With many people believing Pirate Party Australia’s April Fools gag was genuine, the issue highlights the fact that it is becoming increasingly impossible to distinguish real instances of overzealous copyright holders’ claims from parodies of their behaviour.
The Party released a statement claiming that it had received a takedown request in regard to a poster that parodied YouTube’s notice that a video had been removed due to a copyright claim[1]. Although this was an obvious joke to those who created it, the Party was surprised when people mistook the fictitious claim as genuine.
“The resulting enquiries regarding whether or not this actually happened amazed us because we thought the idea was too far fetched to be believable,” said Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer, Deputy Secretary of Pirate Party Australia. “Rather than poking fun by parodying copyright maximalists, it appears we came frighteningly close to the truth.”