In her campaign for California governor, Meg Whitman (R) has created a YouTube attack video which implies that Jerry Brown (D) has had an appearance on the Cheezburger Network FAIL Blog. Ben Huh is steamed:
We want to make it VERY clear that [neither] FAIL Blog nor the Cheezburger Network had any involvement or knowledge of the Whitman campaign use of a screenshot of FAIL Blog.
It’s crystal clear that the Whitman campaign used the FAIL Blog interface when designing the two-second clip. The Whitman ad screen grabs are at ~50-52 seconds.
When are politicians going to wise up and direct their campaign staff not to cut digital corners? Many eyes will out the transgressor.
I am not a lawyer (IANAL), so I’m not going to voice a opinion on the legality of ripping of FAIL Blog’s UI. However, the action is clearly unethical.
I’ll leave the discussion of attack politics for another day.
Update:
The image of Brown seems to have been lifted from someone’s video. There is a “credit” line on the image, but the article cited does not have a photo of Brown nor is it about Brown. Citation on image is the reporter, not a photographer: Meredith May, State’s take-charge guy walks and talks in Oakland, San Francisco Chronicle, June 03, 2003. Even more curious.
