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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."

2 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Parody is protected speech by Picass0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IANAL. That said, I think I'd build new icons, images, and work on making the site resemble the Seattle Public School site. You have some images that are very clearly mirrored and lightly tweaked. I think that might be damaging to you.

    Also, If you are using html code from the SPS site, I'd ditch it. make your own.

    You can make your site look VERY close to thiers, but there is a fine line.

    Just my wild ass guess, but there ya go.

  2. Looks like copyright violation to me. by bmetzler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I looked at both sites and they looked identical. Parody isn't about just copy strait from another source. That's plagarism. Parody is about using a source in a different setting, or with a different plot, or with different characters. Parody should result in a different and often humorous meaning then the original source.

    Consider the Apple Think Different Parody. Those were true parodies. They used the same format to put different actors in "thinking different" about different things. They weren't just ripping Apple's clips off of apple.com and voicing over "Apple Sucks". That would not have been parody.

    -Brent