Oh dear. The British National Party is in trouble again, only on this occasion it's not with the 'biased media', the 'biased government' or the 'biased police', it's the completely non-biased Mr Men - or rather the holder of the copyright on the Mr Men characters, a company named Chorion.

The BNP have a page (that they describe as humour) containing cartoons sent in by their readers, or so they say. One of the more offensive of these pictures is the children's character, Mr Bump, made up to look like the BNP's idea of a suicide bomber and renamed Mr Jihad. The fact that the BNP seem to find the idea of any kind of suicide bomber amusing aside, we wondered whether the BNP had permission from the copyright holders to make use of this image in this or any other way. Consequently we got in touch with Chorion and asked them. Here's the relevant bit of the reply from a lawyer in their legal affairs department:

'Chorion did not authorise any reproduction by the BNP of any image of the Mr Men characters on the BNP website. Today I have written to the BNP requesting the immediate removal of the Mr Jihad image from the BNP website and I shall let you know as soon (as) the image has been removed.'

This isn't the only breach of copyright on the BNP page. Another couple of their funnies include images held in copyright by Apple Computers (the 'silhouette' images) and Wiley, the publishers (the '...for dummies' series of books.

Curiously, this ties in nicely with our Paypal campaign. Paypal's Terms and Conditions state: 'You may not register a website that promotes or facilitates illegal actions, including but not limited to the sale of goods or services that infringe on the intellectual property of a third party' and '(f) infringe on any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other property rights or rights of publicity or privacy'. Oops. You can write to complain about the BNP's actions here:  http://www.paypal.com/ewf/f=pps_prohib

The BNP 'humour' page is preceded by a statement; 'Having a laugh is not yet subject to legislation by Home Secretary "Commie" Clarke and Labour Supremo Blair, but we suspect that it is only a matter of time...if anyone is offended - tough! The essence of comedy is to have fun at someone else's expense!'

Let's see them laugh this one off!

Note: The Mr Jihad image has been removed - the others are still there.