Irish Political Party Plagiarise BBC But Think They’re Cool

The BBC have a serious online presence which probably costs them a fortune to maintain every year.

None of the Irish political parties have an online presence that comes anywhere near it (and you wouldn’t really expect them to either… )

But when an Irish political party blatantly rips off the BBC’s design and thinks they can get away with it, what kind of message does that send?

They then try to cover their tracks, but obviously don’t do a particularly convincing job of it.

Now the thing that leaves me practically speechless is the attitude of the politicos that emanates from their comments on both of Steph’s posts:

Get over it Steph. The site is brilliant. Its really is superb. Its online, it works, and its not going anywhere.

As a matter of fact, the site online now, was ready to go last week, the .org site up yesterday was a bit of a teaser based on some very early work.

I think its great. Don’t think anybody else other than yourself and Dave Cochrane of p.ie are even the slightest bit bothered. My two cents, appreciate a brilliant website when you see it!

So the message is what exactly?

(Irish) Political parties don’t have to abide by copyright rules?

As I already learnt, they seem to think that they can abuse email without any censure, so why would design or any other intellectual property matter?

Of course the funny thing is that they don’t do a particulary good job of protecting their own IP.

Both finegael.tel and fiannafail.tel are registered to the same person.. I somehow doubt if that person has any links to either party and most certainly not both …