Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Bob Katter's homophobic ad's stock photos provoke stock outrage

I agree that this ad for Bob Katter's Australian Party is homophobic. Still, I do think people are overreacting to it. Some are so inordinately indignant that even the identities and opinions of the two shirtless men in the ad have now become part of the story:

The image used in the anti-gay marriage ad can be found on the website of an international stock images agency, and involved the men posing with the breasts and a pregnant stomach - something that was pixellated out of the Katter Australia party advertisements.

It is believed the men did not know their image had been used in this manner.


Eh? Like it was some sort of egregious violation of their human rights or something.

Of course they wouldn't know. It was a bloody stock photo! Katter's ad man had every right to use it in whatever way he wanted, having bought the rights to do so.

Some assiduous hack even went to the trouble of finding out who took the photo in the first place:

The photographer behind the image, Franck Camhi, told the Sydney Morning Herald the photos were of two friends, who were not a couple, taken to illustrate the gay adoption issue.

Mr Camhi said he sold the pictures through an online image library and said he was against the images being used for this purpose and would contact the agency to try to stop them being used.

"I am against the use of it personally and if I can stop it I will," he said.


Franck, mate, if you don't want your photos used in ways you might find a tad offensive you shouldn't sell them to an online image library in the first place! Gawd, if everyone was so petty and controlling about where their snaps might end up an entire online industry would go belly up overnight.

Actually, this kerfuffle reminds me of the sadly deceased hoax blogger Alene Composta. I recall some blogger or journo saying that her image was seen in an online ad for genital warts. That makes it likely that it was also a stock image.

I'd imagine this woman (or the photographer who took the shot of her) might have been mighty offended as well -- what with countless people thinking she suffered an unmentionable STD, and others believing her to be a lonely agorophobic depressive who ended up committing suicide.

But did anyone even wonder what she might have felt? Nup. Obviously, no one even cared. Really, the sexism that pervades society is appalling isn't it? Clearly, it's even more pervasive than homophobia.

UPDATE: Some po-faced quackademic is now suggesting that the ad could be guilty of copyright violation on rather vague grounds of "integrity of authorship". These people will go to amazing lengths to be offended.

2 comments:

  1. So many people these days are just waiting for an opportunity to get offended by something. How do these people cope with reality? The funny thing is, it's getting Katter lots of free publicity.

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  2. It's estimated that half or more of you will eventually get the genital HPV virus. While many with this virus will show no signs of infection, the rest of us aren't so lucky. warts genital

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