What kind of a name is USANext?
Remember USANext and their internet-only ad? The one that suggested the AARP wanted to do away with American soldiers in favor of gay weddings?
Yeah. About that. The couple pictured is suing USANext (Salon.com article requires Premium or free Day Pass, link via Thud)
According to the Tribune, Montini may have tried to cover his tracks for using the photo without the paper’s permission; after the ad appeared, Montini visited the Tribune’s Web site and tried to purchase a similar photograph of Raymen and Hansen. The Tribune stopped him, and Montini sent an email message to the Tribune’s photo department in which he said it looked “more and more like we did make a mistake and ran with the ad prior to getting your approval.” USANext President Charlie Jarvis apologized to the Tribune for using the photograph without permission—and blamed the Montini firm for it. “We hired this company to buy commercial rights for anything we use on our Web site,” Jarvis told the Tribune. “There will be beatings of a severe nature. In business terms that means fines and penalties. I’ll have to go back to the group and find out what’s going on.”
Wow. You can do that? So, if I’m running an illegal mp3-swapping website and the RIAA sues me, can I claim that I have a firm that’s supposed to buy commercial rights for everything I use on the website, so I’m not responsible? Hey – a whole bunch of us could incorporate independently as “rights purchasers!” Then we could each outsource our contracts to other “rights purchasers” and create an absolute labyrinth of red tape so that it would take the legal departments of any rightsholder decades to discover who’s ultimately responsible for the copyright infringement! It’ll be anarchy! Glorious, glorious anarchy!
Both USANext and Montini are named in the suit. USANext seems to be stating that they shouldn’t be named because it was Montini’s responsibility to make certain that the rights were cleared.
This doesn’t seem to be based on any legal precedent as far as I can tell. If I hire a lawyer, tell him to clear all of the rights for music on my website, and then get sued by the RIAA, I’m the one who gets sued. I would be the one who put it up without checking the work of my lawyer.
What you actually see in the above quote is the first three steps of Denial of Responsibility TM.
- Try to make it seem like you asked permission, they’ve just forgotten it (this, by the way, is what they actually busted Martha Stewart for – not insider trading).
- Blame your business partner.
- Make an unfunny joke (“There will be beatings of a severe nature”).
But wait! There’s more! Below, you’ll find the all-important final step in Denial of Responsibility TM – “Change the Subject.”
Jarvis has offered no such apology or explanation to Raymen and Hansen. “They ought to be suing all the left-wing blogs for circulating this [ad],” Jarvis told the Washington Post last week. “That’s who they ought to be asking for an apology.”
In further news, the RIAA announced today that it will be dropping charges on all file sharers so that they may file suit against Wired Magazine, USA Today, CNN and other prominent news outlets for the stories they ran on Napster, claiming that the companies “incited copyright infringement by telling people of the existence of P2P software.” The MPAA announced a similar strategy. Additionally, law enforcement officials announced that they have released Charles Manson from prison and are issuing arrest warrants for Vincent Bugliosi, John Gilmore, and Tommy Udo – among others – for commiting the real crime by publishing books on the Manson Family.