back to article Sarkozy fails to stop sale in voodoo hoohah

Semi-barmy kneehigh French premier Nicolas Sarkozy has failed in his attempt to whip from French shelves a voodoo doll bearing his handsome likeness. As the Reg helpfully informed you, Sarko was stomping courtwards to demand the withdrawal of the dolls which were sold along with a user guide and a satirical biography. But …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    just not true

    'Sarko's case was based on unauthorised use of his image to which he claims "exclusive and absolute rights"'

    None of have any rights to use of our image, otherwise newspapers would not have photos, government would not be able to have any ID systems (such as passports) etc etc.

    Always with the one rule for those in power... etc etc

  2. John Doe
    Happy

    Unauthorised image, eh?

    Fancy what he might think upon seeing a picture of himself in a newspaper that he didn't explicitly approve of!

    Brilliant, Monsieur Sarkozy - quite a crafty manner of reducing sales of said doll!

  3. Kenny Millar
    Jobs Halo

    Une peu...

    Jamais l'esprit toutes ces inepties avec le premier ministre français, permet à tous sortir et acheter un Apple Mac lieu. Vous savez, il est la voie à suivre.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Hmm...

    Nice use of an online translation tool there Kenny but I think you could be right Macs may very well be the way forward.

  5. Elmer Phud

    Dolls

    Sarky is rich - he's just moaning' cos someone else wants a bit of pin money.

  6. dodge
    Boffin

    ROT13

    Hey Kenny, you left your ROT13 encoding turned on, mate.

  7. Nicholas Ettel
    Thumb Up

    @Sarah

    So, you've got one, right? I can only guess where all your needles are located.

  8. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: @Sarah

    Nah. I do have an all-purpose generic commentard one, though. I find it really comes in handy when moderation has done all it can.

  9. Peter

    Rights to my image?

    Well it seems that the French courts agree that a person does not have exclusive rights to their own image - but in that case does anyone have exclusive rights to an image?

    What if I look like "Barbie" - can I make a doll that looks like me and sell it? No one can have exclusive rights to my image, so anyone can make a doll that looks like me, right?

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    The whole situation is rather ironic

    I found it quite funny when my dear Mr. President's lawyer said, in response to the judge's dismissal, "I know civil law, and I know criminal law, but I never knew there was a right to humor" (liberally translated from memory).

    Such an answer proves two things :

    1) this guy has a rather inflated view of his abilities. IANAL, of course, but I highly doubt that one man could possibly grasp all the laws that my Parliament passes like crazy all year round in not one, but two very complicated legal arenas. Oh well, I suppose bluster is one way of upping one's tarif.

    2) this guy has even less humor than Mini-Prez.

    Now the really ironic thing about this whole issue, in my eye, is the fact that Mini-Prez has abundantly and publicly professed his admiration for The Merkin Way in the social and economic arenas, yet now, just when the public is taking up the Merkin habit of Protected Speech in the domain of humor, he turns around and tries to stomp on it.

    No cookie, short stuff. Your ego really is quite a bit too large for your head.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    If only voodoo dolls worked....

    we could have all the following useful voodoo dolls :

    "Banker"

    "Lawyer"

    Dubya

    Maggie Thatcher

    Bill Gates

    Steve Jobs

    Tottenham fan (whoops that one slipped in by accident )

    ........

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @peter

    so you look like "barbie" ? is that possibly only on weekends.....

    ( only teasing )

  13. daniel
    Flame

    @Kenny Millar - Automatic translation fail

    Translation fail : This is what it means translated into English - and it makes just about as much sense.... You want to try posting that in plain english and get a decent translation?

    For teh lulz :

    "A bit...

    Never the mind all these idiocys with the french prime minister, allows all to exit and but an Apple Mac place. You know, it is the path to follow"

    What does Prime Minister François Fillon have to do with Apple Mac Places?

    lrn2french next time :)

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dolls, dummies, puppets, ciphers

    Would there be a life-size version coming? Im sure a few Frenchies as well as English would like to get their hands (advisedly) on it, e.g. November 5th, tho others might like their Xmas every day of the year.

    Better move fast before Whacky Jacqui discovers...

  15. Nicholas Ettel
    Heart

    Re: Re: @Sarah

    I hope the commentard comment wasn't directed at me. :(

    Speaking of dolls, though (in reference to Mr. Phud's comment), when are we to see the Sarah Bee action figure?

  16. Mike Crawshaw
    Joke

    @ Peter

    "What if I look like "Barbie" - can I make a doll that looks like me and sell it?"

    If you look like Barbie, my friend, I really think you need to think about something other than how to make a quick buck.....!!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    A right to humour

    Seen the Frenchies fight ? Now that's a laugh.

    Dress sense,style,language,love making,wine making - the list is endless of things the French are jokers at.

    Mine's the British Burberry

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Re: @Sarah

    haha OUCH! sorry, couldn't resist that

    I hate to think what goes throught sarko-wankers mind when he's taking a leak and peeing on his own image reflected back on him and then flushes...well hopefully he does..

  19. Kenny Millar

    @Daniel

    Daniel,

    It's not MY translation that failed, but your re-translation back to English. My original english, which has been totally lost by being passed through 2 translation tools, was fine.

    The point it, it has NOTHING to do with Apple Macs, in much the same way that the original article had nothing to do with IT.

    If you are a regular Register reader you will have noticed that I have a peculiar habit of recommending people purchase an Apple Mac in the comments of any story which is not IT related. It's a kind of postmodern irony.

  20. Stuart Van Onselen
    Happy

    Sarko is LUCKY

    Obviously the doll-makers are happy for the publicity, 'cos if they'd been pissed off, they could easily have upped the stakes by committing a much greater desecration of his image.

    Anybody remember the George W. Bush butt-plug? :-)

  21. Pierre

    Kenny, Kenny, Kenny....

    "My original english, which has been totally lost by being passed through 2 translation tools, was fine."

    Maybe, but your original French was meaningless babble. Totally un-understandable. Even mentally retranslating it in English did not help much. And maybe, just maybe, that was Daniel's point. Seeing your latest comment, I guess the first one was supposed to be somehow related to buying a Mac, but I assure you it was very very far from being clear in your "French" post.

    Completely unrelated, Jean S., mini-Prez son, was relaxed and the plaintiff condemned to pay him 2000 euros for "abusive procedure" after what appears to have been be a heavily rigged trial. More here http://lamouette.blog.lemonde.fr/2008/10/01/epilogue-dans-l%E2%80%99affaire-du-scooter-pour-jean-sarkozy/

    It's in French though. For those of you that are less-than-polyglot, it's about a road incident and the plaintiff did not know the identity of the defendant.

  22. Roy Stilling
    Coat

    He's not the premier

    He's a very naughty b- I mean he's the President.

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