Warner Bros. Forced To Fight For Fair Use

V-similitude writes with news that Warner Bros. has been forced into a position of claiming 'fair use' in the defense of an upcoming movie. From the NYTimes: "In The Hangover Part II, the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson, which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.) But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri, doesn't quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it 'tribal tattoo,' and claims it as a copyrighted work. ... Warner Brothers in its brief also invoked the 'fair use' defense for Hangover Part II, namely the right to parody what has become a well-known tattoo since it first appeared on Mr. Tyson’s face in February 2003."

Comments

Fair use when it suits them

[betterunixthanunix]

For Hollywood, copyright has one meaning: inflating their profits. Unfortunately, almost everyone in America has forgotten that copyright is supposed to exist to improve the people's access to works of art and science, not just to make money for copyright holders, and so Hollywood manages to get away with their abuse of our legal system.

Re:Fair use when it suits them

[Stormthirst]

And you have completely mis-read the OP. He's not arguing that people should be able to pirate Hollywood's content as and when they please. He's arguing that Hollywood abuses the legal system, and does so to extort more money out of the people than Hollywood are due by suppressing Fair Use, and in this case parody. The irony here (seeing as you don't seem to understand it) is that WB are using the parody clauses of copyright law to get out of paying someone damages.

Re:Fair use when it suits them

[vadim_t]

And it fails quite badly at that.

For instance, why is LOTR still under copyright? Somebody is obviously getting all those royalties, but how does that incentivize creation?

If incentivizing creation is the true goal, then copyright should be much shorter, perhaps the original length of 17 years. Authors should have a good reason for producing multiple works during their lifetime even if they strike gold (especially those, as they proved they can write good stuff), and publishers and similar should be encouraged to find new authors instead on relying on collecting the benefits of works created a century ago.

But copyright keeps getting pushed to an ever longer length, because its current purpose isn't about incentivizing creation, it's about owning as many works as possible and collecting profit from them, which gets easier the longer copyright lasts.

copyrighting meat canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

does this make Mike Tyson a work of art or a piece of work?

oh now I feel dumb

[Osgeld]

I thought it was the face tattoo from star trek voyager's Chakotay

Re:Whitmill's mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

But he did include DRM. The DRM was putting it on the infamous boxer Mike Tyson.

Re:Isn't it Tyson's?

[St.Creed]

The artist and Tyson explicitly arranged a copyright transfer to the tattoo artist, which is why he has a rather strong case at the moment: he can show a contract between him and Tyson giving him the rights to everything that's based on that tattoo. The contract also predates the movie by several years.

Now you can argue about the silliness of copyright on this, but he is an artist and copyright does work this way, even if the canvas is a person. And Warner Brothers is about the last entity in the world that can claim ignorance on copyright issues, so they're probably going to try and get a deal, because if it goes to trial I wouldn't give them much chance. Not when every good defense will also backfire onto your own use of copyright to intimidate people.

All in all: good news. I hope the artist takes them to the cleaners. Perhaps that will teach them something about why abusing copyright is similar to wielding a bioweapon: it tends to backfire.