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?

Comments

Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

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 . . .

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*510 U.S. 59 (1994). This was the case about 2 Live Crew's naughty "Pretty Woman" parody.

Huh

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Idiots

[Bocephus]

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.

Parody defense was weak

[erice]

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.

It doesn't matter if it's funny!

[ethereal]

It seems that there are three issues here:

• Was copying the exact drawings copyright infringement?

  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.

• Was the whole thing trademark infringement?

  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.

• Was it funny?

  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.

It's still there

[Forkenhoppen]

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

nope, they were right

[JEP]

Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?

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)]

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Parody defense was weak

[methuseleh]

Right. If the author (parodist?) had drawn his own characters (maybe a bunch of bunnies) and given them the exact same words, the humor --or lack thereof-- whould have been exactly the same. As it is, he was just using the Dilbert artwork as a backdrop for his seemingly random spewage of dirty words. Nothing in the Dilbert Hole parodied the Dilbert strip, its characters, or its primary subject matter (corporate idiocy).

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.

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Rotten.com

[Another MacHack]

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?