You remember that AARP ad that ran briefly on some web sites? The one run by USA-Next that suggested the AARP was in favor of gay marriage and opposed to US troops? Well, the “pictured gay couple is suing”:http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/09/usanext/index.html. Turns out USANext’s political consulting firm did not aquire the rights to the photograph.
USANext President Charlie Jarvis apologized to the newspaper that held the rights _but not to the couple pictured_. Of their lawsuit, he says, USANext and the consulting firm are inappropriate targets:
bq. 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.”
So: the people who stole the photograph and made an offensive Internet ad out of it should not be legally liable, but the people who commented on and criticized the ad *should* be held responsible? How does that work? I do see how people who displayed the ad for the purposes of commentary might be named as part of a law suit although I don’t think it’d be successful. But how on earth would that _absolve_ the makers of the ad of legal or moral responsibility? They made the ad. They made it public. It’s not like they created it and hid it under their mattress and no one was supposed to see it.
