Slashdot Mirror
Dilbert Hole now Closed Down
An anonymous reader writes "The Dilbert Hole now contains an image of the letter they received and an explanation about why the site is now down. "
For those who missed it, the Dilbert Hole was terribly offensive
parody of Dilbert. Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?
Well? I read them once, and thought they were rather amusing.
Yeah, yeah, the laywers were right, yeah, yeah, I'd get fired if I had them on my monitor at work, yeah, yeah, I still want to see them again.
There's a difference between parody and simply ripping off someone else's work. If you own a bootleg copy of the movie The Matrix, you can't add a scene you made yourself to the movie and distribute the combination of the movie along with your scene and call it a parody (well, you could do that, but it would be illegal despite your claim of parody).
So, could they have hosted this Dilbert Hole stuff on a web server in Taiwan and gotten away with it?
I liked the line how THEY are to remove ALL Dilbert marks from the Internet.
So, if I were to e-mail you these tasteless cartoons over the Internet, then the people at Rotten.com would have to have to remove them after they left my machine on the way to yours.
That site was worthy of a junior high school locker room. Apparantly, it was the work of some morons who get off on posting obscenity in the name of "freedom". It was really stupid of them to use someone else's copyrighted illustrations, though. I'm really glad they're getting nailed - if I were Scott Adams, I'd be mad as hell that my work was being used in that way.
Actually you could dub a whole new soundtrack onto any movie you want. You would be sued and eventually you would win - if it was ruled to be a parody of the original. If you make money it gets a little fuzzy. Supposedly this is what makes America great - the ability to sue someone into destitution even if they have a legal right and will prevail in the end. This Dilbert parody would would be just that - parody and allowed legally even if he used the original strips. Who has the resources to fight something like that that in court to protect "art?" Look at some of the stuff that Larry Flynt has been sued (or arrested) for and eventually won because of his deep pockets and hence his ability to fight.
Also it seems that most people are missing the point of the parody which to me is that Dilbert is such an innocuous, painless little slice of life that its commentary is no longer biting and witty, but actually inoffensive and superficial. Using vulgar captions with no depth or wit is the perfect parody of the present style of Dilbert. Exactly - 14 year old sexual humor to parody humor written on the same level, intended for the same audience.
That was the most un-funny thing I've read in a long time.
Moron HE bought the movie.
Woody also screwed up on of the best James Bond books ever. Damm that Assmonkey!
these are definitely sick and tasteless and several cross the line on the racist and homophobic tip.
at the same time, a bunch of people are saying these parodies have no point or no sense of humor. or since they have no point, they aren't parodies. i would have to disagree with that.
take this one for example:
http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d004.html
certainly, as sexist and demeaning as it is,it does offer some statement on sexism in the workplace (whether or not the author intended it that way).
http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d008.html
i would say similar things about this one. it is racist, but isn't it making fun of racism at the same time? can't we imagine corporate blowhards talking this way to each other?
i have a _very_ limited knowledge of what dilbert is about, having rarely seen it or read it. my impression is it is some cutsie garfield-level humor about being in "cubicle hell" and corporate life.
i think _some_ of these cartoons take on some more weighty issues (sexism, racism, _real_ humiliation in the workplace)that dilbert probably never touches in an "in your face" style that cute little dilbert could never dream of. that is part of it being a parody.
i think the cartoons are sick and tastless, the author probably is an ignorant, racist person. but they are free speech and i consider it a parody.
Theres always gonna be a place for stuff like this, and sites like Rotten.com. If you didnt find this NC-17 version of Dilbert funny, then you obviously dont have much of a sense of humor.
"Shave your nuts and meet me in the John"
Many of those strips were lifted directly from
the Leisuretown.com site, which had them in a
CONTEXT of a much better created story, and
in that context they made sense. on their
own they're just stupid. Read Leisuretown
for an actual web comic that's FUNNY and makes
you think at the same time. So not only were
they plagiarising United Media, they were
plagiarising Tristan, the original creator of
those strips. Let 'em hang.
I fail to see how "reading too much Slashdot" would figure into this, besides knowing that we'll all rant and scream and give it a lot of hits, which is what rotten.com wants. So while you're calling for the fining and imprisonment of Tom Dell should be jailed, check out http://www.freer.com/archives/020996.htm. Note the date. Note the link to Dilbert Hole back when I first read it, on cafe22.com (Tristan Farnon's site).
I don't recall Slashdot being around in Feb. 1996
However, it WAS a commentary on a social and economic trend. The "story" was not the actual comic itself, but rather what happened to it. Offensive content being blocked at the whims of a corporation, and shortsighted members of the public cheering (like yourself) is part of the show.
Sit back and watch your freedoms erode.
Tristan is actually quite good friends with the person who runs rotten.com, and gave him explicit permission to repost them, so I sincerely doubt he's going to sue.
For example, suppose I want to parody Family Circus. I take a video of Star Wars and digitally edit it so everyone has funny round heads, and Darth Vader leaves a trail of "billy lines" wherever he goes.
George Lucus could sue my ass off, and he'd win. I'm parodying Family Circus, not Star Wars, and so I don't get any special rights to make use of Star Wars. Bil Keane would not have a case, assuming I didn't take more of his work than is necessary for that parody, because it is his work I'm parodying.
There is much confusion on this issue because the mainstream press does a lousy job of reporting Supreme Court decisions. There is a widespread belief that in the "pretty women" case the Court said that parody is always protected. Nope. What happened in that case was the district court said it was never a defence, and the appeals court said that was wrong and parody was always protected (I may have these two reversed). The Supreme Court then said that both lower courts were wrong, and that parody may be a defense, and sent the case back down.
I haven't seen the strips in question, so can't say whether their parody was of Dilbert or not.
--Tim Smith
To quote from the PC manifesto, on the topic of animal rights:
Q: HOW DO I KNOW WHEN AN ANIMAL HAS RIGHTS?
The general rule is as follows:If an animal is rare, pretty, big, cute, furry, huggble, or lovable, then it has rights.
Examine the following chart:
RIGHTS:cows, cute bunnies, dolphins in tuna nets, whales, red squirrels, owls, harbor seals
NO RIGHTS:cockroaches, flies, tuna in tuna nets, sharks, gray squirrels, loggers, barnacles
...dunno, this just seemed quite appropriate in light of the discussion about whether this "really offensive material" is protected by parody rights.
Yup. I got the MP3s of both the Negativeland Album and the Plunderphonics. The Plunderphonics is quite a good work. Some is harsh cuts but they put a good deal of time and effort to make it. The Negativeland stuff is kinda freshmen like in contrast. But the Casy Casem samples are funny as hell. Negativeland's work is parody for sure, but not having the big bucks to buy "justice" they were blown out of the water. Plunderphonics' stuff is more of a creative rewrite and I bet they too don't have the bucks up there in Canada, eh.
Dilbert Hole... Parody, but they could have covered their ass better by drawing the strip. Sh*t how hard is it to draw Dilbert?
There's no justice, it's just us. Blind Justice screwing all of us. We need justice for ALL of us.
Agnostic Front
The "We hate you" is from rotten.com's registration. "We Really Hate You (ROTTEN-DOM)" Is listed as the registrant on rotten.com. And if rotten.com is forging letters from Baker & Hostetler, I'd guess they're in for a lot of fun-- B&H is #34 on the NLJ top 250 law firms, with 270 partners & 190 assoc. in 1997, & offices all over the U.S. Begging for UM to pick on them is one thing, but forging a letter from a real-life law firm is really, really asking for it. And if you dig around the site a bit, you'll find the name on the bottom of the letter is one of B&H's i.p. attorneys. If it's a fraud, it's a well-done but really stupid one.
[thanatos@cerebus ~] >whois rotten.com
[rs.internic.net]
Registrant:
We Really Hate You (ROTTEN-DOM)
PO Box [XXXX]
Mountain View, CA 94040
US
Domain Name: ROTTEN.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
[ Snipped for politeness ]
Record last updated on 20-Dec-96.
Record created on 23-Jul-96.
Database last updated on 15-Apr-99 15:35:20 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
ZONE.AREA.COM 165.90.20.20
ZONE.RWX.COM 165.90.20.90
Evidently you can never go wrong with homosexual or scatalogical humor. Such a rich intellectual orchestra of satire.
now that you put it that way,(actually knowing
the laws? im shocked!) i don't see where
'the dilbert hole' is making fun of dilbert
either... he even got 'alice' mismarked as being
a secretary, in dilbert she's an engineer.
as far as i can tell, it is making fun of corporate culture, or modern life, or god knows
what else... but not dilbert itself.
maybe rotten.com (or someone) has reasons why
they think it does make fun of dilbert, perhaps
they can post them.
The parodies are still around. Look at
http://www.boners.com/dilbert/.
Adams didn't object to the parody (I spoke
with him about this). Look carefully at the jpegs. Adams e-mail address, signature, and
the UFS copyright marks were not removed.
That's not cool.
their books are full of fuckin' and suckin'
as for 'scatology', remember that feces
were not considered 'obscene' until way after chaucers time.
You complete retard.
Tristan A. Farnon wrote the Dilbert Holes.
He also writes http://www.jerkcity.com.
a society with free speech is full of smelly,
offensive, stupid, low quality, moronic, etc
speech. it's also full of the greatest speech
ever created.
sort of like linux.
the freedom is the important part. the quality
aspects derive directly from freedom. the
stuff that is 'offensive' is just a side effect.
if you can't deal with that, move to china,
buy windows, and be happy in your non-free
society where the only one who can say
what is good and bad is some bureaucracy.
interesting point.
though d.h. was more just lame-sad than offensive. waste of time, space, energy, etc.
who cares, not I.
Oh bullshit. If you couldn't find the absurdity :)
to the strips, then perhaps you've been behind
a desk a little too long. It's like voicing over
vulgar dialog at just the right moments in TV
shows. It's fun to imagine that they're really
saying those things, and the situation LOOKS like
they're saying it, and is reinforced that way.
But it's not. Thats a style of comedy. Loosen
up and see it for the rediculous mockery it is.
>'Fair use' is a constitutionally protected right. >I happen to think the parodies in Mad magazine >(et al) blow chunks. But that doesn't alter the >fundamental right folks have to 'steal' material >from others and warp it.
Therein lies your misperception. You put stealing and "stealing" under the same roof. The fact of the matter is simple. The person who created "Dilbert-Hole" comics directly stole- he downloaded the strips off of The Dilbert Zone and then chop-shopped them with GIMP or Photoshop or something. That is direct theift and is what he got nailed for. On the other hand, MAD Magazine (et al), "steal." They take pop-culture images, draw them in caricature, and crack jokes about them.
There's the difference. See it? When you caricature with your own "marks," you're creating something that is legally original. When you chop-shop the works of others, you're in for it.
Tell you what. Why don't you go get a KMFDM CD collection, sample it, and put together a song called "Suck my Cock, German Whores?" Make it funny and offensive, but not your own work, and not as a poke at KMFDM.
Wax-Trax Records would be sending you a letter as soon as they heard.
>Well, the southpark parody of the Star Wars >preview simply had the original audio track, with >the images changed. Surely this is the same thing >- according to your arguments, the southpark skit >of the star wars preview should also be removed >then. Why haven't GL's lawyers sent them any >letters?
Has it occurred to you that Comedy Central or Trey Parker and Matt Stone actually ASKED if they could use the material? I guess not.
>Because the issue at heart here isn't the >copyright violation, is it? It's the fact that >Dilbert-hole was horrible filth.
Not at all. If this had been penned by someone's bare hands, I would have no problem with it. Truth is, the spunkmonkey was so lazy that he didn't even scan in printed Dilbert strips- it was all a chop-shop job he did with the online format.
>You can warble on and on about copyrights >forever, but the fact is, the only reason the >lawyers attacked this parody and not others (like >Mad's) is the filth. If it was mildly funny, >family-friendly, and rotten made no attempt to >sell it or claim it represented Dilbert >officially, the lawyers would not have pounced.
Not at all, and don't be so reactionary. I've seen cartoons featuring members of the Family Circus committing incest. I've seen similar stuff done with the Simpsons and with Disney characters.
Why do those slide? Because someone out there made drawings inspired by the original cartoons. Inspired, yes, but the drawings made are original. Just like the work of any good parody artist. What this person did wasn't parody art. It was just a slick job with graphic manipulation.
Get a clue.
HI DEAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe if they wanted to fight it, they could have tried to raise money on rtmark. Rtmark (http://www.rtmark.com) is a site which allows people to post projects (most of which are hilarious) which fight corporate power through mostly artistic means and collect donations. They funded the hack where voice boxes were switched between talking Barbie and talking GI Joe, for example. This would fit in the "Intellectual Property Fund", sponsored by Negativland (which makes recordings from collages of existing materials).
maybe you should pay the legal bills ....?
didn't think so!
wrong, farnon doesn't write jerkcity.
maybe you should do a teensy bit of research before you spread mis/disinformation?
COINS ??????????????? BIRDS ??????????????
Well it is not there any more either, so they must have received the letter as well, or maybe they are avoiding receiving one...either way it seems to be suppressed for now, but that will change in the future. It will surface again, since there are many copies floating, and there are many servers outside of the juristiction of even these hot shot lawyers. :>>--
Well actually some is making a parody like that of family Circus, and they even call it disfunctional family circus, but all of their art is original imitation of family circus, and anyone can tell just by looking, that they are just reminiscent of the parodied comic strip, so they are on safe ground there. You can see the site for the school paper where it runs, and just do there, and find the comic, since I have no time, or patience to put in the exact URL for the strip, but by clicking on the following you are halfway there: wildcat.arizona.edu :>>--
Enjoy
Well actually some is making a parody like that of family Circus, and they even call it disfunctional family circus, but all of their art is original imitation of family circus, and anyone can tell just by looking, that they are just reminiscent of the parodied comic strip, so they are on safe ground there. You can see the site for the school paper where it runs, and just do there, and find the comic, since I have no time, or patience to put in the exact URL for the strip, but by clicking on the following you are halfway there: wildcat.arizona.edu :>>--
Enjoy
P.S.: Sorry for posting thsi twice if that happens, but somehow the browser got mixed up, and so I am posting again....
Hello, Harrison. Ribbet.
All you l33t3r than thou slashdot fagots haven't noticed that the URL's that end in .jpg are STILL there ....
... you people just suck.
Oh nooooh that stuff is offensive take it down
My favorite strip's #16.
"Fatty Queercake's checkin' out the ladies! Woo hooo!
"You plow her ass good tonight, chief. You spurt that jizz all over her fat face. You crazy faggot."
You've just got to keep them down in a world of shit.
"You'll be sucking my balls for the next half hour."
I'm not a lawyer either. But I think the parody is of Dilbert. Dilbert is somehow "subversive" because it "exposes" bad vibes in the workplace. These cartoons parody that because they turn up the volume to 15 on all of that. So I think there is a connection.
http://www.prehensile.com/tales/circus/circus.htm
This particular strip is kind of like Pokey the Penguin only more coherent (and yes, the comics are in there). It will make you feel like you forgot to take your meds.
My favorite one though is very much like what might happen if the Cohen brothers wrote for Tristan.
anyone know of any mirrors of the dilbert hole?
Much thanks in advance.
That is why MST3k could get away with so much.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am getting pretty sick and tired of all the walls that the government and lawyers keep trying to build in order to filter the information recieved by the end user. Fuck Bill Clinton and the "Information Super Highway"
The boners admin took it down shortly after the post that told about it. It was there, and had been for a while. There was a link to it from www.brutal.com, too.
Yes, but for a slightly different reason. The parody branch of fair use analysis allows appropriation of a much greater amount of the original than the general fair use exception. But to qualify as parody, the object of the use must be the original work itself. It's not parody to use someone else's copyrighted work for unrelated humor. Justice Souter put it this way in Skyywalker v. Acuff-Rose Music:*
."
"For the purposes of copyright law . . . the heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material, is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works."
Or, as Justice Kennedy put it in his concurrence:
"The parody must target the original, and not just its general style, the genre of art to which it belongs, or society as a whole. . .
The Supreme Court has indicated that it might be more charitable to parodies that are not widely disseminated in the market, or that readers are not likely to substitute for the copyrighted work. Both of these factors are descriptive of the rotten.com strip. But the Court has not actually applied this exception yet, and I understand rotten.com's reluctance to be a test case.
That aside, while putting a bunch of offensive stuff in the mouths of the Dilbert characters may be funny (I didn't think so in this case, but everybody is entitled to an opinion), it doesn't relate to or comment on Dilbert in any way I can see.
Now if you did the same thing with the Family Circus . . .
---
*510 U.S. 59 (1994). This was the case about 2 Live Crew's naughty "Pretty Woman" parody.
So only parodies with good taste are ok? Really though, there was plastered all over that this is not official Dilbert comics and all. Just like the linux.de incident recently, it's a cute mock of another product. If someone went to linux.de a couple weeks ago, and saw that slogan, are they going to think, "Oh my god! Microsoft has changed its slogan and now has a German Linux web site?"
Freedoms exist despite the content. But I'm sure there won't be the large surge of polite letters to the Dilbert folks like there are any other time this sort of thing happens...
I particularly liked the "fatty queercakes" phrase. You don't see this sort of innovation at other humor sites. :)
Awww... c'mon guys... can't you see that this is all a lead up to a massive April Fool's 2000 gag???
OK, so I told some people. But still.
-A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I have to defend South Park here. South Park is the show where Matt and Trey, the creators, do hysterically funny and twisted (and very subtle- 'tis all in the reactions, priceless) cameos on the storebought video tapes (at least the first one).
South Park is the show where Cartman, controlled by an alien anal probe, gets zapped from space and does a few bars of a weird old-fashioned song (I Love To Singa) and is zapped again, stops, and STARES for seconds. A dog barks (or something.) I'm already helpless with laughter looking at his stunned stare even before another kid goes 'Cartman, what the hell was that?' with great conviction...
South Park is the show where, in the middle of all the business about four-assed monkeys (pretty lowbrow, sure), we get a brief glimpse of the result of the scientist splicing swiss cheese, chalk, and a beard. Say what? It's already gone before you can even react- but talk about a high form of dada, _where_ did they get that one? The Simpsons is almost never quite that just plain weird- the Simpsons does good jokes and cleverness, but South Park has a wild streak of madness that has nothing to do with the foul language, and it's way, way better than those idiotic Dilbert graffitiings.
Posted by lemru:
It doesn't matter if it's funny or not.
'Fair use' is a constitutionally protected right. I happen to think the parodies in Mad magazine (et al) blow chunks. But that doesn't alter the fundamental right folks have to 'steal' material from others and warp it.
The fact that folks found it offensive doesn't matter. It's free speach and it's an obvious parody.
The law is pretty clear on what you can and cannot do and one time parodies are pretty far into protected speech territory. If he put out a book of these, or just altered one word in the cartoons claiming them as parodies, then they would be on shaky ground.
As it stands, these guys would win a court battle (see the supreme court case of 2 live crew doing a raunchy parody of Pretty Woman.)
The real problem is they couldn't afford it.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
A guy came into my house with a gun and made me look at all the cartoons. Now you see how flimsy your aruments are.
actually i think they DID draw the images too, because there were too many explicit positions to be the works of Adams. But oh WELL, I'm not gonna miss that mess called The Dilbert Hole
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Depends on WHO'S lawyer it is! ;>
WTF? So it's ok to post pictures of gruesome molested bodies, but if I post pictures of modified cartoons I get sued?
Guess that money rules everything. This makes me really sick!
J.
he got away with that because he BOUGHT the movie. The rights were his own. Neat what money does, huh? (sorry... sarcasm...) ;)
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Just remember your words should you be on the creation end of a parody.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
The Dysfunctional Family Circus has many of the same factors weighing against it (using the original strips with just the words replaced, racist, homophobic, etc), and yet it has managed to stay alive. Why?
BTW: I hope the UserFriendly/Segfault people realize that *this* is why we didn't like their AFJ - it's too damn true to life. And when the lawyers really do come for them, we're all going to sit back and say "nah, it's just another joke."
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I looked at all the Dilbert Hole cartoons, and all but one of them I could remember the Dilbert cartoon that they had used. They didn't even rearrange panels.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Good points. I think you're right about DFC being more of a true parody, but don't you think that leads down a slippery slope if the courts have to rule on whether something is a parody or just uses the characters in an attempt to make humour?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
"Upon receipt of this actual letter, you must immediately remove all DILBERT uses from the Internet."
Are they expected to write an Internet WORM to do that?
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Rotten.com didn't have a legal leg to stand on from what I saw. First of all they didn't do a parody of Dilbert, so that differentiates them from MAD magazine, who apparently did do a parody. Parodies are generally legal, but parody has a definition. Hence, not every form of humour is a parody. Second of all, MAD magazine didn't scan in the original strips, black out the copyright and scribble in their own humour. They actually inked their own version of Dilbert and worked from there.
Rotten.com did that most likely because they knew they'd get a nastygram from United Media's lawyers. They were dredging for publicity.
Parody would be finding a picture of Bill Gates and his laptop or computer and grafting in an image of Tux or something obviously Linux and publishing it. As long as you don't misrepresent it as real you'd probably be safe (not to say you wouldn't get a letter from Microsofts attourneys)
You can't even say they crossed a fine line in this case, they steamrolled over it. Even the original text that accompanied the cartoons said they were expecting them to be yanked.
Just because you don't find it funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed to be there.
I am glad I kept a copy. That was too easy to see the Lawyers coming to the poor artist's rescue.
So could I use tracing paper and trace the exact image and use that as parody? What is the limit.
Ed
It was very MST3K-ish. Frankly, I liked the PHB better in the parody as a sort of anti-hero.
Oh well.
I suppose if it had some kind of political theme or some kind of statement to make, it could have some value. I mean, what was the point? It seems you could hire the services of rotten.com to really disgrace some company in a bad way.
:(
Something like this may have been good as private joke, but it got out of hand in a massive way. I can almost feel the heat from the legal team right now. Ouch, that hurts.
Agreed
:)
I beleive it was Voltaire, a great French philosopher. He did influence the whole freedom of speech thing.
I sent email to scottadams@aol.com telling him what I thought (I have not seen the site nor do I care to see it, but I can't imagine anyone mistaking them for dilbert or them getting any money/etc for it) and will be taking those dilbert cartoons down. Oh well. Userfriendly is more applicable anyway
Grrr, I think they hit leisuretown.com as well.
LT is definately an adult online comic strip type site. You might find it insanely funny or completely offensive. UAYOR!
Anyway, he had this incredibly funny Dilbert parody stuff on there ("A Comedy Crisis")...
-- haaz.
> Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?
Not this time.
There's parady and then there's shameless copyright violation with no redeeming value whatsoever. This falls squarely in the former case.
Well, they were incredibly foul. Certainly I can understand how United Media was so quick to take action.
OTOH, it was funnier than South Park, in the same sort of 'I can't believe that this isn't being piped in from another dimension that wasn't taught any manners' way. (Although not in the way that the Simpsons is funny. They've had a lot of good writing, which usually doesn't depend on the novelty of foulmouthed little kids. Usually)
Certainly I can't believe that UM would get away with this if it did go to court. It falls pretty squarely into the parody box.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In the context of LeisureTown, these were actually
pretty powerful parodies of the vapidity of Dilbert. Here, the parody defense was strong apposite.
On the other hand removing the cartoons from that context was a pretty stupid thing to do. In my opinion they had _no_ value and were little more than red-rag to UFS and its lawyers.
This is an interesting case in as much as freedom of expression rights collide with trademark legislation. If we "forget" that Dilbert is a cartoon and simply consider the Dilbert name and characters as trademarks, the lawyer's reaction is much more understandable. Unfortunately Dilbert is more than a cartoon strip. It's the "brand" for a slew of merchandising one small part of which we see in our newspapers.
I can fully understand why a lawyer would find that these images damaged the Dilbert branding. And having said that, the parody defense might still stand - but it was stronger when the images were isolated to the LeisureTown strips.
Finally, before you flame me, I love the Dilbert cartoons and own some of the merchandising myself.
I think rotten.com won't fight, because I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Fair use DOES cover the right to parody - and putting other words in the mouths of someone else's characters could reasonably be construed as parody.
BUT:
What rotten.com put into the character's mouths was just profanity. It wasn't a jab at some pompus windbag. It wasn't a commentary on some social or economic trend. It wasn't a commentary on the original characters. It didn't even have a POINT! In short, I don't think that it has any standing as parody.
While I don't think that The Dilbert Hole was really much of a threat to the 'Dilbert Marks', I also sympatize with the owners of those marks - I wouldn't want my trademarks abused without reason!
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Does anyone remember the Quicktime MOV "trekkies"? It's a parody of Star Trek TNG + original. They fire on a shuttle containing Wesley Crusher (yeah!) and the scene where Mrs. Crusher made a come-on to Picard, they superimposed some other [naked] woman from the neck down.
:-D
Juvenile, sure, but the first time I saw it I absolutely died laughing!
The video disappeared, I presume when Paramount decided fansites were competition or maybe they just flipped when they saw it. It's got a home on my "classic net flicks" CD, right next to the Exploding Whale, Troops, and the Spirit Of Christmas.
www.jerkcity.com
The problem was that Ian Fleming sold the movie rights for Casino Royale to someone other than the people who bought the rights for all the other stuff so there was no way that there was going to be a Casino Royale movie with Sean Connery, George Lazenby, or any of their "nothing like the guy in the book" successors (although if Fleming's character had been born 20 or 30 years later, Dalton could be appropriate). Trying to use the ownership of the movie rights to that one book to create a competing "James Bond Franchise" (especially since the Dr. No people probably had the rights any tie-in stuff--T-shirts, lunchboxes, toy guns, aftershave, whatever--all sewn up)would probably have gotten them and their first movie tied up in court cases that would be still be going on right now, 30 years later, even as we type.
Instead they went the "no possible way could you mistake it for the Sean Connery stuff" parody route and we got that great Dusty Springfield (R.I.P.) song, "The Look of Love".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Mad magazine is as famous for its artists as it is for its writers, perhaps even more so.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I think its reasonable to say that this was a parody. Not clear-cut, but reasonable. The characters didn't seem to have anything to do with Dilbert characters other than appearance, but that could be parody as well, I suppose. It doesn't have to be funny or intelligent to be parody, I'm afread.
But copyright - they stuck their necks out on that one. You can't make a copy of someone else's copyrighted art, make a simple change, and claim its no longer a copyright violation. 'Fair use' doesn't cover that. If they had made their own drawings, they'd be fine (though the lawyers would still try to kill them). I haven't seen it, but I'd bet my liver MAD made their own drawings, and parodied Dilbert's art right along with the content.
The enemies of Democracy are
rotten.com should have known that they were on extremely shaky ground when they decided to use pre-existing, copyrighted Dilbert art, instead of making their own drawings. They deserve to get that page shut down.
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
Actually, Taiwan has some of the strongest anti-piracy laws in the world.....the problem is in having them enforced. For example, the only way the courts will take action against a pirate is for the copyright owner (in the US, UK, wherever) to find out and bring action locally. In addition, the President of the company holding the copyrights has to personally sign the papers asking the court to take action.
If the court *does* act, it's considered a criminal offense, not civil. As a result, the President/CEO of the company doing the pirating faces serious jail time and fines.
FYI, pirated CD-ROMs containing about 10 programs (Win98, Photoshop, etc) sell openly in the government managed Kwang Hwa Computer Market on Pa-Te Road for about $30 US.
Pirating Japanese products is something all together different. This has more to do with Japanese/Taiwanese relations and history than anything else. Until fairly recently, Japanese books, music and movies were completely banned in Taiwan. In addition, if you want to see some really novel aspects copyright/patent "protection", check out how Japan handles it. 14 years to recieve a patent?
As far as Taiwan not caring about copyrights.....true. but then again, 20 years ago, the US was one of the larger pirates in the world. Take a look at the author's foreward to "Lord of the Rings". Tolkien had his books pirated by Ace in the US. American law (at that time) didn't protect foreign copyright holders. It's only now (when the US has something valuable-software) that IPR has become such an important issue.
Here's a good French example: "Tarzan, Shame of the Jungle". I think Jane did alot of swinging from Tarzan's vine. Anyway, the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs sued with a notable lack of success. The French courts said it was parody and thus exempt from copyright laws.
This time I agree with the devils.. good job..
That dilbert hole was nothing but a racist/homophobic 15 year old trying to get fame (the wrong way). Apperenly he's been reading too much slashdot.org and though it would be a good idea to get some recognition by replacing dilbert dialogs with his own racst/homophobic dialogs. What a wuss.
And he wanted them to send him a letter. You should see his invitation to dilbert lawyers, this was plain silly, i just wish this guy gets fined badly or thrown into jail. Would teach ppl not to get famous the wrong way.
--
Guess Brant Freer knows how to edit html.
--
I didn't pay attention when the Dilbert parody was announced but now I want to see it. Does anyone still have the cartoons cached?
Thanks to you all for mailing me copies of the cartoons. :-))
BTW, as someone pointed out the cartoons are still on the original site at:
http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d001.html
This is too funny. I've gone from being flooded with cartoons to being flooded with requests for cartoons. :)
I think I would entirely agree with you. I
...
never looked at it because I didn't want to
get pissed off at someone making fun of
a hero off all engineers.
I think it is sick for anyone to make
fun of Dilbert but freedom has a price
The day you start to limit freedom
is the day tyrany starts.
The Dilbert Hole was not only completely valid parody, it has its roots in the political/literary/art movements of the 50s called Lettrism and the work of the Situationist International. The act of taking existing narrative works, especially comics but also advertisements and film, and retitling/retracking them to strip them of their cultural posturings, was called detournment and recuperation - it was considered a strategy for recovering one's cultural environment from those who would colonize it.
Both Dysfunctional Family Circus and Dilbert Hole are latter day examples of this practice, and probably self-conscious ones.
For more information about the Situationists, Lettrism, and the like, read Greil Marcus' "Lipstick Traces." Also, check out the careers of composer John Oswald and the band Negativland for more about the conflict between artists who reuse the cultural detritus that surrounds them and the legal minions of those who would vend that detritus.
I agree with your subject - there is a differencfe - but in the case of the Dilbert Hole, the obscenity and churlishness and sheer nastiness of the substituted dialogue created a different context - it turned Dilbert and Co. into libidinal , crass monsters, and transformed the vision of corporate America from a struggle between goofy PHB's and their Oh So Superior professional staff to that of a den of barbarians.
Like Beavis and Butthead, it begs to be misunderstood as engaging on the stupidity and crassness it uses as a device. I not only thought that Dilbert Hole was parody, I thought it was particular barbed, savage parody. It reminds me, too, of Tom Tomorrow's attack on Dilbert.
There are quite a few artists who work with appropriation, and their legal fates vary depending on their resources, standing, and millieu.
These Dilhole cartoons have been around for well over a year or so now. There was a big stink about it when it was first published, then it quietly disappeared.
It looks like rotten.com just dug these up from the grave to pull a nice little publicity stunt using the traffic of slashdot.
A blatant mention to NOT post it on slashdot. A mention how "it won't be around for long," then the expected legal action.
*YAWN*
But I'm sure their traffic has soared because of it, and everyone remembers the rotten.com domain again.
Let's hear it for marketing!
=-/
There is nothing original about their cartoons, it was just an attempt to be offensive, and to do so by using a very popular comic strip.
Since they were simply redoing the conversations they don't deserve the right of being a parody. If they had added their own interpetations of the drawings (as in drew the pictures themselves) then it would be okay...
well offensive and stupid, but okay
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
Okay, then how did Woody Allen get away with it in What's Up Tiger Lily? (dang funny movie, tho, IMHO) He took a Japanese spy movie, dubbed his own script on top of it and released it as a new movie.
As was pointed out in the Supreme Court scene of 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' (and the speech given by Flynt's attorney is virtually the same as Alan Isaacman's actual oral argument) you can't make legal distinctions based on taste.
I keep seeing a disturbing number of posts making note of how disgusting/vulgar/nasty the Dilbert Hole was while discussing its legal merits as parody. TASTE has NOTHING to do with the legal definition of parody; get used to it. If something offends your delicate sensibilities, LOOK AWAY. No one that I know of was ever forced to view the page.
In another vein hand, the way they got the source material (i.e., simply repasting new words on existing strips) may (I repeat, may) have gotten them into genuine legal hot water. Then again, it could be argued that Dennis Miller does the same thing on his HBO show, where at the end of each episode he puts captions and words into the mouths of people from real photos from news organizations. It's not nearly as cut and dried as some might prefer, and personal taste is definitely a poor measure of constitutional legality.
I'm not sure how I feel about this Dilbert Hole thing, but I really don't think you can compare it to the Dysfunctional Family Circus. The Family Circus is well known to be a ultra-conservative white-bread "happy-happy" comic. Thus DFC really is a parody of Family Circus. The Dilbert Hole, on the other hand, doesn't really parody anything. It doesn't try to jab at Scott Adams pseudo-proworker stance, it doesn't parody the characters in Dilbert. In other words, it isn't a parody. But DFC most definitely is.
"We hate you" and the file path down at the bottom make it seem like it's fake. Not to mention that this is a (not too funny) humor site. The comics being so stupid are enough to take it down, but since they are still up there and given the letter, I just don't believe it.
As of a few seconds ago, the links all disappeared and were changed into a link to the letter.
I thought it was funny. How is that "no redeeming value"?
pooptruck
> That dilbert hole was nothing but a racist/homophobic 15 year old ...
Yeah! Free speech is only for people that agree with me!
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> I also feel that rude and obscene parodies are not good, and could hurt the real Dilbert.
That is often the POINT of a parody. If you find something banal or offensive to your sensibilities, a parody is an excellent way to express your dislike. It can be offensive, sick, stupid and annoying. It does NOT have to be "funny".
> I like the way the folks at the site seem to be taking this very well.
I disagree. The right to parody is not a small thing. Just one more step taken against ALL of our freedoms. Taking down OLGA and the lyric servers were also small steps. Making cddb proprietory was another small step.
How many small steps make a big one?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Although the main page of the Dilbert Hole has indeed changed to have the scanned in letter from the lawyers, the 17 comic strips themselves are still there. If anyone hasn't read them yet but, for some reason, wants to, start here:
and work your way through to here:As far as I'm concerned the comics haven't been "removed from the Internet" so hopefully the lawyers will get medaevil on this guy's ass. Freedom of speech is all very well but the copyright holder has rights, too.
If people try to tell me that this qualifies as a parody one more time I'll have no choice but to reach for my bucket and be violently sick.
Andrew.
(Who remembers when all the Internet's crap was just on USENET, and the web was nice and clean and new.)
--
The Yautja
"It was all so different before everything changed."
Sincerely,
The Yautja.
Yeah, they are all still there.. the links between pages even work. So if you missed it like me you can go check it out.
I don't know how the lawyers define a parody but, personally, I don't see how Dilbert Hole had much of a case. Was Dilbert Hole makeing fun of some serious aspect of the Dilbert universe? Not that I could see. Parodies generally serve to highlight absurdities in the assumptions of the subject being parodied. But Dilbert has few assumptions and Dilbert Hole didn't address any of them. As far as I could see, it's just a different comic that uses Dilbert characters and happens to be offensive.
Just do a whois rotten.com. Sheesh, what do they think they're protecting there. If you're worried about your name, don't post offensive stuff under a domain you have registered using it or anything correlatable to it.
It seems that there are three issues here:
Maybe. It certainly didn't make things look better for the rotten.com folks. If I was the artist I would be understandably upset that my drawings were being used for that. So this may be a copyright violation.
Again, maybe, depending on your reading of fair use. If they had called it anythingelsebert, they would be in better shape, versus using the Dilbert name. I don't see how you could trademark the suffix -bert. However, I don't think there was any way that the public could mistake these for the being the real Dilbert/United Media cartoons, and I don't think that rotten & company could have made any money off of that confusion (not that they were trying to).
As I understand it, the real point of trademark law is to prevent other people from using your trademark and your hard-earned reputation for their financial gain. There was no chance of that happening here - the site was clearly plastered with notices that they were not associated with Dilbert, United Media, and so forth. So I think using parody and fair use as a defense on the trademark law grounds would work. Of course, IANAL.
Fooled you - whether it was funny or not doesn't matter at all in these circumstances. Why should the legal standing of the previous two arguments be affected by what you think is humorous? I found the cartoons in bad taste too, but I don't see why that makes it a less affective parody. Some people on Slashdot found it funny, others didn't. That suggests to me that it was a not entirely effective parody, not that it failed to be a parody at all.
The bottom line is that the right to poke fun at a anything should be protected, whether or not the majority agrees with with the humor. If we went along with what the majority thought all the time, this forum wouldn't exist.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The original site had a request not to publicize it on slashdot, apparently because they feared that would get them shut down.
If your country of residence has signed the Berne Convention then you must respect the copyright. France has signed the Berne Convention (it was drafted in Paris I think). I beleive that France would enforce, though I don't know all the details.
Taiwan is one of the major countries that hasn't signed the convention, as a result you can legally buy all kinds of pirated stuff there. Of course the minute you bring it into a Berne Convention country you are breaking the law.
Of course I beleive that parody is somehow acceptable, I am a little fuzzy on this though.
Of course I am not a lawyer, so take this all with a grain of salt.
Q.
What good are laws if they are not enforced? Might as well not have them in the first place.
My understanding is if the company does not have a Taiwan copyright then they cannot bring action. Taiwan does not honor other countries copyrights. Possibly it has changed recently? I get most of my info from my Anime hobby. Sonmay pirates all of the Anime audio CDs. They've been doing it for many years now (5+), they have gotten really good at it, everything looks as good as the original for half the price or less. And these are not just CD-R's, real screen printed pressed CDs, with booklets. How can they get away with this? Taiwan doesn't care about copyrights. Pretty ridiculous.
Q.
There's a difference between taking a piece of a work and using it in a different context, and
grabbing someone else's work and using it in the
same way.
If they had cut up a bunch of Dilbert panels and
glued them on a canvas, it might be a little
different, but the "Dilbert Hole" stuff are comic
strips much like any other comic strips (with
cruder dialog). They created another comic strip using the Dilbert artwork and worse the Dilbert
*name*.
There's a tradition in parody of using transparent
aliases for the target... how hard would it be to
change Dilbert and Dogbert to Dildo and Dogdoo or
something like that?
These days, I'm leaning toward the view that we
don't need any intellectual property laws... but
even in the absence of laws, I would still regard
the "Dilbert Hole" as crossing an ethical
boundary. It deserves to be boycotted, and the
people who perpetrate it deserve a storm of angry
email rather than a legal warning.
A final thought:
If you're trying to contrive a test case, it's
not a bad idea to actually create something of
some sort of artistic value, so that the people
shooting it down will have trouble claiming that
they're the good guys.
If you really want to weaken laws against
appropriation, you need to set up a series
of test cases, where at each little step it's
difficult to claim that there's something
unfair about the usage.
That's the method that was used to roll back the
obscenity laws... From "Lady Chatterly's Lover"
through "Tropic of Cancer" to "Naked Lunch".
--
"redbreast, weeping, autumn light, and tenderness"
They didn't do a damn thing original.I hate to say it....but the lawyers scored one this time.
Tired of being another body in the flock? Linux ! We are not sheep anymore.
I don't see what the big deal is.
I had the main page cached, so when I loaded it up, I didn't get a view at the cease and desist letter. Interestingly enough, all the links still work, so if you know one of 'em, you can still read 'em.
For example:
http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d013.html
It's not worth reading, anyways, though, so.. [shrug]..
Fork
Nuff said.
I saw them, and back then I thought I should download them.
How about mailing them to me, please.
Please..........hello?
Another one I liked was "jizzmop", I gotta use that one sometime :)
You did not remove
All the files from the internet
What a bunch of dorks
These lawyers suck cock
To think it is possible
Lets shoot them all now
Ass full of pork fat
Jiggles like a jello mould
Mouth is flapping too
Matt
Already there.
http://www.linuxsucks.com/
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work.
I disagree. If they had just been any old characters, it would have been a pointless excercise in swearing and homophobia.
As it is, I don't think it was. I didn't find it perticularly funny, per sé, but I think it was a reasonable parody. It was making fun of the corporate culture, which places employees in subservient, demeaning positions. This is exactly what (the original) Dilbert does. But in a slightly different way. Dilbert (for the most part), focuses on ignorant bosses with stupid corporate policies that end up hurting the employees.
This comic focused more on petty hostilities between employees (which are just as much a part of the corporate culture, IMHO), and people being deliberately ill-mannered to each other (the emphasis on the deliberateness). In the "real world", this is usually done subtly, and within the confines of the workplace rules, but is still destructive. This comic was an attempt to bring it out into the open.
Granted, it was in poor taste, but nonetheless, I think it was trying to make a valid point. The Dilbert connection was an attempt to garner recognition of the objective. With "just any old characters", I would probably not have "got" it. (As it is, I suspect that a lot of people here still didn't "get" it, but that's a separate issue.) Since the Dilbert world is already well-entrenched in most people's minds as representing a parody of corporate culture, using the same characters here instantly garners (or tries to) that same recognition.
Thus, it tries to be a parody of Dilbert in unmasking those behaviours which still go on "behind the scenes", but which never get explicitly examined in Dilbert.
Very much like "the shadow knows" type of approach (for those who don't know, it's a comic/picture depicting 2 people interacting "normally", with their shadows (in the background) acting out their true feelings toward each other. For a good example, check out the promotional poster/box cover from the movie "What About Bob?").
Now, the copyright issue, dealing with the fact that the author just lifted the Dilbert images directly, and didn't bother to draw his own, is something else. I'm not sure where I stand on that. I think the Dilbert lawyers probably would have a case there.
But, of course, IANAL.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
i never got to read those comics, but it looks like the layers are using windows =/ at the bottom it shows the url for the server the file is on.
---bob
I know many of you are actually happy that they got shut down, but for the ones that must see those bad jokes, Brecht Sandlers' Joke database still got them. Do a search on Dilbert.
I can't find it in Bartlett's, though, so I'm probably misquoting...
--
Mark Conty
mdc@isd.net
Mark Conty
mconty@integra.net
"dilute the distinctiveness of our client's marks"
:)
--- only lawyers talk like this.
Infringer: "what happens if we mix dilbert with water?"
oh my god. they diluted dilbert!!
say that 3 times fast
Lowmag.net
I remember some DFC-type parodies in MAD Magazine back in the early 90's. In the subsequent issue they had a letter from Keane complimenting them on the quality of their satire.
While the MAD parodies were of a much higher quality than the Dilbert-Hole, Scott Adams should have done the same thing. Ignoring them, or even complimenting them, just deflates their "cutting-edge"-ness.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Rob needs to give more publicity to Swatch's attempt to broadcast commercials from space using a pirated amateur "sputnik". That's a front where the Man needs fighting. -Barry
It is definitely possible that these strips can be seen as a parody of society, or of the workplace (though I personally think that's a bit of a stretch). However, I don't really see them as being a parody of Dilbert. They just used Scott Adams copyrighted art work to try and get a message across. I'm not quite sure what that message is, but I guess that's up to whoever is reading it to decide.
I do wonder, however, whether copyright laws differentiate between using part of a copyrighted work to parody that work, and using part of a copyrighted work to parody something completely unrelated. In this case, it seems that if there is parody, it is of the second kind, and whether or not it is legal depends on how the law differentiates these two issues.
Unfortunately, I'm a programmer, and I'm not up to date on copyright law. Does anyone know if the law treats these two situations differently?
Dave
well, I thought it was funny...
uh.
I feel both ways on this. While the site is correct that they have the right to parody, I also feel that rude and obscene parodies are not good, and could hurt the real Dilbert.
I like the way the folks at the site seem to be taking this very well. Their attitude is wonderful, in my opinion. They think that they're in the right, but the also see that it's stupid to spend thousands fighting over a relatively little thing.
Before you jump on me and say I'm opposed to freedom, let me point out that there are bigger more important battles to fight! This is a tiny thing, and should not take precedence over more important issues.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
I think it was being on Cruel Site of the Day that did them in.
--
E_NOSIG
Parody is all very well, when you have actually done the work yourself. All this guy on Rotton did was scan the dilbert cartoons, cut out the text, and put his own in instead. Had he drawn the cartoons himself I think he could count it as parody, and UFS would have had less of a case, because it was his own work. As it is, he's displaying Scott Adams' work and UFS own the copyright on that.
And they weren't very funny either. 14year old humour really.
I'm sorry, I got this thing, came free with age. It was called maturity. I would have found it funny when I was, oh 13/14. But yes, it is a form of comedy. Just not one that I find funny.
It was exactly like "voicing over vulgar dialog at just at the right moments on TV" but I don't find that funny either.
Rotten.com are a bunch of shit disturbers, which is good. There's definitely a place for freaks like that on the net, it would be a much blander place without them.
The Dilbert Hole wasn't an attempt at comedy (it shure as hell wasn't funny), it was a challenge to Dilbert's creators and admirers to fight back. Well they did.
"I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as parody"
Well, the southpark parody of the Star Wars preview simply had the original audio track, with the images changed. Surely this is the same thing - according to your arguments, the southpark skit of the star wars preview should also be removed then. Why haven't GL's lawyers sent them any letters?
Because the issue at heart here isn't the copyright violation, is it? It's the fact that Dilbert-hole was horrible filth.
So the question is really if a disgustingly filthy parody (with seemingly little other purpose than to be disgusting) still qualifies as parody. I don't know.
You can warble on and on about copyrights forever, but the fact is, the only reason the lawyers attacked this parody and not others (like Mad's) is the filth. If it was mildly funny, family-friendly, and rotten made no attempt to sell it or claim it represented Dilbert officially, the lawyers would not have pounced.
On a side note, I personally doubt seriously that ANYONE on the planet is thick enough to mistakenly think that a Dilbert-hole strip is somehow an "official" Dilbert. Why do so many arguments put forth by lawyers seem to be based on the assumption that the general public is incredibly stupid, naive and gullible? When last did you read a "disclaimer" on anything that didn't ONLY apply to incredibly thick single-digit IQ people?
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
- Noam Chomsky
It doesn't matter if you thought it was funny or not (I for one didn't think it was funny either). The fact is that other people did.
Whether or not *you* or *I* think something is funny or not, is NOT relevant when determining whether something should be censored or not. Is it "right" to censor things that *you* don't like but "wrong" to censor things that you approve of? Sorry, but that isn't free speech at all.
I remember getting pissed off a few months ago because someone was passing around a petition at my university hostel to get some or other movie banned (because it portrayed Christ as gay or something like that.) I was horrified that "in this day and age" people still thought it was okay for one group of people to control what everyone may or may not look at.
.. he did not even realise the inconsistency between his answer and his actions. That is disturbing.
:)
I asked one of the guys who signed the petition, "do you believe in free speech", and he immediately answered "yes"
I sometimes wonder how I would feel about it if someone put up a "linuxsux.com" website or something like that. (How would the slashdot people feel about such a site being closed down?) The fact is, other people have the right to say that Linux sucks, even if I don't like it. (It's probably only a matter of time before someone does put up such a site
Second paragraph first. I think we just disagree on this one. I don't think the Dilbert style is what you say it is, and therefore I don't believe the substituted captions are a comment on it.
I also think you're wrong on the first paragraph. Parody gives you a little more freedom to use the authors original work (the drawings in Dilbert, the video in SW), but not unlimited freedom. I do not think the courts would agree that you could appropriate the video for a whole movie. In the same way, I don't think they would side with the Dilbert Hole in taking the drawings of a bunch of strips. Just as you could probably get away with 10 minutes with SW, you could probably get away with 1 or 2 completely copied strips from Dilbert. But simply to claim parody gives you unlimited freedom to copy is incorrect.
But even with all that, it has to be a comment on the original work. You think this was, I think it wasn't. Let the court decide (that's what they're there for). As such, I think UFS has a legitimate case.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
I think this is where you're wrong. I believe one of the requisites to being a parody is that it has to be a comment on the copyrighted work you are including. This wasn't. The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work. Therefore, it's not really parody. It's just an attempt to piggy back off of someone else's success.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Nope, these aren't my arguments. You've changed them around and applied them to something else. Unfortunately, you deleted the gist of my argument in the process.
A trailer is not the same as a movie. A trailer is a pretty short version of a movie (manner of minutes). As I said in another reponse, you could probably get away with using a few minutes of a movie in a parody. This is my point. There are limits. You can't just go hog wild and use as much of the material as you want. I think DH could have gotten away with a couple of panels, maybe even a couple of strips.
And, as I've said in other threads, I like offensive humor, this just wasn't humor. Offensive, hell yeah. Funny, well... I mean funny in a sense of most people thinking it's funny. People are different enough that theres always a few people that will laugh at a given work. But I doubt it was funny to most people.
Don't call my like of offensive humor into question. I busted a gut laughing at this one:
http://www.prehensile.com/tales/c ircus/circus.htm.
"Mommy, your flashlight smells funny!"
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Actually, Rob, I hate the fact that the lawyers were right in this case. They just lifted the strips and changed the text on them. Let's forget for a moment that it wasn't even funny (you can be offensive and funny, this wasn't). It saddens me that people like this (the ones who made the strip and the ones who posted it) are around, because it means there really is a legitimate reason for lawyers.
And before everyone cries parody, I think you're stretching it a bit. I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as "parody". Parody only covers you so far.
[posted this twice because i think it rejected it the first time for forgetting the subject ("cat got your tongue" - interesting error message)]
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
If you're going to use offensive language, at least let it serve some purpose. And no, some vague notion of "Free Speech" is not a worthy purpose, IMHO.
Also IMHO, the Dilbert Hole was singularly, profoundly unfunny. I found more humor (albeit bittersweet) in the death of my pet lovebird.
--
--
Think Green... Burn only 100% recycled dinosaurs in you car.
First, I disagree with the idea that whether the cartoons were funny or tasteless has anything to do with this. Certainly, yes, they were tasteless, but some people find that sort of thing funny. It's immature, but it doesn't hurt anybody, and it gives some people entertainment.
As for directly copying the strip, this kinda treads on the same ground as the usual IP arguments that we get plenty of with the whole Linux/OSS thing. By the letter of the law, copying the strip like that probably does step over the line, but I am of the opinion that the letter of the law is often broken.
Theft would be legitimate, but I don't think I see that here. They used the characters that somebody else created, yes. Does this prevent the original creator from using those characters, or in any other way fall into the usual "You had this, but now I have it and you don't" sort of thing that makes theft wrong? Not in any way that I can see. Libel? Not really. The characters are saying tasteless things, but this doesn't really attack anybody. Since they go out of their way to say that the comics are parodies and not created by the people who do Dilbert, they aren't trying to pass the strips off as something that came from those people. Nobody in their right mind would think any less of Dilbert just because some jackass with a paint program figured out he could cut and paste text into a Dilbert comic.
As for the strips not being a parody, just trying to be obscene, I'm not sure I agree with that, either. I don't think it'd be that far-fetched to say that they're parodizing office life. The pointy-haired boss calling Dilbert "fatty queercakes" isn't really all that funny, but I did get a chuckle out of these strips because they take place in an office environment. I'm used to the office environment being formal and professional, so something like that strikes me as kinda funny in small doses. Scott Adams doesn't own office humor. He owns the Dilbert characters, yes, but like I said before, this doesn't effect that ownership of them. He owns them as much now as he did before Dilbert Hole ever happened.
If the guy who did Dilbert Hole had drawn the strips himself, it would have had a lot more creative value on its own, but I don't see how he should be punished for using the Dilbert characters any more than being told it's not that creative.
I don't understand rotten.com; the keep posting things like this, claiming that they believe they're in the right, but then back down, claiming "other battles to fight."
Do they ever fight the battles, or do they just keep backing down?
Libel has nothing to do with copyright issues. Use your dictionary. Also obscenity ca n be quite funny. I didn't get to see the strips but I don't thing you create the definition of what is funny.
root@localbrain root>ps ax |grep thoughtd
If I amn't in the US, lets say France, and I put up a Dilbert Parody Website (speculatively only), on a french web server.
Whats the legality involved, could they easily prosecute me ?, would they have to prosecute me under French or European law.
Just out of interest is all
Regards Redemption
http://www.boners.com/dilbert/ has nothing to do with Dilbert ... links to jerkcity.com, wherein I could not find (in a quick and lazy scan) anything relating ot our favorite engineer. What am I missing?
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
I worry that people think that to be parody requires that some standard of quality or depth be reached. Just because it was fairly inept and pointless doesn't mean it shouldn't be protected under the same law that protects more intelligent and well-thought out satirists. This was brought up in Falwell vs Flynt. Good taste isn't a legal requirement.
However, I should note that I think the direct use of the strips with just the words changed does violate copyright laws.
No. The .html's have all been replaced with the letter. The .jpg's on the other hand...
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???
Negativelands 'U2' and John Oswalds 'Plunderphonics' both ran into similar legal troubles and neither of them won. It seems to hinge on the difference between parody and appropriation. Wish I had some relevant links, sorry. nme
That stuff was messed up. Looks like the lawyers have have actually done a good thing for once!
It's good reading these comments on slashdot, some of them are actually quite erudite.
The strips themselves have been floating around for two years on the net in various places. We did not create them. The originals had United Media copyrights on them (bad); those were removed and replaced with disclaimers. Once this was done, we believe we're actually in the right, legally. There is of course room for disagreement.
As to those people who think we are media whoring for attention by using Dilbert Hole for attention, pshaw! It is but a tiny drop in the site's daily traffic.
Incidentally Yahoo! created a whole new category for Dilbert parodies. What are you people waiting for? Oh yeah. the attorneys. Fie I say!
Okay. Now we can concentrate on something more important, the Dilbert Hole Haiku contest.
staff@rotten.com
> You can't even say they crossed a fine line in this case,
Peed on the line and gave it a warm sudsy enema, then?
This is interesting. The freer.com URL contains references to both Internet Wiretap -- a site that I run, now at wiretap.area.com,and is actually on the same server as www.rotten.com -- *and* Dilbert Hole. A veritable double header.
Wiretap dates from the pre-web, gopher days. Imagine that a gopher site today gets 5,000 hits a day! (well, it's broken right now, but will be fixed shortly.)
staff@rotten.com
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For very twisted parody, you must check out the Dilbert Hole. [For adults only.] [2/8/96]
Before Lycos crawled the Web, before McDonald's had a domain name, before any sites were cool for a day, there was a simple gopher site that championed freedom of
information, personal privacy, and knowledge for its own sake. Since 1992, Wiretap has housed electronic texts of all kinds, giving equal space to the Communist Manifesto
and the Holy Bible, conspiracy theories, tech documents, and lawyer jokes. Now it's making a comeback - with a Webby front end that's been nipped, tucked, and HTML'd.
Fortunately, though, the beauty is only skin-deep. Underneath, it's what we now call "content." [2/3/96]
This material has been around since late '97.
Nothing new here. It's a testament to Rotten's "position" that such a fuss is being made now. More the power to 'em. Gurgle.
back in the day we didnt have no old school
A parody is when SNL does a sketch featuring an actor portraying Bad Boy Billy (Clinton) and some sluts. Copying strips directly from the Dilbert site and replacing the words, is theft and libel.
Had the authors actually drawn the cartoons and tried to make them funny instead of just obscene, they may have had a case.
The people at rotten.com really need to find some other way to draw attention to themselves.