Success at last! News Corpse is after me!

Noel Wauchope, 3 Oct 26, https://wauchope.substack.com/p/success-at-last-news-corpse-is-after

And here was I, all these years, thinking that only a few ant-nuclear nuts ever bothered to read my Australian website antinuclear.net. I am so chuffed that News Corpse has finally recognised my work.

It turns out that News Corpse has suddenly noticed my wicked infringement of copyright, that I did, just the bare 8 years ago. Yes, this evil act occurred on an article about Submission 76 to Senate Inquiry on Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia. It was about a farmer, Donald Fels, who opposed nuclear waste dumping in his area. What News Corpse didn’t like, was that I had used a picture of this lovely rural area, with animals grazing. I must have gathered this image from the Internet, and apparently, it was a News Corps image, and under copyright.

Interestingly, on making this discovery of my criminal action, News Corps did not bother to write to me and ask me to please remove the image, – (which I can tell you, all the others do, and I remove those immediately). No, they felt that this matter is so urgent that they employed the Visual Rights Group to demand from me both legal documentation that I had the licence to use the picture, and remuneration – – AUD $525.00, within 14 days, for misuse of its image under section 115(2) and s115(4) section 31 of the Australian Copyright Act.

Anyone who knows me at all well, will know that $525.00 is whopping for me, as I survive on a very low income. But that’s not the point. Actually I’m not sure what IS the point.

Does the use of a pretty picture of a few horses grazing, that was shown 8 years ago, somehow became suddenly important now to News Corps well-being? Or is it that they would prefer that I cease and desist from my current project, which is publishing many of the over 1000 Submissions to the AUKUS Public Inquiry? News Corps itself is strangely reluctant to publish any news at all about this Inquiry.

Last time this happened to me, it was quite a few years ago. The uranium mining company Paladin became most offended, because I quoted an article from a Mali newspaper. That article had said that the Paladin mine manager in Mali at the time was “insensitive to the needs of the local community”. Paladin sent Ashurst legal company after me. That time, a very good journalist saved me, publicising the issue in a national newspaper, and Ashurst backed down. That journalist has since gone on to build his own wonderful independent media.

Who knows what will save me this time? Meanwhile, I have immediately removed the offending picture. I just can’t bring myself to apologise to News Corpse. I mean, I usually do the polite thing. But I have in mind that old feminist chant ‘ “Don’t be too polite, girls”. I really think that it’s pathetic of News Corps to go for me so rudely. And I’d have a bit more respect for them, if they did cover this big AUKUS Public Inquiry. Of course, the submissions are already showing me that the nuclear lobby is boycotting the whole issue.