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A win for parody
Mar. 15th, 2019 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madfilkentistAfter two years of litigation, a U.S. district court has ruled in favor of "Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go!", published by ComicMix. The estate of Theodore Giesel (Dr. Seuss) had sued, claiming copyright infringement. ComicMix held it was a fair use parody.
The 2 Live Crew decision, which covered similar ground, led to a lot of false claims that anyone was now free to produce any kind of parody. Neither decision says that. The court ruled that ComicMix "is a highly transformative work that takes no more from the Dr. Seuss books than necessary for its purposes." "Transformative" means that it does something different from the original. Taking no more than necessary was also a basis for the 2 Live Crew decision.
There's no reason to overstate the scope of the ruling. This is a big win for parody mashups just as it is.
The 2 Live Crew decision, which covered similar ground, led to a lot of false claims that anyone was now free to produce any kind of parody. Neither decision says that. The court ruled that ComicMix "is a highly transformative work that takes no more from the Dr. Seuss books than necessary for its purposes." "Transformative" means that it does something different from the original. Taking no more than necessary was also a basis for the 2 Live Crew decision.
There's no reason to overstate the scope of the ruling. This is a big win for parody mashups just as it is.
