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JibJab Sues for Fair Use of Right to Parody

Posted by timothy on from the dark-side-of-the-farce dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A few days ago, Slashdot mentioned that JibJab was threatened by a copyright lawsuit. Well, it looks like JibJab decided to sue first with the help of the EFF. Lots more info here." (Here's the Bloomberg News article.) Update: 07/31 20:43 GMT by T : Seth Finkelstein has posted the court info on his website.

6 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Good for them by raistphrk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In intellectual property cases, a good offense is probably the best defense. At least this way, if they lose their declarative judgement, they can minimize the amount of damages. But I don't see that being a problem, in this case: the JibJab parody is grounded in the orignal work, not simply capitalizing off it. The criticism in the clip is that this land ISN'T your land AND my land, but just "my land", in that each candidate is saying "I deserve respect and you don't."

    But yeah. I think Woody is up in heaven, proud of JibJab for their work.

  2. Well by iamdrscience · · Score: 3, Interesting

    By the letter of the law, Jib Jab's use of the song is probably not parody. That said though, I feel that really, their use of the song should probably be allowed. So hopefully, this will come out favorably for Jib Jab and establish some nice legal precedent. I think that this is probably why the EFF has chosen to take this case in particular.

    Another thing though, I feel less inclined to protect the rights of the owner of a song or other work when the owner is not the person who actually wrote the song. In this case, it is not Woody Guthrie's family suing, it's a company.

  3. It's not a parody by Billobob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's political satire - they are not making a parody of the song itself. This use of the song is not protected in courts.

    --
    If you have to ask, you'll never know.
  4. These guys were on Leno this week by chcorey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis appeared on Jay Leno earlier this week talking about their website and how popular it has become over the past months.

    I give these guys Kudos for having the balls to try to make a living off of making these online cartoons.

    In the interview, they said that they make money off of donations and they joked that they'd just have enough money from this "Your land is my land" cartoon to pay one month's rent and maybe a few meals.

    I hope they are allowed to continue what they are doing but unfortunately, i'm not familiar with american copyright laws.

    --
    Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children
  5. Barbie in a Blender Day by chatooya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From FreeCulture.org, the student movement for free software, free speech, and free culture, comes: National Barbie in a Blender Day.

    It's a celebration of victory in a similar free speech / fair use case that finished recently. Mattel had sued a photographer for taking photographs of Barbie in a blender and other appliances. The ACLU took on his case and he not only won, but Mattel had to pay his $1.8 million in legal fees.

    The Barbie in a Blender gallery is pretty great.

  6. Re:I hope they win by phats+garage · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Woody Guthry used to include a copyright notice on songbooks he would mail to his fans:
    • 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.

      (from www.woodyguthrie.com)

    I like to think that he'd approve of jibjabs outstanding version of one of his songs ;-)