whether this is finally a good enough reason to use the DMCA and file take-down notices against the faux websites. Perhaps the candidates could solve this themselves, and get a judgement for copyright infringement so absurdly large that it puts the NRCC out of business?" Some sites along these lines might be dirtier than the ones here illustrated, which seem to fit pretty well into the broad world of snarky and cutting political ads; Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her." Note that, as the Tampa Bay Times' article mentions, this kind of site isn't limited to Republicans, either.
There is a not so small difference between parody and impersonation. The illegal practice here is not to imitate what someone else did. What's illegal about it is the intent. It's not meant as a parody, to showcase some fallacies or shortcomings of the person or organization parodied, or to make fun of them. It's meant as impersonation to make people believe that they are who they are impersonating.
The "basic" intent may be the same in both, parody and impersonation. The intent may in both cases be to harm the reputation of a person or organization, or to impede their ability to gather supporters. The difference is that the parody tries to convince, the impersonation tries to trick.
Convincing people with arguments, i.e. a parody, that someone is a "bad person" is a good thing, because it leaves the decision whether they want to believe the parodist to the person being addressed. Impersonating does the same by tricking people who want to support someone into doing the opposite. I guess it ain't hard to see why this is not a "morally ok" (and hopefully not legally ok, either) practice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For the record i do think what they were doing wrong and should be slapped down for it. I am just disagreeing with using the 'copyright angle' to deal with it, as its a bad direction to take, with long term bad consequences for the concept of free-speech.
Also i didn't mean to say they were engaging in parody, just that political parody will be one of the casualties if we go down this road. My fault if i didn't make that clear enough.
---- Booth was a patriot ----