Just when you thought all news about the fight for fair use was bad news, we have two exercises in parody to brighten the day:
Zippy the Pinhead goes "Totally Jeffersonian" in a strip on "wacko" exceptions to copyright. (Ah, no, I can't explain it; you'll just have a to take a look for yourself.)
Meanwhile, the fearless folks @ Free Culture have announced "Barbie-in-a-Blender Day" -- celebrating an instance in which an artist made it to the courtroom to fight for fair use and won:
Mattel isn't a big fan of free speech -- at least not when it applies to their products. So when Utah artist Tom Forsythe took this photograph of Barbie in a blender as part of a series of critical fine-art Barbie photos, Mattel got pissed. So what did they do to try stop Tom's message? They decided to sue his ass. Usually, a guy like this would have no chance going up against a fleet of corporate lawyers; and from the corporation's perspective, that's the whole point...Luckily for Tom, he convinced some lawyers from the ACLU to step up to and fight his case, and after a long legal battle he was victorious.
Category: IP Use
re: Zippy - in case people don't pick up on it, he's actually having his characters act like Chip and Dale. Especially the "body language".
Barbie - Let's say it again, "Fair Use is the right to hire an attorney" :-(
Given the recent discussions about fair use, it's nice to see a published author's take on it:
From Neil Gaiman's blog -
So here's a small start on the post-bag...
You said that your teacher said "Please remember that before you can be properly eccentric, you must know where the circle is." I would like to use this quote as a basis for a short story. Is this OK? Sorry, I'm a bit dim as regards copyright.
Rebecca Billings
It's fine. It's always nice to be asked, but it would come under the heading of "fair use" (here's a bit from the copyright office about what fair use is).
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Tracked on July 14, 2004 09:00 AM
Tracked on July 14, 2004 05:37 PM