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Copyright Law Used to Shut Down Site

Posted by Hemos on from the bad-usage dept.

driptray writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Australian mining industry group has used copyright laws to close a website that parodied a coal industry ad campaign. A group known as Rising Tide created the website using the slogan "Rising sea levels: brought to you by mining" in response to the mining industry's slogan of "Life: brought to you by mining". The mining industry claimed that the "content and layout" of the parody site infringed copyright, but when Rising Tide removed the copyrighted photos and changed the layout, the mining industry still lodged a complaint. Is this a misuse of copyright law in order to stifle dissent?"

7 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. well.. by mastershake_phd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well at least parody is still legal in the US. Is anyone else surprised how repressive Australia and the UK can be?

    --
    Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
    1. Re:well.. by hnile_jablko · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There are heaps of shows in Oz that parody everything from sport, to business and news. I find it odd that this has happened. Especially considering the parody website does not appear to be making money from it. Being an american/australian, I find Australia is a lot less repressive than the US, while the UK has its problems, not sure I would say that it is more repressive etc. I for one welcome our new Aussie copyright litigator overlords.

    2. Re:well.. by clark0r · · Score: 1, Interesting

      and there's always news about guns being put to good use in the US ;)

    3. Re:well.. by axxs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Read my post here : http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225234&cid =18244686

      We got a very legal notice I assure you, as per the copyright act schedule.

      We aren't trying to 'toe the line', in fact, we are a very progressive collective of activist geeks.

      And we have also received similar with a government agency using the DMCA to do the same with another site, in the past 2 weeks, where the server farm host was threatened with the DMCA, and thus us with them threatening to take down the server if it was not removed. it was a parody image of a logo. The logo was changed, because there is just not the funds to mount a legal battle in the US over this.

      twice in a few weeks ..

      DMCA / This law .. pretty much the same. The point is, here it is being used to quell dissent and used by folk with money against those that don't have the resources to even organise legal responses quickly. They are being abused.

  2. A little OT... by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "Life: brought to you by mining"

    Are you kidding me?

    I have nothing further to say.

    TLF

    --
    I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
  3. No Copying, Thus No Fair Use Needed by skywire · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The discussion here has immediately moved into the area of parody fair use. A quick comparison of the sites in question reveals nothing that even approaches being a copy or derivative work. The text and artwork are original. Unless Australian law allows a phrase such as "brought to you by mining" to be copyrighted, this whole fair use tangent is beside the point.

    --
    Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  4. Re:Takedown by rosscoe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Same here in the UK, people very rarely complain about parady or satire because they know that if they do it will be 10 times worse for them. In fact its such a national passtime here that celebs etc ask to go on the very shows that take the piss out of them.