The Rainbow Man

The Rainbow Man is a critical portrait of Greenpeace, the environmental protection organization. The programme unleashed a chain of reactions from Greenpeace when it was broadcast on Danish TV, The organization threatened to sue, and complained to the Danish Press Council. The latter rejected Greenpeace´s case outright, which resulted in a new type of lawsuit from the organization; it claimed that its copyright had been infringed, as the programme showed a number of sequences from Greenpeace campaigns which the organization had made available free of charge to TV-stations all over the world. In Germany Greenpeace succeeded in obtaining an injunction preventing transmission on the strength of the “copyright protected” sequences and objections from Greenpeace representatives. A similar case is currently underway the United Kingdom. The Rainbow Man is an example of what can happen when “public television” falls foul of a powerful international organization like Greenpeace and should inspire lively discussion.