Slashdot Mirror
007 Dis(Gold)members Austin Powers
gpinzone writes, "MGM and Danjaq, the British company that controls the Bond
film license, have obtained a cease-and-desist order against New
Line Cinema that prohibits New Line from calling the latest
installment of
Mike Myers' shagadelic spy series
Austin Powers in Goldmember . The full
article is available from E!-Online."
Weird how they're upset about this, but allowed "The Spy Who Shagged Me". I thought that satire counted as fair use of copyrighted material?
It's weird Al allowed to make his songs so similar to the original becuase they are parodies. Surely the the same is true for this film?
Could this be the end to creative Porn Titling? Some of the greatest Adult ventures of all time were titled after famous flicks. Setting a precedent like this could only harm the most sucessful industry in history.
Do it doug.
Has nobody got a sense of humour any more? (Well, I know Mastercard haven't.)
Soon it wont be possible to satirise anything without getting a nastygram?
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
It will be interesting to see if "MPAA Guidelines" and laws like the DMCA will be used by MPAA members against each other, rather than us consumers. I have visions of a pack of wolves turning on its weaker members in a gory bloodbath.
Did you even read the article? It says MGM and Danjaq only want the title of the movie changed.
The characters and the plot do not need to be changed, even though there is a character in the movie called Goldmember.
It is strange how the film companies only want the title changed but not the character that infringes the copyright
--Metrollica
It's a play for revenues. MGM wants cash. My prediction: amicalbly resolved with an undisclosed cash settlement in 2 weeks.
- Austin Powers: Dr Yes!!!
- Austin Powers: From Russia with Lovers
- Austin Powers: Thunderballs
- Austin Powers: You Only Live for Shag
- Austin Powers: On Her Majesty's secret Lover's List
- Austin Powers: Diamonds Are For Minks
- Austin Powers: Live and Let's Shag
- Austin Powers: The Man with the Golden Bum
- Austin Powers: Moonraiser
- Austin Powers: OctuplePussy
- Austin Powers: A View to A Shag
- Austin Powers: License to Shag
- Austin Powers: Tomorrow Never Bites (hard)
- Austin Powers: Never Say Lover again
I wonder if New Line Cinema can take any lessons from Star Ballz? If they can get away with a PORN parody it seems like a weak reference like "Goldmember" should be allowed too. Especially when New Line Cinema (with all that cash) is backing it...
Here's an article with fuller details. I find the following paragraph particularly interesting: The "Goldmember" flap is not the first between MGM and New Line over Austin Powers titles. MGM initially challenged the use of "The Spy Who Shagged Me," an obvious play on the 1977 Bond title "The Spy Who Loved Me." But that dispute was settled when New Line agreed to include trailer play for MGM movies on its Austin Powers sequel.
MGM's past actions show that all MGM is interested in is profiting off anything halfway Bond-related, whether they thought of it or not. If they can leverage copyrights to accomplish that, they will do it. If it takes, as MGM's CEO says, having "a zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who tries to trade on the James Bond franchise without authorization", they will leverage that too.
This isn't primarily an issue about rights. It's primarily about money, and rights are only dragged into the picture when they are likely to bring in more money.
Other articles:
Movies.go.com
Yahoo
BBC news
CNN
From CNN: Rappers 2 Live Crew, for example, took their use of the Roy Orbison song "Pretty Woman" all the way to the Supreme Court, which then reached the explicit conclusion that a parody falls within the scope of the fair-use defense. It would, however, be impossible to market the film as "Goldmember" during that process.
--Metrollica
Because Austin Powers is so confusingly similar to James Bond, and penises are so confusingly similar to fingers.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Apparently, the 007 folks weren't too keen on the double entendre of Goldmember
Hmmm...I realise this may be a poor choice of words on behalf of the writer of the article, but if not, the people who gave us "Pussy Galore" and "Ivana Onatopp" better not be whining about use of double entendre!
Prisoner #655321
For the benefit of the hordes who will post "I thought satire/fair use yadda yadda yadda", don't speculate, go and read about it.
There is a specific codification of fair use for parody or satire, but satire alone is not automatically enough to protect you.
The factors relevant to this case are:
Prima facia, it's about 50-50. Mike is trading on someone else's idea for profit, but in a small way compared to his original content. Using the character in the title was rather asking for it though. Mel Brooks got away with that, and with significant use of Star Wars material in Spaceballs, because he also parodied at least another 21 sources, and used his borrowed characters to perform a fair amount of critical commentary ("moichandising, moichandising").
Remember that but fair use is an exception to the law, and as Mike is clear about where he's taking his material from, it really is up to him to prove his innocence. He shouldn't have much trouble doing so, and this is likely just a well timed gambit to land a quick out of court settlement, one that the Goldmember people really should have anticipated and prepared for. But heck, it lands them free publicity, so the only losers here are a few PR executives.
(Incidentally, I agree with other posters that this article really is -1 Offtopic. If we really care IP issues, then why not run my submission on how all the sound and fury about IP on Slashdot has failed to translate into actual support for the WIPOUT essay competition. For gods' sake, all you have to do is CC your usual Slashdot rants to them!).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is it a copyright issue? Might it be a trademark issue if they registered the movie title? Are we even talking US law or British? The article doesn't seem to address any of this.
If this is in fact copyright, then MGM is in the wrong as parody is fair use in US law from what I understand of it. As an earlier poster mentioned, there's a ton of porn movies that take advantage of this. You can make fun of an original work all you like. If this is British law, who knows?
If we're talking a trademark issue, different rules apply. Again, I don't see how MGM has a legal leg to stand on as this obviously isn't going to create any more confusion in the market place then the last Austin Powers flick.
There's a stack of unanswered questions this article raises but doesn't address. Anybody know where more information on this might be located?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Austin Powers: You Only Shag Twice!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
The problem with "fair use" is that it has to be proven and defended on a case-by-case basis. If New Line wants to fight it they wouldn't have a chance of sufficiently marketing it and still get it out for the summer blockbuster season.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Yes but what do they mean by major tweaking?
If it's just a title change, how about Goldphallus, Goldshlong, Golddong, Goldhairybanana, Goldbigchap, GoldflyingScotsman or something to that effect.
But then if the call it GoldflyingScotsman they could get sued for damaging the reputation of Scots.
--Metrollica
"MGM/UA and Danjaq have a zero-tolerance policy towards anyone who tries to trade in on the James Bond franchise without authorization," says an MGM spokesperson.
Really? Veerrryy interesting.. So what about:
"The Spy who Shagged Me"
The Spy who Loved Me
"Random-Task"
"Oddjob"
"Dr. Evil"
Dr. No
"Alotta Fagina" / "Ivana Humpalot" / "Robin Swallows"
"Pussy Galore" / "Plenty O'Toole" / "Mary Goodnight"
"An unnesecarially slow moving device to which i'll leave them alone so i can't actually witness their deaths."
umm... pick any of the last 19 bond flicks..
And approaching 100 dollars each in the bids!
The idea of "conjuring up" the original work has become both a basis for protection, and a limitation. You can use enough of the original so that the target of your parody is obvious, but you can't simply copy the original, hoping to benefit from its success, and then throw in a few jokes in order to gain protection. Commercial parodies are just as entitled to this protection as non-commercial ones, as well.
Whatever way it turns out, I think Mr Myers should add a new character called 'Emgi M. Sucks' :)
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
- Austin Powers: The Shag is Not Enough
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
with links to three different items on the raid ... three IMCs were the sources
/. that keep pointing at IMC.
IAMNAE (editor), but if IMC was your only source then I probably would have rejected it too. IMC is about the most twisted source of information I've ever seen on the net. I can't figure out why there are a couple of people on
IMC calling itself Journalism and NewsMedia is good for a laugh though. They make SlashDot look like CNN.
Finding an actual news report on the incident would probably get the story accepted.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
...as I recently discovered while scratching my nose. No, wait!...
Check the date on the article. This was reported back in September. It said that filming was scheduled to begin in November.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago I saw a preview for Goldmember. It was still a ways off, but I'd assume they would have changed the name in the nearly 4 months since this article was written if there were still legal issues surrounding it.
This has beeen discussed ad infinitum on alt.fan.james-bond many times before. This isn't a copyright or trademark dispute. It's a standard part of the MPAA.
Basically, MGM has a problem with how Goldmember is being marketed (the trailer comes too close to some of the sight gags in Goldfinger, mainly). They're not suing New Line; they've complained to the MPAA panel that governs member's promotions and titling and so forth and convinced them to bar New Line from promoing the film until they work out their differences.
I think MGM/Danjaq/EON are being morons, but this is not a threat to parodies of Bond films outside the MPAA. If you want to make a homemade porn film titled "GoldenCock", you can.
That said, it is nice to see the Bond series getting some play on Slashdot. Enough of those crap Sci-Fi series like Star Trek and Star Wars...
I think MGM and Dunjaq will in the end lose the case because of the precedent set by MAD magazine back in the 1950's, where the courts in the end ruled that parody is a protected First Amendment right.
Somehow, both MGM and Dunjaq seem to have forgotten that the entire Austin Powers concept is a parody on the whole idea of spy movies in the first place! (rolling eyes skyward)
OK, I've got DMCA and MPAA, all I need is RMS, SSSCA, and a software patent to commplete the row...
- Have a picture
While we might at one time have thought the law well-settled concerning the copyright issues of parody as fair use, the truth is far more interesting.
Clearly, we know that a rap reworking of O Pretty Woman, parodizing the song as an unrealisticly romanticized account of the horrific life of a prostitute on the street is fair use, for the Supremes told us so in Campbell v. Acuff Rose.
Alas, the Courts in infinite wisdom have distinguished with a fine hair the parodizing of a work of authorship with the satirizing of a societal issue by reference to a work, for example the Dr. Seuss-esque storybook about the O.J. Simpson Trial, the "Cat NOT in the hat, which was held NOT to be fair use. There was an interesting article about this case in the Cardozo Law Journal. (big pdf file)
Finally, we have the recent reworking of the civil war epic "The Wind Done Gone," which led to one of the more important recent copyright and parody decisions, and an excellent Eleventh Circuit opinion.
And that's just the Copyright issues. There remain the trademark parody cases, which have an even odder range of uncertainty. Certainly, there are a host of cases where trademark parodies have been found permissible and protected (I think "Off the wall-street journal" was an example of one that passed), but apparently there is an invisible (or at least very gray at the fringe) line of cases where the use is so offensive to the trademark that it borders on unfair competition. (I think Jordache with a depicted butt and Cocaine with the Coca-cola commercial style failed, but again, I may be misremembering).
I had a case not too long ago when I analyzed these issues and this absolutely murky hunk of case law. The best I could approximate is the SDR&R standard: "it is ok to parody a trademark, unless you make reference to sex, drugs or rock & roll."
Interestingly, these standards (trademark and copyright) are NOT consistent. The Campbell Copyright case was a fact pattern as egregiously offensive to the Orbison estate as Cocaine was to the Coca Cola Company. Yet there, it was protected expression.
It would be interesting to see a case well-resolved that addresses these conflicting areas of law clearly. But at any rate, I wouldn't presume without seeing ALL the facts and ALL the arguments that either side has a clear win. This is one of the truly gray margins of the law, except in the few arenas where the conduct has already been litigated. Unless your case lies foursquare on the facts of an existing, controlling case, this is as uncertain an area as it gets.
From the article:
MGM and Danjaq, the British company that controls the Bond film license, have obtained a cease-and-desist order from an Industry panel that prohibits New Line from calling the latest installment of Mike Myers' shagadelic spy series Austin Powers in Goldmember.
See the bold part there? They didn't get the cease-and-desist from the Government. This is a private business issue.
And a Motion Picture Association of America arbitration panel sided with MGM.
Ayep. Your friends, the MPAA at work.
If New Line is taking it seriously, then there's probably a contract issue in place here. Chances are, New Line is un-titling their movie because MGM would sue the pants off New Line for releasing it as is, probably a breach-of-contract suit; I would guess stemming from some rules of membership in the MPAA.
While I personally think it's pretty stupid of MGM to push this, it's _entirely legal_. This has nothing to do with copyright law or fair use.
-JDF