It looks like Nicolas Sarkozy’s party has taken lessons from John McCain:

U.S. indie band MGMT has threatened to sue French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party for repeatedly using one if its hit songs without permission, unless the band is fully compensated for its use.

The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party paid a standard €53 fee ($75.54 Cdn.) to France’s music licensing body, but MGMT’s lawyer Isabelle Wekstein says that this was not enough to cover subsequent uses of the song, particularly on the Web.

The party has admitted to using the popular track, Kids, at its national congress in January, in two online videos and in political advertisements. But it claims this was an unintentional mistake and offered the band a symbolic €1 ($1.43 Cdn.) for copyright infringement.

Wekstein has rejected the offer, calling it insulting.

“This offer is disrespectful of the rights of artists and authors. It is insulting,” she told Agence France-Presse. “We are dealing with acts of counterfeiting, an infringement of intellectual property.”

Ironically, the UMP has been pushing for tougher laws against those who infringe musicians’ copyright.

That sounds so much like here it is scary, right down to the point of which party is pushing for tougher laws.