UPDATE: Freeview Spoof Ad Causes Controversy; Youtube Pulls Video
UPDATE: Tech Wired has interviewed one of the creators, Dan Ilic.
UPDATE 2: Youtube has pulled the main spoof ad!
UPDATE 3: Dan Ilic has put up a copy of the video available here.
UPDATE 4: Margaret Simons of Crikey questions the creators to see if they took part in reporting the video.
UPDATE 5: Asher Moses of The Sydney Morning Herald believes Freeview lodged a copyright claim against the video.
Australian marketing website AdNews was reporting late last week that Freeview would be taking legal action against the creators of a viral video making fun of it. There has since been an edit to the article removing such comment of legal action though no retraction of the statement.
The viral video was created as part of a Melbourne Comedy Festival Show “Massage My Medium”, a show all about the death of TV networks.
Dan Ilic, one of the creators of the spoof told his blog readers:
“I maintain that our Mash-Up of the Freeview TVC is FAIR COMMENT and thereby the use of it and the Ford Fiesta TVC is FAIR USE. Freeview’s use however of Ford’s creative is questionable.
The video (of which you can watch here) contains comments that some may say are slanderous and defamatory, but that’ll be up to Freeview to pursue.
Freeview chief executive Robin Parkers told AdNews:
“Freeview is a free service – so there is no comparable offer,”
“It will be up to the viewers to decide on the success of Freeview once the remaining channels launch.”
Tech Wired is in the process of organising an interview with the creators Dan Ilic and Marc Fennell to find out their side of the story.
I was slightly surprised that Freeview didn’t just go straight to YouTube and claim copyright violation. I expected to see the video disappear within hours.
But it is indeed fair comment. The more suspicious-minded could almost think that the free TV networks don’t want Freeview to succeed, it’s being done so badly. (As Homer says, it’s funny because it’s true.)
But Dan is being a tad unfair on Freeview regarding the Ford creative. They certainly are similar. But they came out very close together, and lead times being what they are, would both have been in the can before either one aired.
Still, it’s all great PR for Dan’s show…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
ah the media
always first to step on free speech
Well, youtube have pulled the clip now – you just get a “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation” message. So it looks like someone’s complained.
I’ve Dugg this article at
http://digg.com/television/YouTube_pulls_Aussie_Freeview_spoof_ad
Hey Freeview, instead of calling your lawyers, why don’t u just admit, this ads really highlights the truth about Freeview. It’s nothing more than marketing spin on free chanels in an attempt to compete with PayTV.
You could also address the critisisms directly with a video reply, explaining things like why we’re seeing so many chanels duplicated etc.
Also what the hell is going on with TenHD. They’ve pretty much shut it down in the lead up to the launch of OneHD, really don’t see how they rationalisation this.