Tarmack
Rhetorical Porcupine
You can sue anybody for any reason. Doesn't mean that you will win.
Parody question
- Thread starter Vindolla
- Start date
You can sue anybody for any reason. Doesn't mean that you will win.
Ben Steele
I've Got It
Not always true, but I can sort of see your... "logic"...
Tarmack
Rhetorical Porcupine
No, it's quite literally always true. A lawsuit is little more than a claim that one party wronged another. Whether the claim is valid, is determined by the court process.
Parody is one of those items that is actually rather well defined. There are some nebulous items in how it is enforced, but the entire point behind fair use is that the onus is on the plaintiff to prove that fair use does not apply, not the other way around. This is an advantageous position in a court battle. Where it becomes awkward is when people don't understand the difference between parody and satire. Satire in copyright law involves the use of a piece or pieces of copyrighted material to poke fun at an unrelated entity.
A standard example is Dr. Seuss Vs Penguin Books. Essentially a work was published making fun of O.J Simpson called Dr. Juice which used the standard Seuss pedant and other items. It was deemed to be satire, not parody as there was no need to use that particular copyright in order to make the same satirical work. This is one of the major tests in parody defense.
To use another example which will illustrate the point better, I'll pick two Weird Al songs. #1 is Smells like Nirvana. #2 is Amish Paradise. It is an easy case to make that using the music of Nirvana, in order to make fun of Nirvana has a very clear connection. #1 is a Parody. Using the music of Coolio to make fun of the Amish however has no such obvious connection which makes #2 a Satire. This is the best example that I have been able to come up with because both are songs by the same person, and in the eyes of the consumer are essentially the same thing. However, by copyright law they are in fact very different.