Kelly O’Dwyer is a politician from the Australian Liberal Party who sent Twitter DMCA notices that shut down an account that compared her to Sophie Mirabella, another Liberal politician who lost her seat in a landslide in the last election.
The @Kelly_dnuSophie parody account had fewer than 200 followers (“a significant proportion of whom are pornbots,” according one of the students behind the account). It was shut down when O’Dwyer sent Twitter a DMCA notice — which requires that the sender swear to its truth under penalty of perjury — claiming she held the copyrights to photos that had appeared in the feed. Those copyrights were held by Fairfax Media. O’Dwyer doesn’t work for Fairfax, and does not appear to be nominated by them to serve as their copyright agent.
The O’Dwyer campaign has been plagued by scandal: former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello blanketed O’Dwyer’s constituency with election flyers that did not contain the minimum legal notices required under Australian election law.
Twitter has also issued a please explain to the Liberal Party of Victoria, and wants to know why it faked a copyright claim over the photos in order to shut down the account.
“We have requested additional information from the reporting party,” read an email from Twitter.
As part of the original complaint, Jennifer Freind [sic] had signed a statement declaring that “Kelly O’Dwyer” owned the copyright to the photos, and “the information in this notification is accurate, and I state under penalty of perjury that I am authorised to act on behalf of the copyright owner”.
Federal election 2016: Kelly O’Dwyer under fire as Twitter launches investigation into Liberal Party over fake copyright claims
[Mark Hawthorne and Tony Wright/The Age]