Universal just did a Youtube takedown on Bad Lip Reading’s “Dirty Spaceman.” It appears there’s no other copy of it available online, but here is Bad Lip Reading’s “Russian Unicorn.”
As you can see from that link, what they do is take a music video, write completely new music for it, and replace its lyrics with new lyrics which plausibly fit the lip movements of the people in the video. (“Russian Unicorn” is a dance/pop song played over the video of Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.”)
“Dirty Spaceman” was a song played over the video for “Check it Out” by Will I Am and Niki Minaj.
I don’t figre this question for GQ, but it seems a less trivial topic than IMHO, so I put it here in GD though I’m not confident opinions will differ all that much.
I’d argue it’s parody, because a work that uses parts of other works is legally “parody” if it’s providing commentary on the original work. The commentary here is “The people in this video look like they could be saying X” for some X as well as “The movements in this video can be completely repurposed to match style Y” for some Y.
I literally see Taylor Swift differently now that I’ve seen this. Of course I would always have affirmed that her appeal relies on sexuality to a degree, and that her body language surely has something to do with it. But the video highlights just how explicit this is. The original song and arrangement of clips in the video connotes sweetness and all-americanness, while the new song and arrangement of clips highlights that the very same movements are, when viewed out of context, completely different in connotation. There’s genuine commentary here.
Similar insight is offered by the Buble video, IMO.
This section in the Wikipedia Weird Al Yankovicarticle starts to address this and contains links to fair use which has a parody section. I didn’t see this circumstance addressed directly. I’d say the video you link to has a good chance of standing up to a legal challenge. And such a challenge having a good chance of occurring if the artist and/or copyright owner is offended by it.
Fair use is a defense against a lawsuit. Having available a valid defense does not, in many cases, prevent the case being brought. Defending the case is expensive, and many defendants will fold rather than fight.
I see this more as a Cafe Society discussion than a Great Debate. (If it turns into a serious disagreement over Law, a CS Mod can always move it back.)
And don’t forget that YouTube is more stringent than the law requires: if they get a DMCA notice, they will take it down, and generally will not fight it. Sure, if it’s obviously a mistake, they’ll let you appeal to get it back. But when it’s a fair use issue, they generally won’t.
This is why most reviewers that use clips don’t use YouTube for any extended amount of time. (If it were actually illegal, places like TGWTG.com couldn’t exist.)
EDIT: having watched part of a video, I suspect they will be off YouTube soon, too. You only get three strikes before you account is deleted.
