The Italian government just gave Armalite a ton of free publicity with their creation of a hullabaloo over a gun advert.
Armalite photoshopped one of their rifles into the arms of the classic “David” statue from Italy.
The Italian government claims to own the rights to the statue’s likeness and is “offended” by Armalite’s creativity with an image of a public statue.
Apparently the Italians don’t have enough real problems in their country to deal with – like unemployment, deficit government spending, and the list goes on and one.
Italian government up in arms over use of Michelangelo’s ‘David’ in gun ad
(FoxNews) – …Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini urged the company to withdraw the advertisement after images of it appeared on several Italian media websites over the weekend. Franceschini tweeted “The image of David, armed, offends and infringes the law. We will take action against the American company so that it immediately withdraws its campaign.”
The Italian government claims that it has the copyright to all commercial uses of the marble masterpiece, which was created between 1501 and 1504 and resides in the Accademia Gallery in Florence. The gallery’s director, Angelo Tartuferi, told Repubblica newspaper “The law says that the aesthetic value of the work cannot be distorted. In this case, not only is the choice in bad taste but also completely illegal.”
Hey Italy: Go pound some sand.
I’d be supportive if the Italians were calling Armalite out for their bigoted practices of saying “we’ll continue to arm law enforcement, because their rights are more important than yours – you lowly peon citizens”, while throwing private individuals under the bus.
It’s been about a year … have we forgotten? Hey Armalite: go pound sand!
(background at http://www.gunssavelife.com/?p=6001 if you were asleep last year)
I’m Italian …..don’t care about Franceschini…..;)
we have a tons of other big problems…..in first place our politicians….as mr Commun…ehm Franceschini…
I’m torn. Sophia Loren is Italian.