Here's some more evidence that Rep. Mark Kirk should stop talking about energy. On the same day that he presented a false proposition between offshore drilling and importing Iranian oil, the North Shore Republican launched an attack ad against Democratic challenger Dan Seals. The TV spot criticizes Seals for his May campaign event in which he subsidized a drop in gas prices at a 10th District service station to $1.85. “Dan Seals: His stunt wasted more gas than it saved,” the ad says. “Mark Kirk: longterm solutions, not campaign stunts.”
But before running the commercial, the campaign forgot to check one tiny detail -- namely, copyright laws:
Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) campaign has taken down its latest ad attacking Democratic challenger Dan Seals after it used news footage without copyright permission from the Chicago NBC affiliate.
NBC’s legal department asked Kirk’s campaign to take down the ad soon after it began airing in the district.
The ad attacked Seals for holding a campaign event where the Democratic candidate partially subsidized the price of gas. It used a video clip from Chicago’s NBC affiliate, WMAQ, where the anchor said “a campaign stunt is costing Congressional candidate Dan Seals more than he expected.”
“As a general policy, we don’t want political campaigns using our footage in our ads especially in the ones criticizing an opponent,” said NBC Universal media counsel Steve Chung.
Politico says the campaign is now up with a similar version of the ad, but without the NBC footage.
Ellen Beth (not verified) on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 09:21
That's funny because Kirk is always very worried about intellectual property laws when he talks to the Chinese. Back in April 2006, Kirk told Chinese President Hu that the only issue on the table was IP infringement. Human rights were off the table despite China's extremely poor human rights record including sending Chinese slave laborers to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands under some Jack Abramoff/Tom Delay related deal to keep a reform bill from reaching the House floor. Thankfully, a federal court and Abramoffs incarceration ultimately changed that situation.
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