Category Archives: Fair Use

The Cat NOT in the the Hat! A Parody?

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The parody book “The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody” by Dr. Juice used Suess- like rhymes and illustrations to tell the story of O.J. Simpson’s double murder trial. The book depicts O.J. Simpson, wearing the Cat in the Hat’s distinctive red and white striped stove-pipe hat, and holding a bloody glove. An example of a line from the book: “One knife?/Two knife?/Red knife/Dead wife.”

Parody falls under fair- use according to the Copyright Act. However, what defines parody? According to the book, “Mass Media Law”, parody must “reflect the content of the original work not just the style or method of presentation”(523). In fact, Dr. Suess Enterprise sued because they did not believe that Dr. Suess’ image should be allowed to be commingled with a murder trial. Penguin book lost the trial because the court found that it was more a parody of the O.J. Simpson trial that used Suess’ shtick.

http://www.imaginelaw.com/lawyer-attorney-1181191.htmlThe disputed work

Beyond the Individual: Copyright Works for Us All

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More and more, I am getting the sense that copyright is not just some old prude’s law, its sole purpose hording texts for no greater good than money. Instead, copyright policy is working for the proliferation of culture, although some would see it as a stagnating force. According to one critic, lawmakers write copyright policy to encourage the creation of cultural works. Giving certain rights to the creators give them an incentive to create. However, should these laws become too protective, they will make censors out of creators. Vaidhyanathan in his epilogue to Copyrights and Copywrongs admits that cultural production flourishes on its previous productions; should creators censor their own work in other media, they run the risk of impeding the artistic proliferation of newer artists.

Copyright Infringement Today

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Where do you buy your textbooks? From the college store? The bookstore? Or perhaps online? If you buy them online, do you know where they are printed? If you buy textbooks printed outside of the United States, you may have a problem when you want to sell them back.

Just last year, a university student in America found himself sued for copyright infringement for selling his textbooks. As a Thai student, he had relatives who sent him textbooks from abroad; he then sold these textbooks while in America to pay for his education. Although normally one would be allowed to do whatever one wants with a legal copy, like selling it, the Copyright Act has a loophole for international copyrights. The first-sale rule which allows owners of copies a lot of freedoms with that copy does not apply to internationally copyrighted material, which American law deems as being under control of the copyright holder regardless of who owns a copy.

This is similar to the discussion of ASCAP in the Copyright’s Highway, where Goldstein writes a little on the freedom of owners over their own copies. In seeking greater control over how their music is used, the ASCAP targeted dance halls and restaurants which played without direct permission from the group. Though we are granted enough freedom with our own copies, when it becomes public or for profit, someone needs to pay. ASCAP won in determining that such performances are for profit. In the same way, Mr. Kirtsaeng’s selling of textbooks is clearly for profit, placing him in violation of copyright law.

Recent Developments – Germany

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In the past few days, a major development occurred in Germany that will have a profound effect on copyright laws over the internet going forward. Originally, the German parliament was sponsoring a bill that would have negative effects on internet search engines, particularly Google, who has links to various news sources scattered across websites all over the internet. The legislation would allow for newspapers and other news sources require search engines to stop showing these links unless the company agreed to pay licensing fees to the new source. However, heavy lobbying by Google has resulted in the bill being severely watered down. Now, the bill states that while news sources can now require charging search engines for the printing of full texts, the search engines still have free reign in using small snippets of text in advertising links. The bill has passed in the lower house of the German parliament and is awaiting a vote in the upper house. Google is calling this a victory for the free internet movement, but what effect this development actually ends up producing remains to be seen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/technology/german-copyright-law-targets-google-links.html

Copyright Controversy – The Verve

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This week, I’ve spend much time working on the essay for the first portfolio, with the central theme of the essay being the history of copyright laws. Doing this made me think of an instance involving one of my favorite bands, The Verve. During the mid-90’s, while working on an album, the Verve came to an agreement with Decca Records, the company that deals with the music made by The Rolling Stones. Both parties agreed that for a small fee, the Verve would use a five note sample from a relatively unpopular Rolling Stones song in the composition of one of their own songs, “Bittersweet Symphony”. When the album as released in 1997, “Bittersweet Symphony” became a worldwide hit, bringing The Verve both enormous fame and album sales.

After seeing the success of this song, former Rolling Stone manager Allen Klein filed a lawsuit against The Verve, arguing that they had used “too large of a sample” from the original song. This was an absurd claim, as not only did the Verve use the exact amount they agreed to, but their resulting song was essentially unrecognizable from the song that the five note sample came from. Nevertheless, the case went to court. Facing a difficult legal battle, in which there was the potential to lose much money and still lose the case, The Verve had no choice but to hand over 100 percent of their royalties from the song to the Rolling Stones.

This whole controversy represents a disgusting chapter in copyright history. Allen Klein, fueled by greed, created a false claim and cost The Verve all the money they would have made from a worldwide hit. What makes it even worse is that these are the types of instances that copyright laws are supposed to prevent, but it is arguable that they have created this problem.

http://www.thevervelive.com/2005/05/bitter-sweet-symphony-controversy-and.html

Anonymous No More

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A recent bill proposed in the Illinois State Senate would make anonymous website forums reveal their true identities or risk having their content taken down.

Although not technically an issue of copyright, it does tie into our discussion of authorship. Our unalienable right to free speech has come under-attack, yet again, on the internet. I am of the belief that our right to anonymity and privacy is an all important aspect of what makes this country great. But I would like to pose the question: To what extent does free speech go? Do we all have the right to not have our words attributed to us?

 

Parodies

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I was watching the latest episode of saturday night live and started to think about what constituted original content. Many of the saturday night skits are made from the parodying of other media and popular culture. In 1994 the Supreme Court justified a parody under fair use because a parody is the “use of some elements of a prior author’s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author’s works.” Like other forms of comment or criticism, parody can provide social benefit, “by shedding light on an earlier work, and, in the process, creating a new one.” I never really thought about parodies, such as the ones Weird Al creates, in this way before.

Television and copyright Laws

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Over winter break I interned at Lou Reda productions (located in Easton) they’re the mind behind cable documentaries focusing on Vietnam and WWII. The part of the job that pertains to this class was their film archive, they have an archive of thousands of hours of footage most of which is copyrighted. A large portion of their business comes from selling the rights to fair use footage they own. what I gained from this job was what could and could not be sold to other production companies for them to use. Anything shot by the US government was fair game to be sold, this meant any footage shot of USO shows, combat footage and propaganda films could be sold off to other companies. the majority of my job was going through their large archive fulfilling film requests so I  quickly learned how to tell what was shot by the Government and what had already been edited by someone else (say the History channel) and therefore couldn’t be sold.

what struck me in particular was that they seemed to have a large amount of footage that couldn’t be used due to copyright laws. When I asked one of my coworkers about this he explained that they saved the footage for when the copyrights ran out it would then be usable and therefore worth it to hold on to.

So I just thought I would share with you my hands on experience with copyright laws and hopefully it will help someone with their paper.