The media company paid by the EU Parliament to make a video promoting a copyright law it stood to make millions from once sued a photographer for complaining that they'd ripped him off

Yesterday, I wrote about how MEP Julia Reda resolved the mystery of how the European Parliament came to produce a batshit smear-campaign video promoting the new Copyright Directive and smearing the opposition to the Directive (including signatories to the largest petition in human history): it turned out that the video had been produced by AFP, a giant media company that stands to make millions if the Directive passes.

Now this is bad enough, but reading Mike Masnick's Techdirt coverage of this issue reminded me of something else about AFP, those campaigners for the strongest possible copyright regime: back in 2010, AFP used a photographer's pictures of the Haiti quake without permission or compensation, and when the photographer complained, AFP sued the photographer, arguing that all photos posted to Twitter are presumptively lawful to re-use and seeking a judgment affirming this view. ().

The point being that AFP has a highly selective form of copyright fundamentalism: when it comes to copyright rules that would pad its bottom line by millions, no cost is too high. But when it is playing fast-and-loose with others' copyright, it will threaten and attempt to bankrupt the aggrieved party.

AFP, of course, is a giant publisher that stands to potentially benefit from Article 11 in particular. And, apparently, AFP has been one of the more aggressive lobbying organizations in Brussels pushing for Article 11. Hell, all the way back in 2005, AFP actually sued Google for linking to its stories (spoiler alert: it did not win).