What’s the reason that our copyright/fair use founding fathers decided that parody should be allowed? Did they just have a sense of humor or is there some underlying legal precedent I’m missing?
The goal of copyright is to encourage creativity through providing an apparatus to make sure you can profit from your creativity. A parody still utilizes creativity, and thus is protected.
Parody also is a different genre, so it doesn’t steal market share from the original.
In the US, the right to publish parodies was established when Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and several other songwriters sued Mad Magazine in the 1960s for featuring parody lyrics to be sung to the songwriters’ tunes. The case was known as Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc. The songwriters lost; the courts upheld the magazine’s right to publish paraody. More info here: http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/cases/case_berlin_ec.html
Wait, so I can’t write a song “to be sung to the tune of” a protected song unless my song is parody?
Suppose I write
Did I violate copywrite just by writing this, even though I didn’t actually perform it?
And our founding fathers did no such thing. Fair use itself was a concept that built up slowly through a variety of court cases and was not codified in the copyright law until the 1976 Copyright Act, IIRC. Parody is a word to be found nowhere in the Copyright Act. It is protected solely because the courts have ruled it to be protected.
Tyrrell McAllister, it is the expression of creativity that makes a parody protected. The lack of creativity in your work would not rise to that standard.
What’s the dividing line? Ask a court.
And for the inevitable “what’s fair use around here” question, here’s a good summary that covers what we do on the Dope:
I think the parody exemption was established long before the Mad Magazine case (after all, Mad was parodying things for almost a decade before the songbook came out), which established the right to parody* songs* (songs are treated differently than other works: essentially, there is no fair use). Mad was in a strong position because they did not publish the song lyrics or music, and merely suggested that the poem/lyrics they published could be sung to an existing song. If Mad had recorded the songs, there would have been no parody exemption (e.g., the Capitol Steps, which performs song parodies in the same way that Mad published them, must pay standard royalties to perform and record the songs with their new lyrics).
If ASCAP would have won, it would mean that anyone who wrote a song could lay claim to its rhyme and rhythm scheme. Using that principle, Billy Joel could sue anyone who wrote a limerick, since “Piano Man” uses that rhyme and rhythm. The ruling wasn’t all that much a surprise – even the lower court allowed most of the songs involved (IIRC, the said that only one was close enough to the original to be considered an infringement; the Supreme Court just expanded the ruling to include that song and, by extension, all songs – and made it apply as the law of the land). But this only applies to publishing the lyrics, not recording or singing them.
Actually, there is no mention of a parody exemption in the copyright law, but it does say the purpose of the copying needs to be considered, and parody has traditionally been allowed. The thinking is that, in order to parody something, you have to imitate it; if parody were not fair use, there would be no parody.
No. As I said, no one can lay claim to a rhyme and rhythm scheme. As long as you don’t perform it, you are fine.
So you’re saying I did violate copywrite? Should the mods be alerted?
Gah. Sorry for repeatedly writing “copywrite” for copyright.
But my song shares not only the rhyme and rhythm scheme. It also shares the same tune, though I have only indicated the tune indirectly.
Surpisingly, no. William Patry, in The Fair Use Privilege in Copyright Law identifies *Loew’s v. Columbia Broadcasting * (1955) as the seminal case. It involved Jack Benny’s parody of Gaslight, but Benny lost that case. The first Supreme Court to recognize parody as fair use was Campbell v. Acuff-Rose (1994):
Here is an overlarge chunk of that opinion, which talks all about parody as fair use, and its purpose:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U10426
Here is a good discussion:
http://www.edwardsamuels.com/illustratedstory/isc8.htm
And another: http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/cases/case_berlin_ec.html
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose may have been the first parody case to be decided by the Supreme Court, but that’s not the same thing as saying that no courts had ever ruled on parody.
Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc. was a 1964 Circuit Court decision and the 1961 Report I cited clearly indicates that courts had already laid down decisions.
You own link includes a pre-Benny example:
And further states:
I understand that nothing’s ever really final until the Supreme Court says so (and not even then in reality) but the history of parody clearly shows that it was a very unusual event for anyone to sue over a parody and even rarer for anyone to win, and the history of writing clearly shows that all writers felt they were perfectly safe in producing parodies. And that’s because the courts have, mostly, usually, allowed them that freedom.
Mr. Patry disussing the Sid Caesar case ( Columbia Pictures v. National Broadcasting Co.):
It is sort of a fair use case. Here’s what the judge said:
I was responding to the statement: “I think the parody exemption was established long before the Mad Magazine case.” This case rejects a pardody exemption, but considers the use under the 9th Circuit’s substantial takings/fair use weirdness. Nevertheless it is a fair use case involving a parody (or burlesque). But the opinion was published in 1955. How is that long before 1964?
The *Loew’s * Court noted, btw, that:
Patry notes that the MAD court cited HILL v. WHALEN & MARTELL, Inc. (S.D.N.Y 1914), which he says “recognized but rejected without much comment because of defendant’s bad faith and colorable copying.” Here is what the court said:
So until about 1955, there was meager authority, at best, for parody as fair use. In 1955, the a District Court in the 9th Circuit accepted a fair use defense involving a parody, but refused to single parody out for special treatment. That’s what I meant to say.
And sitting at your desk and singing it is not a performance. Sitting at your desk telling someone else to sing it is also not a performance. Writing the words “la la …” and telling someone to sing it to the tune of “Happy Birthday” is not a performance or a copy.
To get back to the OP, parody is a specially protected form of fair use because the Constitution protects the principle of free speech to promote the unfettered discussion of political ideas. And, as satirists from Jonathan Swift to Al Franken have known, one of the most effective methods of discussing a political idea is to parody the political ideas of your opponent.
Well, it is protected as a form of comment or criticism, not by the Constitution, but, by Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. *See, e.g., * Campbell (We thus line up with the courts that have held that parody, like other comment or criticism, may claim fair use under 107; and see, *Dr. Seuss v. Penguin Books * (9th Circuit 1997): http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/9th/9655619.html (new work must comment on or target original work in order to be parody) *and * Adriana Collado, "Unfair Use: The Lack of Fair Use Protection for Satire Under § 107 of the Copyright Act, 9 *J. Tech. L & Policy * 65 (2004): http://grove.ufl.edu/~techlaw/vol9/issue1/collado.html
On the relationship between the First Amendment and copyright law see: Netanel, Neil W., “Locating Copyright Within the First Amendment Skein” . Stanford Law Review, Vol. 54, October 2001 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=267848
Even if you or someone else actually sang this in a performance, a good lawyer could argue that it was parody; that the meaningless la-la-la lyrics were intended to show how meaninglessly people sing Happy Birthday, even for people they don’t know or don’t like.
Plus the other side would have to show how that performance of la-la-la actually caused them damages. For example, if not for that, your parody performance would have included their Copyrighted Happy Birthday song, and paid royalties to them. That might be a hard thing to prove, too.
Not quite. Fair use is an affirmative defense. The defendant has the burden of coming forward with evidence to establish it. As the Court said in Campbell,
It noted that there is no “presumption of market harm,” and continued,
(Footnotes left in because I’m too lazy to delete them).
So a Court would probably find that there was little chance of market substitution unless the plaintiff could prove it. OTOH, one shouldn’t read t-bonham’s comment as suggesting that you can get away with copyright infringement just because the owner can’t prove damages. Statutory damages are available.
Mad magazine presumably didn’t actually sing or perform their parody lyrics when they were sued. It would seem, then, that absent their parody defense, merely printing the lyrics and indicating the tune indirectly could have qualified as infringement. I will state right now for the record that my lyrics are not intended as parody. Rather, they are intended to serve as an example to help me understand the finer points of copyright law. Assuming that I have now destroyed any chance for a parody defense, did my post #5 qualify as copyright infringement?