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?
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.
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.
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.
"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!
Ah, but Weird Al can't release the parodies without permission from the song's owner.
There are some songs (Chicken Pot Pie, Snack All Night) which he'll do live but wasn't allowed to release on record, and are not included in the live video. This is because the song's owner wouldn't allow the release of those parodies.
Neil Innes wrote brilliant Beatles parodies for "The Rutles", and despite being a pal of the Beatles, (The Bonzoes hit single "Urban Spaceman", also penned by Innes, was produced by Paul McCartney!), he had the rights taken away from him in court when the owners of the Beatles songs successfully sued. These rights to songs such as "Ouch", "Doubleback Alley", "Cheese and Onions" etc eventually ended up with all the other old Beatles material as being owned by Michael Jackson!
The late George Harrison in later years attemped to buy back the rights for his mate Neil, but with no success.
Neil Innes later successfully sued Oasis for stealing the melody of his song "How sweet to be an idiot", which considering many Oasis songs could be labelled beatles parodies is nicely ironic!
So. Parodies can get you in legal hot water, and if the Bond people want to force the name of the new Austin Powers movie to be changed, there are precedents.
Besides which, the Austin Powers joke got old after the first movie...
"Information wants to be paid"
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.
Ah, but Weird Al can't release the parodies without permission from the song's owner.
Actually, he can. It's his own decision to not release those parodies that haven't been approved by the original artist.
...as I recently discovered while scratching my nose. No, wait!...
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