Bye bye Barbie: Green Party deletes political Barbie memes from social media

The Green Party has waved bye bye Barbie, wiping political memes referencing the blockbuster movie from its social media pages to “protect Warner Bros’ intellectual property”.

Earlier this month, Clive Elliott KC, a past president of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand (Ipsanz), told the Herald the party could face serious consequences over its use of Barbie movie memes on their social media pages.

“It doesn’t matter who created the work and it’s not a question of the quality of the work, it’s that if someone has created a work, they own the copyright in it and they’re entitled to control who actually uses it.”

At the time, a party spokesperson confirmed to the Herald it hadn’t sought permission from Barbie’s studio Warner Bros. to “make memes”, but said it sometimes “remixes popular memes to communicate with the public, particularly young people”.

“Thousands of organisations around the world, including many in Aotearoa, find that the ‘meme’ format is a unique, fun and effective way to communicate online.”

Today, a spokesperson repeated this sentiment but also said the party “respects the intellectual property rights of others”.

“We have decided the best thing we can do to protect Warner Bros’ intellectual property is to remove the content from our social media.”

When asked whether the party was asked to delete the content by the owner of the intellectual property, the spokesperson said “the statement covers that”, and when again asked to confirm if it was asked to remove them they referred to part of today’s statement.

Warner Bros. has been approached for comment.

Elliott said earlier this month regardless of whether the work is replicated elsewhere on social media, the same copyright laws apply.

“In some ways, social media reaches a much bigger audience, so the harm would be greater. So I think you could argue that, you know, the fact that it’s on social media, it makes it worse, not better.”

Elliott said using popular content without permission was similar to a tactic employed by former US president Donald Trump, who often used music without the artist or studio’s authorisation.

“There does seem to be a trend among some people who think that the law doesn’t apply to them.”

Elliott said those who republish work without permission could face serious consequences.

“Unless they’ve got a licence from the film studio,” Elliott explained when referencing the Green Party.

“I doubt [the studio] would have agreed to a political party using an image like that, and so I think they could be in difficulty if the studio took action.

“With the Eminem case, you know what happened there – they used just a part of a song, and the National Party got into big strife about that.”

In 2017, National was found to have breached copyright for using Eminem’s track Lose Yourself for a 2014 election ad and was initially told to pay $600,000 before it was reduced by the Court of Appeal to $225,000 in 2018.

Then-National campaign manager Steven Joyce famously said using the music was “pretty legal”.

Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers social issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.