Intellectual Property Law

So here's the latest and coolest internet prank you can play on your friends: Enter their name into this new fake news feature, send them an e-mail through the application and then tell all your friends about the resulting video.

This fun time-waster comes courtesy of Paltalk, a video and voice-enabled internet chat application company based in New York City.

"The reason we did the viral video is that politics is so hot right now, and we thought we could subtly promote the company and at the same time have some fun with it," said Joel Smernoff, Paltalk's president and COO.

The campaign was created by  the New York City branch of Vanksen, Culture Buzz, a global marketing  company  headquartered in Luxembourg.

"It was one of my sick ideas," jokes Thierry Daher, CEO of Vanksen, Culture Buzz New York. "I thought it would be nice if everyone could have a chance to be nominated to be a frontrunner."

Daher's idea was to "intelligently build the client into the story line," and to get the idea across that "if you want to talk politics this election season, there's no better place to do it than Paltalk."

To make it fun, and make people want to pass it on, the feature "puts the user at the center of the experience," he says. "It's all about you and plays on your ego."

The video clip uses Adobe Flash and is hooked up into a database, which enables the personalization seen in the video, Daher says.

By the way, if you're wondering who Russ Kick is, he's the guy behind The Memory Hole -- the web site that brought you the photographs of the flag-drapped coffins returning from Iraq that the Bush Administration took itself took, but kept secret and banned from being run in newspapers.

Kick obtained the photos through a FOIA request.

(Hat Tip to techpresident.)