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Parody or Satire? Threat To Sue JibJab
The Importance of writes "Internet multimedia producers JibJab have been getting a lot of attention recently for their version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" that pokes fun at Bush, Kerry and America in general. Now, JibJab is being threatened with a copyright lawsuit by the rights holders. They've already contacted EFF and there is an ongoing debate about whether the flash animation is protected parody or infringing satire."
Anti-property, anti-government... and they're worried that a satire aimed at Bush/Kerry will "damage" this "icon of americana"?? This is what the original folk music was all about! It seems to me that the copyright holders are just looking for an excuse to come down on these people. I doubt Woodie Guthrie would have approved the suit...
(PS. Just to be clear, I love this song - in its entirety - and was listening to it last week during a drive across the U.S. I wish the original message wasn't getting so lost...)
The intent is to make a political message about the government not to parady the song. Ergo Ipso Facto, it's a satire not a parody and they're in the wrong.
What's important in this case is that is clearly political speech, and the Courts have time and time again give much more freedom to political speech than any other. Political speech is what is most protected by the first ammendment, because it keeps a free government free.
The difference is that parody makes fun of the original work that the work is derived from; satire is a derivative work that makes fun of something else. Parody is protected, satire is not fair use.
It's pretty clear that the flash animation in question does not make fun of the actual song, but rather the presidential candidates and America in general. Thus, I don't think it's legal, but I'm only a law intern.
I'm not saying that I like the conclusion, however.
Oh, sorry, I thought the title said "Threat To Sue JarJar"
These companies don't give a hoot about songs nor artists. They only care about how much money they can make off it.
The music company is just mad because they are not making money from it.
Welcome to the land of corporations.
The song should be renamed: This land is my land, your land is my land.
I've seen Jib-Jab's song, which is a very clever and well-done piece of bipartisan fun. The problem though, is that parody can't use an entire work - either all the words or all the melody or both. Appropriating the entire song and changing some of the lyrics goes beyond the normal bounds of fair use. It's why Weird Al Yankovic gets the copyright holder's permission before publishing his parody songs, and it's why Mad Magazine sets limits to the song parodys it publishes.
Of course, the present copyright holders of "This Land is Our Land" are still being dickheads.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Reread the page you linked to. It doesn't say anywhere that he pays the copyright holders. It only says that he voluntarily asks for permission from the original artist before doing a parody.
Does Al get permission to do his parodies?
Al does get permission from the original writers of the songs that he parodies. While the law supports his ability to parody without permission, he feels it's important to maintain the relationships that he's built with artists and writers over the years. Plus, Al wants to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of the royalties.
.... its freedom of speech but only when you say what I want to hear.....
To quote Ren Hoek...
"Sometimes your wealth of ignorance is astounds me"
and to quote Woody Guthrie...
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Insolence. The original copyright notice attached to This Land is Your Land ( and several other Guthries, iirc ) reads as follows:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Your bullshit about caviar dreams and champagne wishes is poorly placed against a man who loved his fellow americans, loved the free flow of information, mailed lyrics booklets to his listeners and invited them to sing his songs, and died wretchedly in a state hospital of an irreversible degenerative nerve disorder. Learn your history.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/26/commentary/wastler /wastler/
Right now lawyers for both sides are just hurling threatening letters at one another. If the dispute ends up in court, it'll be interesting.
TRO: "You've hurt our music!"
Jibjab: "You've got no humor!"
Both: "This judge will surely side with me!"
$cat
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Met her at the door
With a loaded 44
And she ain't my teacher no more!
Nowadays, songs like these get you expelled under "zero tolerance" policies. Hell, I remember when we did the Christmas gift exchange, I brought a cap gun. The lucky bastard who drew my number was the "cop" that day during the playground game of "cops and robbers." Nobody, teachers included, said jack. Try to imagine how many people would wet their pants, not even at the sound of a cap gun on a playground, but at the very fact that a crude facsimile of a pistol was on school grounds at all.
I worry that we're teaching kids how to appreciate a totalitarian society, and worse, that some people are happy about it.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
There were mother rapers. And there were father rapers! And then the biggest, meanest, father raper of them all, came up to me and asked, "what you do time for, boy?"
And I said "fer violatin a copyright." And they all slid away from me on the Group W bench.
And then I said "and fer addin' obscene words," And they all slid back towards me on the Group W bench.
This potential case has already been decided in U.S. case law.
5 31 01petrhr.pdf
The case that recently decided this issue on the federal level was SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co. It's the case where the estate of Margaret Mitchell, the author of "Gone With The Wind" went after Alice Randall, author of "The Wind Done Gone" for copyright infringement. The case claimed that it was illegal for Alice Randall to take the story and characters of Gone With The Wind, put it in a blender and use them to make a new story that made a social and political statement.
The SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co. case was first affirmed for the plantiff but was overturned on appeal. The issues of that case aren't any different from this potential case. Can parody be defined as making a political satire or statement? Is it legal to take an entire previous work and use the characters and places and story line to make your own case for such parody?
The reason I know about all of this is because it is very personal to me. Alice Randall is my sister-in-law. And in the end, the plantiff not only lost the case, but decided to contribute to charities dear to the defendant.
You can read the case yourself. But if I were the holders of the Woody Guthrie copyright, I would read this case carefully and choose not to file. Because I guarentee that the defense will be using this case as the cornerstone of their argument.
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/suntrust/wdg