PRESS RELEASE / LA ZONE LIBRE vs AVIQ
The Free Zone citizens’ collective promotes democratic values and ensures respect for fundamental rights and freedoms.
As part of the COVID crisis, he fought non-violently against the introduction of the covid safe ticket (« le passe, on s’en passe ») and against the discriminatory system put in place between vaccinated and non-vaccinated. He was particularly interested in child vaccination.
To encourage people to get vaccinated, the Walloon health agency (AViQ) has created a website and put it online at www.jemevaccine.be.
The collective immediately denounced the poor quality of the message, which tends to pass vaccination off as a harmless act when it is necessary to reflect on the matter so that each citizen, duly informed, can make a free decision.
The collective therefore created a website www.estcequejemevaccine.be, a nod to the official site.
RTBF published a report on the collective’s website. Unable to accept either the content (fake news) or the form (parody), public television (largely financed, as we know, by taxpayers’ money) was extremely critical. This was all it took to arouse the anger of the Minister and her administration, who tried to have the collective’s site taken offline.
The Brussels Court of Appeal has just rejected the AViQ’s application.
While the French administration was contesting the collective’s copyright on the official website, the magistrates of the Court of Appeal upheld the parody exception put forward by Mr. Étienne Wery, partner at ULYS (Brussels), who was defending the collective.
The Court of Appeal reviewed the constituent elements of the two sites, noting that « the expression of humor or mockery […] can be seen (i) in the title of the site, which, in its interrogative mode, hijacks the statement expressed in the name of the I’ AViQ site, (ii) in the use of the slogan « I’ve had my dose » which, while referring to a dose of vaccine, (iii) the fact that the eyes of the face depicted on the disputed site are covered by plants, which may imply blindness. «
The Court added, for the benefit of the first judge who had condemned the collective on the grounds that its site was not funny, that « the informative nature of the disputed site is not exclusive of a humorous or mocking tone of the home page in question ».
Étienne Wéry, the collective’s lawyer, points out that » this is an important expectation. Parody is an autonomous concept in European Union law, referring not only to humor, but also to mockery, offense, mockery or criticism. Limiting parody to end-of-year bloopers is a serious mistake that undermines freedom of expression. It is fortunate that the Court of Appeal emphasized this »..
For the La Zone Libre collective, the administration’s legal action sends out the wrong signal. Spending public funds in the name of (otherwise non-existent) copyright, when in reality it’s all about silencing dissenting voices, is behavior that has no place in the democratic society the collective promotes. The very existence of this legal action shows that the collective is more necessary than ever.
