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What Protections Exist for Parody Sites?

Posted by Cliff on from the some-people-just-can't-take-a-joke dept.

jolchefske asks: "I'm a small time guy running a small time parody website of a medium sized school district. My site lampoons the real website of the Seattle School District -- a district currently over 30 million dollars in the hole due to accounting "irregularities." My question is, what protections (if any) do parody websites have against copyright litigation? The district is 30+ mil in the red but they've got the lawyers knocking on my door."

5 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. IANAL by clark625 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, seriously. I'm not a lawyer. Neither is most of the other folks around here. Maybe it would be best to actually call a lawyer in your own area and see what he/she says? Most have initial consultations for free...

    --
    Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
  2. Critique of your parody site by mbstone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have little to fear provided you get a lawyer right away. Your site is a parody, presumably protected by the First Amendment, and it does not appear to have any content that could be termed libelous or obscene. I would observe that your site a) isn't very funny; b) isn't very robust; c) doesn't do a good job of explaining to someone like me, who is unfamiliar with Seattle or its school system, what it is that aggrieves you about it; d) links back to the official site in such a way as to confuse people. Maybe they will violate your civil rights and you can countersue.

  3. Re:Oh my god! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My god, these things are TOO easy.

    Well, on "Ask Slashdot," yeah, duh. Nobody reads "Ask Slashdot" except know-it-alls, trolls, fp'ers, and people who love to say "A simple Google search would have given you the answer, you inconsiderate clod."

  4. Too subtle? Too BLATANT, you mean! by bobv-pillars-net · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Lessee,
    1. HTML source code is blatantly ripped from the original, filtered through html-tidy and lightly edited.
    2. Images, color, and layout are either exact copies or obvious light-edits of the original.
    3. Porn link at the top of the page.

    4. I'd say that you're a PRIME candidate for a lawsuit. Not only are you obviously COPYING instead of RE-CREATING the content, but you're linking to porn. People are highly sensitive to that sort of thing, especially where schoolchildren are concerned.

      If you plagiarized one of MY websites that way, I'd sue you, too.

    --
    The Web is like Usenet, but
    the elephants are untrained.
  5. Re:Protection...but 2 kinds by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gee ... so copyright must be unconstitutional?

    No, wait, there's also a Copyright Clause in the Constitution.

    I'm ribbing you a little; but my point is that First Amendment absolutism doesn't actually solve all that much. This is a tension within the Constitution itself, and I doubt the 1st A. was meant to amend away copyright.