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Gritty 'Power Rangers' Short Is Not Fair Use
"Power/Rangers", the 11-minute short directed by music video veteran Joseph Kahn, is still available on Youtube, where it was posted by the film's producer, Adi Shankar. Rival video site Vimeo removed the short film after receiving a copyright complaint from Haim Saban, the creator of the U.S. series, for using the characters without his permission.
The movie is OK. I think the people gushing about how amazing it is are mentally comparing it to the awful 1995 "Power Rangers" movie or the bland cartoon. But how are the director and his defenders arguing that the movie isn't a copyright violation?
The director said in one of a series of tweets: "Every image in POWER/RANGERS is original footage. Nothing was pre-existing. There is no copyrighted footage in the short." True, but this ignores the fact that characters themselves can be protected by copyright. Fan fiction sites can exist legally only to the extent that the character copyright owner grants permission (J.K. Rowling has explicitly given permission for the Harry Potter characters to be used in fan fiction; Anne Rice specifically prohibits fan fiction featuring her characters). Most obviously, when a studio like Warner Brothers produces their own gritty reboot of a character, they have to pay fees to the owner of that character, even if every frame of their movie is entirely the studio's own work. Why on Earth would the studio pay those fees, if they didn't have to?
The director also tweeted, "I am not making any money on it and I refuse to accept any from anyone." Well, everyone ought to know by now that that argument isn't going to fly if you put a copy of The Avengers on your personal home page. It's not obvious why that defense should work any better if you've violated someone's copyright by using their characters without permission, instead of just copying their movie.
Kahn also tweeted that the short film was not a copyright violation because it was "satire," and his supporters agreed, calling the film a "parody." (Copyright law holds that you can satirize or parody someone else's work without their permission; thus Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer do not have to pay licensing fees for the movies that they rip off in their awful "parodies.") But no English speaker would use the word "satire" or "parody" to describe Kahn's movie, precisely because of the qualities that people loved about it (dark, violent, almost completely humorless). Most tellingly, as far as I can tell nobody did call it a satire or parody until that started being raised as a defense against copyright claims -- they called it a dark, gritty remake or re-imagining, because that's what it was, and calling it a "satire" sounds jarringly wrong unless you're in on the wink-wink pseudo-legal strategy.
Kahn also invoked "fair use" multiple times, but that's just begging the question: since "fair use" is a catch-all for several scenarios in which you can legally use copyrighted content without the owner's permission (parody/satire, brief excerpt for the purpose of commentary/criticism, etc.), which defense applies here? One of the criteria for "fair use" is how much of the original work you re-used -- if your online review of The Dark Knight links to a 10-second clip that you posted to show that the fight scenes are kick-ass, that might be OK, but a 30-minute excerpt would not be. But if we apply that logic to the use of a copyrighted character, in a story you're either using someone else's copyrighted character, or you're not. Given that characters are protected by copyright at all, it doesn't make much sense to talk about "using 0.5% of a character", the way that a 30-second clip would constitute only 0.5% of a 100-minute movie. It certainly wouldn't make sense in the case of Kahn's remake, where the copyrighted Power Rangers characters are onscreen in every single scene.
The director's defenders rightly pointed out the absurdity of Vimeo removing the short film just hours after giving it a "Staff Pick" award, but the real absurdity runs in the opposite direction -- how did Vimeo's staff give an award to the film that they should have known was a knockoff? Presumably they had heard of the Power Rangers and knew that the movie was using the characters without permission.
Moreover, there's not just a legal argument against an unauthorized "gritty reboot" of the Power Rangers, there's a moral one as well. The short film shows that Joseph Kahn is a technically competent director -- but there are many, many competent directors out there, making gritty sci-fi films of short and feature length, all competing for people's attention. By using the "Power Rangers" name for his piece, Kahn got way more views than he would have gotten if he had released it as "just another dark sci-fi short film." And despite his protestations that he's not making money from the film, it's bringing him exposure and connections which are almost certainly monetizable somewhere down the road, opportunities which come at the expense of other similarly talented directors. Does that seem fair?
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Power Rangers has always been a live action TV show.
I would. Parody/satire humor. A dark, gritty send-up of ridiculous subject matter is every bit as much a satire as the inverse would be.
What is Parody if not to amuse? And what is amusement but entertainment? To say the only form of parody is the sort we see on Saturday Night Live would be utterly limiting and disingenuous at best. This is clearly a piece of "Fan Fiction" and should by all intents and purposes be covered by fair use since it is not a commercial work, and was created to amuse fellow fans of the Power Rangers. Perhaps instead of calling their lawyers, the copyright holders should have called the creator of this piece to see about putting together a deal to bring this to SyFy as a Galactica style reboot. But hey -- they're assholes in suits and more about "protecting" the rights they've secure from others than "creating" anything new with those rights.
You don't see the humor in changing a hilariously bad kids show into a very serious adult movie? Satire, parody, and humor aren't just in the domain of chuckles.
Parody of Power Rangers. No one is mistaking this for an actual official Power Rangers movie. (Compare with Hustler v. Falwell.) The difference in fan fiction is that when looking at an excerpt of text, there is the potential that a reader might mistake a piece with officially sanctioned/published material. Non-commercial work faces a lower bar for being judged as fair use. (Thus firms are more likely to obtain permission/licensing when making a product or film.)
Satire of grimdark and remakes/reboots. "In the grim future of Hello Kitty, there is only war". http://onastick.net/sitz/image...
The video was interesting in spots; this article wasn't.
Parody and satire don't require humour anyway.
It could argue that it is a parody. The official Power Rangers are Anti-Gritty, clean cut one dimensional good guys (at least they were when I was a child). To make them a more complex and morally ambiguous to show off how clean cut the original is parodying the original.
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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Satire" doesn't mean "Different".
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But in current copyright law, there is no longer a viable way to create a derivative work and benefit from it. In the past, when a new music or art style became popular, many people would start creating by copying each other. Even the last two major music styles to emerge, hip hop and edm, started by using existing samples and copying each other verbatim and not bothering other artists with royalty claims. This is now legally closed, the estates of deceased musicians will sue for use of specific words, a chord scheme or bass line and get rewarded. People are just too damn greedy. What happened to 'limited time' and 'public domain'?
So what?
It was an interesting bit of film.
One that does NOT ONE DAMN THING to detract from the "actual" Power Rangers.
If our fucked up copyright laws forbid something as simple as this then that whole "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" shit that was intended is totally gone to hell.
If we can't stand on the shoulders of giants (or dudes in tacky suits) and create "new" interpretations, then we've lost the real reason for copyright anyway. I'm not saying that Power Rangers doesn't deserve copyright, but I am saying that reasonable copyright terms should have put it in the public domain by now.
I am currently boycotting all songs from Tom Petty because of his crappy copyright challenge to Sam Smith's "borrowing his song" I mean come on, if we compare every song with every other song and "alter the tempo", and "vary the pitch" then we're screwed. Music reuses all kinds of things all the time. Fuck, soon people will try to copyrighting fucking chords progressions and beats. Yeah Sam Smith's song resembles one of Petty's, but only if you torture it enough. What's next, syllable counts on choruses? That shit was ridiculous.
Copyright has become a farce that no longer does any good for the public. And since thats what it was supposed to be for, I'd say its high time we scrap the whole decrepit edifice of modern copyright law and start over.
If this were the standard, then the concept of "copyrighted characters" would be meaningless, because anybody would be free to create new works of fiction using someone else's characters, as long as it was noncommercial and used no portion of the original work.
But, the general legal consensus seems to be that character copyrights are enforceable, i.e., you are not free to create works using someone else's characters even meeting criteria 1-4 above.
One that does NOT ONE DAMN THING to detract from the "actual" Power Rangers.
I'm incredibly anti-copyright law, but even to me that's obviously not true. Every time a certain fictional character is used, people's perception of that character changes. By showing the Power Rangers this way the video's creator is changing our perceptions of the Power Rangers.
All it takes is just a single person:
1) seeing the video
2) associating (subconsciously) the brand with darkness
3) deciding to buy a gift of Legos instead of a Power Rangers toy as a result
and then clearly the video has detracted from the "actual" Power Rangers (in the sense that their IP's owner will sell one less toy because of the video).
Don't believe me? Imagine if everyone was legally allowed to use Mickey Mouse. There would Mickey Mouse snuff films, Mickey Mouse versions of 50 Shades, Mickey Mouse promoting drug use, etc. If enough of that stuff exists kids would see it and would never look at Mickey Mouse the same way again. That absolutely detracts from Disney's ability to keep Mickey a wholesome character that they can make tons of money off.
Now, should Mickey be in the public domain by now? Absolutely (screw you Disney). But let's not pretend that if anyone can make any version of any famous character they want that it won't have any effect on how people see that character (and thus detract from the original author's vision of them).
"Satire" doesn't mean "Different".
In a reddit AMA, Khan explained what he wanted to show was the nature of how society finds violence acceptable in a kids show versus what they consider adult themed. He said the major difference between his short and the original power rangers cartoon was that when characters get shot, red liquid spurts out. Plus he showed titties. Other than that, it's the same type of fighting, with people hurting or killing others. But one is a kid's show and the other is "gritty".
It absolutely fits as satire and valid commentary.