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Merkel wins big in Germany; can drop anti-nukes.

Published by Michael on September 27, 2009

This just in on the news: Angela Merkel and her party CDU/CSU wins the 2009 federal election in Germany, along with the Free Democrats while the Social Democrats does their worst election since World War II. Merkel has announced her intention to form a government with FPD.

The upshot of this is that Merkel does not have to have the nuclear hostile SPD or the Green Party on her government, which in turn means that the German moratorium on nuclear power can now be reviewed and perhaps dropped.

If this happens it means that with Sweden, the UK, Italy and Germany reconcidering their stances on nuclear power and moving in favour of this form of energy, 2009 is a year of tremendous success for European nuclear friends.

7 Comments

How to get professionals to agree with your opinion

Published by Michael on September 8, 2009

…or…

How the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives used nurses to lie to the government.

Surveys and questionnaires are a simple and effective way of gauging people’s opinions. The result can then in turn be used to influence the opinions other people hold, most often to become opinions you want people to have.  And the more supposedly trustworthy the people you survey are, the greater you can expect the compliance to be.

Let me show you an example of this. This is a TV advert from 1949.

Simple enough isn’t it? If many medical doctors like this brand of cigarette, it must be really good, right? Right! Doctors can’t be wrong. Moving along…

Surveys and questionnaires that you make yourself have a nice bonus: you can make them any way you want. The advantage of this is that if you phrase the questions just right, you can get any answer you want.

Continue readingHow to get professionals to agree with your opinion

10 Comments

Greenpeace admits “emotionalizing” is one of their tactics

Published by Michael on August 21, 2009

Gerd Leipold, executive director of Greenpeace International appeared on the BBC show “Hardtalk”.

When pressed about a specific issue where Greenpeace appeared to have exaggerated their claims, Leipold admitted they are “emotionalizing issues”, and that they do it willfully and consciously. He went on to defend this practice saying that they do not feel they gain enough sympathy for their statements if they do not “emotionalize” their messages.

We, as a pressure group, have to emotionalize issues, and we are not ashamed of emotionalizing issues.

Gerd Leipold – Executive Director of Greenpeace International, 2009

He may call it “emotionalizing”, but  that is merely a euphemism for scare-tactics, FUD and propaganda. When he calls it “emotionalizing” he is in effect green-washing the act of lying.

Greenpeace was not late to react to this and the signature “Brian” posted a blog entry lambasting BBC, saying they got it wrong about the factoid that triggered the confession. But while that blog post may be technically correct, it is insignificant because Leipold still admitted that “emotionalizing” is indeed a Greenpeace tactic.

If Greenpeace cannot argue their cases without “emotionalizing”, they are not only justifying skepticism, but rather necessitating it. This confession shows that scrutiny is long overdue. It proves it’s time we started looking at if they know what the heck they are talking about or just bilking sympathizers for money with whatever fairy stories they can come up with.

After all… we don’t exactly lack examples of  “emotionalizing” in the nuclear issue from Greenpeace…

8 Comments

Nuclear power opponents trying to silence harsh criticism

Published by Michael on August 11, 2009

This article is long overdue. Earlier I didn’t pay much notice to people using the power of the “delete” button on their blogs to shut out criticism of their reasoning – or lack of such. Just now however things stepped up a bit as Allianz Insurance, partner to the World Wildlife Foundation in creating the so called Climate Scorecards, just did the same thing.

Before we get to them, take a look at others who have discovered some of the practical buttons that comes with being a blog administrator.

Monica Antonsson, of the blog “Änglagård, Tjernobyl och Jag“, recently turned off the ability to post comments on her blog. She claims that this was because “[She] was terrorized by a rabid nuclear power lover”. What happened was that practically every blog post she made was quoting some other nuclear opponent. She admitted herself that she did not even fact check these quotes, only that she found them “interesting”. Most of these quotes had errors of fact, grossly exaggerated the state of matters or were in some other way worthy of criticism. When members of Nuclear Power Yes Please pointed that out to her, she claims we “spit on the information”.

Monica claims that she is not opposed to nuclear power, that she is “only collecting information”. But the links on her blog, not to mention her behaviour in general in the matter, tells a very different story. You don’t have a link with the headline “No to more nuclear power. You can sign (the petition) here!” when you are  “just collecting information”.

The thing that finally made her snap and turn off comments was when I relayed to her the fact that every nuclear reactor that replaces the equivalent amount of coal power saves up to 15 000 lives. Her immediate reaction was to lash out and call me a liar, without checking the fact. I relayed to her the data behind the statements, and she immediately dismissed them as conspiracies by the EU and the UN, and shortly thereafter turned off the ability to further criticise what she posed.

This is what she calls “being terrorized”. Well, I guess someone coming up to you telling you “You’re so very wrong” and showing he has good cause for it(!) is quite terrifying. 😀

Peter Swedenmark is a former editor in chief, and chief of the opinions & debate desk of a Swedish newspaper. After only two posts he made opposed to nuclear power under which I had discussions with other people on his blog, he quickly shut me out because “[he] didn’t want this to become a playground for nuclear proponents”. I guess having had the say-so of who gets to voice their opinion in the paper and who doesn’t was stuck as an old habit.

Anders Grönwall, press secretary of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation(SNF) did not appreciate when I criticised their hate-campaign against nuclear power where they among other things constantly and next to obsessively call it “expensive and dangerous”. I wrote a comment on that saying that this had a certain likeness in method to another well known hate-campaign we all know about. The exact comment was:

Nobody except ardent opponents of nuclear power believes the scare-mongering where you are saying “Beware of the Jew…”, sorry, “Beware of Radiation, it will come and get you!

Anders Grönvall mailed me and said “It feels as if you are trying to say that nuclear opponents are like nazis”. I mailed him back and told him that this was of course not the case since trying to conserve nature and nazism were of course(!) completely unrelated. Such a connection would be completely invalid and silly. I also told him that I did not intend to not remove the comparison of the method since scare-mongering was the key issue I was criticising. He ignored all of those arguments and just repeated he wanted that wording removed. When I again wrote him a lengthy email explaining that if SNF did not agree, all they needed to do was defend themselves and argue the case. This mail he just ignored completely, never answered and withheld the comment.

And now, the latest one,  Thilo Kunzemannof Allianz SE. As you know we posted a critical blog entry about how WWF and Allianz wantonly manipulated emissions data on the climate scorecards. A bit later I found the Allianz web page about the scorecards for 2009. A conversation had already started and Thilo had posted a sour comment where he tried to defend Allianz saying they had not lied because they had in some places told people that they had changed and misepresented the data. I posted a comment saying that a lie does not become diminished just because you admit to it.

A strange turn of events then followed. Thilo mailed me and said he wasn’t going to approve the comment, claiming it was insulting to call them liars just because they admitted to lying. 😀 When I checked the page though, the comment was there, despite him saying he wouldn’t approve it. 24 hours later still, I got a email saying that the comment had been removed, and indeed it had. Luckily I saved a screenshot of it; you can grab it here.

All in all, we are seeing a pattern where nuclear opponents are getting increasingly desperate when their claims are getting challenged. Having had the stage practically to themselves for over 30 years, they are finding themselves stumped when someone else gets up there with them and starts criticising their arguments. 

Well they better get used to it. Trying to shut us out will not make us go silent. Oh no, quite the contrary. 😀

P.S: Greenpeace didn’t approve my comment critical of their Hiroshima Day article either. But I might write that one off since they don’t seem to be accepting any comments at all on those pages.

5 Comments

We must abolish wind power because of World War I and II.

Published by Michael on August 9, 2009

Yes it is true; the use of wind power is a constant reminder and an insult to all the millions of people that suffered and died in the world wars. And the reason for this is steel.

Steel was used to kill, maim and terrorize countless millions of people from 1914 to 1919 and 1939 to 1945. It was used in rifles, in tanks, in artillery shells and hand grenades. All of it culminating with the steel birds Enola Gay and Bockscar dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Steel and war are forever linked because you simply cannot wage war without steel.

The connection between war and wind power is steel. Practically every wind turbine in the world uses steel. Steel is everywhere in them: in the tower that holds up the turbine; in the gearbox; in the bolts that hold it together, just to mention a few examples. This of course means that wind power always connected with the use of weaponry and war.

Wind power is an insulting tribute to the memory of those who died in the world wars. Turning away from wind power and, in turn, weapons and war should be a true lasting legacy and memorial of those victims.

What?! Wait…

Continue readingWe must abolish wind power because of World War I and II.
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The WWF cheats on the climate scorecards

Published by Michael on July 11, 2009

The World Wildlife Foundation continuously makes so called “climate scorecards” for the G8 countries. Since the issue of whether a nation is acting in an environmentaly sound manner or not is a very complex one, the WWF is making these scorecards that summarize the G8 countries and gives them a ranking which makes it easier to see how they are doing.

In July 2009, the three top ranked countries were Germany, the United Kingdom and France. As you are probably aware, Germany and the UK rely heavilly on coal (24% and 28% of total respectively) and gas (23% and 35% respectively) for their energy production while France only gets 5% from coal and 14% from gas. That is 1/5 the amount of coal and about 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of gas. France’s emissions per produced kilowatthour of electricity is 86 grams carbon dioxide, while Germany outputs 495 grams per kilowatthour and the UK a whooping 572 grams per kilowatthour.

One would imagine that this should give France a great advantage over Germany and the UK and easily beat them at the top. Right?

Wrong!

The WWF ranks both Germany and the UK higher than France. Why? Because the WWF changed the figures. In the climate scorecard for France, we find the following footnote:

1 WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option. The indicators “emissions per capita”, “emissions per GDP” and “CO2 per kWh electricity” for all countries have therefore been adjusted as if the generation of electricity from nuclear power had produced 350 g CO2/kWh (emission factor for natural gas). Without the adjustment, the original indicators for France would have been much lower, e.g. 86 g CO2/kWh.

There it is, in plain writing. They changed the numbers, simply because they don’t like nuclear power, thus down-ranking France despite being the lowest emitter of carbon dioxide by far of the G8 countries. They cheated on the scorecard by tweaking the numbers.

And it’s not some small tweak either. From 86 grams to 362 grams… that is upping the numbers to 400% of their actual value! What is their reasoning for this? “[The] WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option”. In short: they don’t like it. So they quadrupled the number, just like that.

The WWF also ranked Sweden, there boosting of the numbers even more. For Sweden they change the number from 47 grams per kilowatthour to 212 grams. That is 450% of its original value.

UPDATE: At the Energy From Thorium forum, a person got in touch with Allianz Insurance and asked them what was the meaning of this obvious manipulation of number. The reply was this:

Re measurement in the report: We received criticism last year for not acknowledging the fact that some countries (i.e. France) have lower CO2 emissions thanks to nuclear power. But neither WWF nor Allianz wants to encourage nuclear power as the power source for the future. The fact that there is no solution for ultimate storage is a particular concern. And we think that this world needs a different strategy for its energy needs (renewables, efficiency) – which also leads to different investments in grids and other infrastructure.

They don’t want to “encourage” the use of nuclear power. But why would anyone be enouraged? Because it is environmentally friendly of course! And here I foolishly assumed that WWF was in it for the environment… but apparently not, because they don’t want people to be “enouraged” by the fact that nuclear power has extremely low emissions. So they changed that number outright.

Not only that but they are dead wrong when they say there are no viable solutions. KBS-3 is in the final stages of development. The work to grant the method environmental approval starts next year.

This is quite simply outtrageous. It is neither scientific, nor honest. This kind of smearing and badmouthing of nuclear power is what made us start this website, because even though one would hope that this is simply an isolated incident, it is not. This kind of deception is taking place constantly. The only thing unique about this particular case is the gall they have in admitting that they actually did it.

How are we meant to trust bodies like WWF when they do this sort of thing? Had this kind of behaviour taken place at a nuclear plant, their permit would have been rescinded and the people in charge would most likely be facing criminal charges for falsifying information! But the WWF gets away with it. Why? Why should they be allowed to cheat on the numbers just to make them fit the policy, rather than fitting the policy after the numbers? Science gets ripped to shreds because the truth is too unpalatable for the nuclear opponents to swallow. What gave them the right to do so?

And maybe the most important question of all: how is the climate, the environment and the population of this planet benefiting by bodies like the WWF lying to us? What gave them the right to defend their policy first rather than the environment? What becomes better from this?

60 Comments

No, we do not need to mine uranium domestically!

Published by Michael on July 10, 2009

One argument being used quite frequently against nuclear power here in NPYP’s home country Sweden is this:

If we do not allow uranium to be mined in Sweden, we cannot have nuclear power since it would be immoral to let people in other nations take the devastating environmental impact of the uranium mining.

This argument is flawed in many ways, which will take some time to get to the bottom with, so let me first summarize where the argument goes wrong:

  1. Unlike what is being hinted, we do not have a ban against mining uranium in Sweden.
  2. Uranium mining does not have a higher environmental impact other mining other minerals.
  3. We import other produce, products and commodities to Sweden as well, most of which like uranium are not locally produced.

First I should say that this argument is not actually used against nuclear power per se but rather being thrown in the face of proponents of nuclear power trying to mark them as hypocrites. This is a type of ad hominem attack, that is to say you’re not attacking a person’s arguments but instead the person itself in order to try to win the debate by default. This is, of course, a very dishonest and cheap way of doing debate.

Anyway… on to the flawed reasoning behind the argument.

Like I said, we do not have a ban on uranium mining in Sweden. What we have is a right for municipal councils to veto uranium extraction in that municipality. We do not have a general ban on uranium mining in Sweden.  This means that unless the target of the argument has said that we should have a general ban on uranium mining in Sweden, the argument is dead in the water right there.

The second fault of the argument is to assume that uranium mining has a severe impact which causes unacceptable damage to people and the environment, and that uranium mining is worse than everything else. This too is wrong. All mining, no matter what you are extracting, can have quite a hefty impact and be very detrimental to both worker health and the surrounding environment if it is not done with care and caution. Indeed historical mining all the way up to the 70’s and 80’s have had severe problems with this.

Current mining in the early 2000’s however is different, and has all the protection and monitoring techniques needed to live up to any modern worker-, population- and environment protection standard out there. This includes uranium mining.

To illustrate by example: a Swedish miner in the LKAB iron mines in the 70’s received an accumulated yearly dose of radiation that was approximately 2000% higher than what an Australian uranium miner receives today.

It is simply just not true that we cannot do uranium mining without protecting people and the environment. We have all the tools that are needed. This still means that we have to ensure that they are used, of course, but they do exist.

The final leg of the flawed argument is the general notion that we cannot consume or use anything which we ourselves are not producing domestically, lest someone will call us hypocrites. This one is just plain stupid, because all I need to do is lift my eyes and look around me where I’m sitting to realize that not much of what I have in my room or indeed in my life, is produced domestically.

Take for instance metal, since that is produced in a nearly identical manner to uranium, which is to say: first you mine it from the ground, then you refine it. Metal is an integral part of our lives. Metal is all around us: in our computers, our furniture, appliances, jewelry, buildings, eating utensils, cars, keys, phones, power lines, wind turbines, water dams… there is metal just about everywhere.

Now I ask you, who use immense amounts of metal: are you prepared to have an iron mine in your back yard, with all the pollution and environmental hazards this implies? Are you prepared to have a steel mill as your next door neighbour with all the coal being burned in the furnaces to refine iron to steel?

You’re not? Well how can you be using all this metal then! Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite, just dumping all these environmental problems on someone else so you can sit there and read this very article on your metal-laden computer and its screen?

Of course you’re not a hypocrite. Or… maybe you are! How do you know you’re not? When was the last time you took the time to check that all the goods you’re using has been produced in a way that does not affect some other person or persons in an unacceptable manner? All this metal around you was once extracted from the ground in a mine. How do you know no-one suffered ill effects from this? How do you know that your lifestyle has not caused an environmental disaster somewhere?

With this you realize that you cannot go around and worry like that or you’d have to give up living altogether. There has to be a better way to deal with this issue than just saying no to everything that potentially caused problems when it was produced. And there is.

The ethics of importing goods, or indeed simply using goods produced by anyone other than myself, is a universal issue and it does not apply only to uranium. Uranium is not a special case and is subject to the same considerations as everything else (and then some more, since it is a controlled substance). And unsurprisingly, the Swedish nuclear companies does indeed have strict rules to abide by when it comes to seeing to that the uranium used in Swedish nuclear reactors have been produced in a sound manner that does not harm people or the environment in an unacceptable manner.

So in the end, does the argument turn those that do not want to have a uranium mine in their back yard but still want nuclear power into hypocrites? Does the argument successfully render their stance for nuclear power null and void? Must we produce uranium domestically just to have nuclear power?

No, we do not. It is a narrow-minded, simplistic and silly argument. The issue of assuring that the things which we use and consume in our lives are produced in an ethical manner is very important, and it is not being done any favours by the anti-nuclear lobby trying to dumb it down to fit their agenda. They are abusing the issue just to try to add some fuel to their waning struggle.

So don’t fall for it. Treat the issue with the respect it demands. And don’t let anyone try to abuse it just to push their point across unless it’s actually relevant.

18 Comments

Going rough on spammers. Collateral damage possible.

Published by Michael on June 2, 2009

This past weekend I cleaned out over 120 spam bot user accounts from the forums, and deleted a huge amount of never activated accounts… well over 1000 of them. I have started banning both individual IP-numbers, ranges of them, plus certain mail domains. In this process, legitimate users might end up taking collateral damage. If that happens, get in touch on the blog or through another user and let us know.

No, I will not make public an email address where to get in touch because then that will pretty soon be spammed as well and we’ll just have the same problem again. The blog is the best bet to get in touch.

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The third letter from The Smiling Sun

Published by Michael on May 22, 2009

It’s been three weeks since the first and second letter from mr Siegfried Christansen, copyright consultant of the OOD Foundation. But today he got back to me again. He is not prepared to drop their claim, but he is not providing me with much basis to believe his arguments. In the last letter I asked for some kind of legal document that supports his case that The Smiling Atom is not a work of parody. He did not provide that this time around either.

Dear Michael Karnerfors,

Re. Infringement of Copyright.

In follow up to our previous correspondence by e-mail the board of the Danish OOA Foundation has discussed the matter. On this basis and in follow up to my e-mail of 01/05/09 I shall inform you as follows:

All intellectual and immaterial rights to the figurative mark featuring a specific smiling sun with the wording “NUCLEAR POWER? NO THANKS” belong to the OOA Foundation, as documented in our previous letter. You have designed a logo using the most significant element of our protected logo, as your logo is drawn with exactly the same smiling face as used by the protected Smiling Sun logo. And you have, using the same font, turned the message “NUCLEAR POWER? NO THANKS” to the opposite, saying “NUCLEAR POWER? YES PLEASE”. The design used by your pro nuclear network Nuclear Power Yes Please constitutes an infringement of our copyrights rights.

Your claim, that your ‘Smiling Atom’ design just is a parody, and accordingly exempted from copyright claims, is not valid. If it had been a parody you would just have used it on a certain occasion in a specific context indicating the intention of parody. The reality is that you are using ‘The Smiling Atom’ as a logo for your campaign and as such offering it to other pro nuclear groups. As such ‘The Smiling Atom’ has been taken over by groups in various corners of the world and is displayed on their repective websites as logo for their campaign. There is no where not even the slightest hint, that the display is carried by the intention of a parody.

As your use and modification of the protected Smiling Sun logo constitutes a clear violation of the rights of the OOA Foundation, we request that you and your network Nuclear Power Yes Please:

* Immediately removes the unlawful logo from your home page and and other forms of promotion .
* Confirms to have informed regular users of your network of the infringement, requested any relevant user to remove your unlawful version from their respective websites and to stop any other possible use of the logo.
* Provides information concerning a postal address.

For the sake of good order we shall again stress, that the OOA Foundation is not objecting to your slogan “Nuclear Power? Yes Please”, not even to your making use of a “Smiling Atom” and of course not to your campaign as such. We only request you to redesign your logo, avoiding any visual similarity with the protected Smiling Sun. This means that you have to use another design of smile. You may fx.use the not protected “Smiley” and you need to use another font.

In case Nuclear Power Yes Please does not comply with the above demands, at the latest on 3rd June 2009, the OOA Foundation reserves the right to take any appropriate legal step in this matter according to Swedish and European law.

Yours sincerely,

Siegfried Christiansen
Copyright Consultant
The OOA Foundation

I read his arguments as best I could and have responded to them. Note that none of his arguments actually refer to any kind of legal documents which mean I could just ignore them all. But that would be kind of rude so I took some time responding to the arguments individually. In my opinion, none of them helped his case.

Hello again Siegfried!

It was so long since I heard from you I was afraid I had missed one of your emails. I am glad that this was not the case and that we can continue working towards a satisfactory conclusion of this.

In the email I sent you on 2009-05-01 I specifically asked you to show me any kind of legal document, such as a paragraph or legal precedent, that corroborated your argument that The Smiling Atom artwork is not a parody. I have read your latest email very carefully and I note that you have not included any such reference.

So must ask you again: what is your legal argument that The Smiling Atom artwork is not a parody?

Unless you can show any kind of legal weight behind your argument, I stand by my claim that The Smiling Atom artwork is a parody and as such considered an independent work according to Swedish copyright and with that I am entitled to use the work however I see fit. The restriction I have placed on the artwork in the form of an Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA did not need to be there and is a courtesy. Assuming The Smiling Atom is an independent work, I can use it freely. As you are surely aware, parodies all over the world millions in profit. I elected not to make any profit at all, and I’m not letting anyone else do it either, because I felt that would be a bit too much, even if I was entitled to do it. I am not even trying to cover my cost for the web hotel, the domain registration or the purchase of the fonts needed to created the artwork. And as previously mentioned I’m also linking to WISE and OOA from the download pages. As such I have already extended you a courtesy that goes well beyond what I’m obliged to do.

In this latest email you argue that because I use the artwork to “campaign” this would make the Smiling Atom artwork something other than a parody. I find this argument to be contradictory because “campaigning”, that is to voice and spread a message critical of that of the original, together with the imitation is what makes a parody just that. Voicing a message and trying to gain sympathy for your standpoint by opposing someone else’s standpoint is the exact reason why parodies are exempt from copyright since Freedom of Expression/Freedom of Speech when criticizing or opposing a message is considered more important than your rights as copyright owners to not have your work imitated. So if you are claiming that I am “campaigning”, and that there is strong likeness to the Smiling Sun artwork, you are in effect saying I’m using the Smiling Atom artwork in such a way that it fulfills the criteria of being a parody.

In short you are trying to claim that The Smiling Atom artwork is illegal for the very reasons that make it legal.

Also in this latest email, you are arguing that because I have not explicitly stated that The Smiling Atom artwork is a parody, it would not be that. I find that argument to be invalid on account of the fact that I have never seen a parody, anywhere in the world, with the words “This is a parody” or any other statement to that effect attached to it. Being 35 years old I would like to argue that I have seen enough works of parody to conclude that explicitly tagging them as parodies is not a common or even occasional practice. I have never seen it at all. Have you ever seen something like that? Hence a work does not explicitly have to state that it is a parody to constitute such. An implicit implication is more than enough.

You are trying to argue that the implicit statement of the intention of parody is too weak, even going as far as arguing that “[there] is no where even the slightest hint” that The Smiling Atom artwork is a work of parody. I find that argument to be invalid as well because that would strike down your main claim that The Smiling Atom artwork is an infringement in the first place. If people would not recognize The Smiling Atom artwork as a imitation, that would be because it would be too dissimilar to the original, but you are claiming the exact opposite to support your claim of infringement. Second, a great majority of the people I showed The Smiling Atom artwork to before publishing it reacted in exactly the manner you would expect from someone understanding it is a parody, that is to say with amusement and recognition. Not all agreed with the message but they most certainly recognized the intent of parody. And lastly I am, as I pointed out in my first email to you on 2009-04-30, linking to The Smiling Sun and WISE websites.

All in all, I find that the implicit statement that The Smiling Atom artwork is a parody is clear enough to not be misunderstood.

You also make the claim that in order to constitute a parody the work would have to be used “on a certain occasion”. I am not entirely sure what you mean by that, but assuming you mean that the work could only be used once or during a limited time, I cannot take that argument seriously either because that would mean every work of parody, like for instance movies such as “Hot Shots” would be copyright infringements if published beyond their initial screenings. Clearly this is not the case since I have the aforementioned movie as a legally purchased DVD on my living room bookshelf without Paramount Pictures or Warner Brothers trying to sue 20th Century Fox for copyright infringement of the movies “Top Gun” and “Superman” respectively.

As always Siegfried I am very willing to listen to legal arguments such as legislation and precedents. If you would show me any such document or documents that support your claim, I am more than willing to remove the artwork if you by these documents can show legal weight behind your arguments.

But so far you have not done that. You have referenced Swedish and European copyright legislation, which I recognize, but I have responded that The Smiling Atom artwork is exempt on account of being a parody and I have referenced legal documents stating that is the case. I have not seen you show me any kind of legal document that contradicts my claim of parody exemption. Do that, and I shall honor your claim, but will not honor it before I am shown you have legal weight behind your arguments.

For now, I am still rejecting your claim that The Smiling Atom artwork constitutes an illegal copyright infringement.

As such I will not remove The Smiling Atom artwork from the website.

I will also not go after other users of The Smiling Atom artwork, because even if it would constitute an illegal infringement of copyright, which I am claiming it isn’t, it is not my responsibility to ask them to take it down as people are personally responsible for their own actions. It would be up to you to contact them and ask them to take down The Smiling Atom artwork, referencing their respective countries’ legislation in order to put any weight behind your request.

As far as my postal address goes, I’m not in the habit of casually giving it out to email addresses I do not know for sure who is behind. If you need my address, you can find it by [instructions edited out].

with the best of regards
/Michael Karnerfors

P.S: Regarding the links you said in your last letter were not working. I have since checked them with a number of different browsers and found that they are working.

Continued in The last(?) letters from The Smiling Sun.

4 Comments