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What Protections Exist for Parody Sites? 58

Posted by Cliff from the some-people-just-can't-take-a-joke dept.
jolchefske asks: "I'm a small time guy running a small time parody website of a medium sized school district. My site lampoons the real website of the Seattle School District -- a district currently over 30 million dollars in the hole due to accounting "irregularities." My question is, what protections (if any) do parody websites have against copyright litigation? The district is 30+ mil in the red but they've got the lawyers knocking on my door."
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What Protections Exist for Parody Sites? More

What Protections Exist for Parody Sites?

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  • IANAL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clark625 ( 308380 ) <clark625@nOspam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:24PM (#4920480) Homepage

    No, seriously. I'm not a lawyer. Neither is most of the other folks around here. Maybe it would be best to actually call a lawyer in your own area and see what he/she says? Most have initial consultations for free...

    • What do you charge for advice like that? :)

      I don't know how many good lawyers do free consults (maybe I'm wrong, but I'm picturing Lionel Hutz [wikipedia.org] for some reason), but maybe give inexpensive 30-minute consults (maybe $40? depends where you live). Contact your local bar association and ask about a "lawyer referral service." My wife used to work for one.
      • Hey, what's wrong with that?

        -- your resident parody

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Lawyers aren't all bad.

          Thank you. :)

          In Boston and the DC area (two places I've lived) the consult did cost a token amount. But the point is not to make money, but to maybe find business. A lawyer friend said the referrals tend not to be high quality (good cases) but there is a public service aspect to doing it, too.

          Who came up with "disambiguated"? Yikes. How about clarified? Stated? Specified?

          I hope you at least sent a birthday card to the free one.

  • These (Score:3, Informative)

    by David_Bloom ( 578245 ) <slashdot@3lesson.org> on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:29PM (#4920522) Homepage
    CA's parody laws: here [cafepress.com].

    I'm sure they're similar elsewhere.

    [obligatory][lame]And, it's freedom of speech! LOL[/lame][/obligatory]

    • Actually, they are the same elsewhere, as the ruling cited in the link above is a US Supreme Court ruling. Apparently, it is covered under freedom of expression.

  • Copyright? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:38PM (#4920571) Homepage
    What exactly are they charging you with? Defamation?

    Parody is not per se protected, but parodies can satisfy the fair use defense to copyright infringement. Check out the Supreme Court decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose [cornell.edu]. (I spent a looong time reading this case after it came out.) There are various tests applied by the court to draw the line.

    Eff.org and chillingeffects.org have very good general guides to online free speech issues. Specific litigation advice must come from a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction if things get ugly.

    • This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I am not an attorney.

      The real question is, what has happened? Have you gotten a letter in the mail? Have you been served with papers?

  • Parody is Protected Free SPeech (Score:3, Informative)

    by peripatetic_bum ( 211859 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:43PM (#4920598) Homepage Journal
    Look it up.
    DO a search on supreme court ruling a parody and you will see there have been recent cases in the last 20 years that have protected parody.

    The most blatant example of how protected Parody is, just at look at "the Simpsons"

    DO you really think that they got the permission do use all the character they feature and make jokes about? No way. They are doing parody and thus dont need to worry about copyright or stepping on anyone's toes

  • Parody is protected speech (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:45PM (#4920612) Homepage Journal
    IANAL. That said, I think I'd build new icons, images, and work on making the site resemble the Seattle Public School site. You have some images that are very clearly mirrored and lightly tweaked. I think that might be damaging to you.

    Also, If you are using html code from the SPS site, I'd ditch it. make your own.

    You can make your site look VERY close to thiers, but there is a fine line.

    Just my wild ass guess, but there ya go.
    • I'm still learning about parody, and it's kind of hard to do from the web because, or course, everyone has slightly different interpretation, most of them wrong. (not you!) Almost everyone gets something wrong, certainly including me.

      Your comments on resemblance remind me of an insight I finally had into the interaction between parody and fair use. Copyright protects the original work and derivative works. Parody is by definition a derivative work -- if it doesn't reference the original work, it makes no sense. So parody is an infringing derivative work unless it meets the factors set forth rather clearly in Acuff-Rose, which I linked elsewhere here.

      As for resemblance, you look how much is "borrowed" to make that parody connection, in both quantity and quality. So however much you alter or disguise images or text might not protect you. In Acuff-Rose the guitar riff itself struck at the essence of the song. The quantity and quality of the copying are equally important.

      There are of course further requirements -- I commend the opinion to anyone's reading. The Kennedy concurrence is also interesting. Something most people get wrong about the decision is that it did not actually say that the Pretty Woman derivative was fair use; rather it remanded for more evidence to be collected. I don't know what happened then, except the parties probably settled.

      I don't see how your site could be mistaken for theirs, but it is still a derivative work that could violate copyright. I think they just want your site to go away, and will grasp at whatever will make you do it.

      Don't forget to call the press! These officials are elected, right? :)

      P.S. As mentioned by others, this isn't legal advice, just background. If you need a lawyer get a lawyer.

  • Oddly enough..... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kibo ( 256105 ) <naw#gmail,com> on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:46PM (#4920616) Homepage
    This came up for me once. Sometimes people just can't take a good yo' mamma joke.

    When Stan Morris speaks, people listen. [gigalaw.com]

    Parody and Satire

    Parody or satire is difficult to deal with, but if applied to a public figure is clearly protected by the First Amendment because the exaggeration or distortions of the truth are not intended to be taken as fact.

    The case of Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Fallwell is an example. In that case, Hustler Magazine printed a fake advertisement that parodied a Campari Liquer advertising campaign. In the Hustler publication, the advertisement contained a make-believe interview with Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and a television evangelist, in which he talked about his "first time" to experience sexual intercourse. The vulgar "recounting" of Falwell's "first sexual encounter" was set in an outhouse with him having sex with his mother. Falwell, a teetotaler, was also portrayed as being drunk.

    Falwell was outraged by this caricature, so outraged, in fact, that he sued. His lawsuit for libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress went to trial. At the close of the evidence, the district court said that even if everything Falwell claimed were true there were no legal grounds upon which he could claim relief. The balance of the case was submitted to the jury, which returned a verdict for Falwell for intentional infliction of emotional distress, although the jury disallowed the libel claim.

    On appeal, the Supreme Court heard the case on the First Amendment question of whether a state has authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress and whether a public figure may recover damages for his or her distress.

    Specifically, the Chief Justice said the issue was whether a state may protect its citizens from patently offensive speech, and he said the First Amendment provided a safe haven for even that mode of speech. The Chief Justice reasoned that even though Falwell was not a public figure who held elective office, he was a public figure who had influence on public affairs and, as such, only had limited capacity to be distressed. The Chief Justice wrote that: "robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those that hold public office or those public figures who are 'intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or by reason of their fame, shape events in area of concern to society at large.'"

    The Chief Justice ruled that even so outrageous a rogue, or impish rascal, depending on your point of view, as Larry Flynt is entitled to exercise his First Amendment freedoms in a manner best determined by Flynt, rather than being restricted by any state action.
    --By Stan Morris from Gigalaw.com

    But there are limits it would seem. The creators of Parkwars originally planned to completely parody The Phantom Menace, but thought better of it, at least in part to make sure lawyers didn't come a knocking.

    Mr. Morris seems to make a convincing case clearing the way to do what you will with your modest proposal. But the real snag might be copyright.

  • A quick google would set you straight (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikecheng ( 3359 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @11:51PM (#4920649) Homepage Journal
    Whilst very few of us are lawyers, and hence almost all of us will not be qualified to answer you question directly, a simple google search [google.com] turns up a heap of great starting points.

  • You're assuming that what the law says is important (and it is) but the first question to ask, the more important question, is who has the deeper pockets.

    Doesn't matter how much the law is in your favor if the other side can spend more than you can.

  • Looks like copyright violation to me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bmetzler ( 12546 ) <bmetzlerNO@SPAMlive.com> on Thursday December 19, 2002 @12:10AM (#4920728) Homepage Journal
    I looked at both sites and they looked identical. Parody isn't about just copy strait from another source. That's plagarism. Parody is about using a source in a different setting, or with a different plot, or with different characters. Parody should result in a different and often humorous meaning then the original source.

    Consider the Apple Think Different Parody. Those were true parodies. They used the same format to put different actors in "thinking different" about different things. They weren't just ripping Apple's clips off of apple.com and voicing over "Apple Sucks". That would not have been parody.

    -Brent
    • After looking at both sites, I must say they do look too similar. I would suggest looking at some existing parodies and learning from them. In the meantime, I would pull your site down immediately.

      IANAL, but IAASHB.
    • "That's plagarism"

      Plagarism gets you kicked out of college. This is a case of copyright infringement plain and simple. He'd be wise to kill the site now. Take a look at the source code. He even copied the unused code that was commented out of the original website. No wonder the lawyers have come knocking.

      Parody sites are great, and this one is quite funny too. But to just copy their code, Photoshop a few of their images, and change a few URLs, well... that's just plain stupid.

  • Become informed about anti-SLAPP laws (Score:5, Informative)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @12:10AM (#4920731)
    SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits are illegal and Washington was the first state to make them illegal. Use google to read up on them and how you and your lawyer might use anti-SLAPP laws to keep the school district off your back. A friend of mine critized a public agency, they sued him, lost, then he countersued on the basis of them violating an anti-SLAPP law. He won a $1M+ judgement. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

  • Critique of your parody site (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mbstone ( 457308 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @12:21AM (#4920767)
    You have little to fear provided you get a lawyer right away. Your site is a parody, presumably protected by the First Amendment, and it does not appear to have any content that could be termed libelous or obscene. I would observe that your site a) isn't very funny; b) isn't very robust; c) doesn't do a good job of explaining to someone like me, who is unfamiliar with Seattle or its school system, what it is that aggrieves you about it; d) links back to the official site in such a way as to confuse people. Maybe they will violate your civil rights and you can countersue.

  • Fair Use is an explanatory defense. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bootsy Collins ( 549938 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @12:24AM (#4920780)

    Several people here have noted (correctly) that parody is considered "fair use"; there's a significant body of case law on this, and people here have provided links to some of that.

    It's worth emphasizing, however, that fair use is a defense that you use in court, rather than a principle you cite to avoid court. As Brad Templeton notes in his 10 Big Myths about copyright explained [templetons.com],

    This is not a
    loophole; you can't just take a non-parody and claim it is one on a technicality. The way "fair use" works is you get sued for copyright infringement, and you admit you did infringe, but that your infringement was a fair use. A subjective judgment on, among other things, your goals, is then made.
    So regardless of how solid your position may seem, if they're really coming after you, then you really do need a lawyer.
    • I've seen before and like the "10 Myths" page, but should caution it is not completely thorough. But then, he only intended to point out 10 myths about copyright (and slipped some trademark in there, too, I see).

      This may sound like a technicality -- but:

      Parody may be but is not necessarily fair use. I mentioned earlier Campbell v. Acuff-Ross [slashdot.org], a Supreme Court case which held a parody rap version of "Oh Pretty Woman" might be fair use, and remanded for the final determination.

      For example, you might do a great parody of "Feelings" but if it borrows too much material or deprives the copyright holder of income by substitution or teh like, then it would not be fair use.

      All of this is way to detailed for present purposes. But isn't it interesting? :)

      *

      Oh hey, this is post #1000. I have definitely been here too much. :)
  • The district is 30+ mil in the red but they've got the lawyers knocking on my door."

    No wonder they're so far in the red, with lawyers making house calls. Around here, the lawyers just send letters.

    Oh, yea...you may wanna put a dislaimer on your site mentioning that it is just a parody, not to be confused with the real Seattle School District site. (Maybe put a goatse.cx link somewhere on there, too. That'll put some color back into the bloodless faces of the school board members.)

  • People saying that this site blatantly rips things from the public site are mistaken. There are many subtle changes which make it a parody and not possibly conceived as a copyright violation.

    A nice touch is the "please visit our partners: Enron, Worldcom, Anderson, Coca-Cola," all companies that are either corrupt or have severe financial fraud issues and are bankrupt.

    $eattle Public $chools, again clever.

    And of course, all of the content is completely different -- hyperboles of the schools' hard-to-hyperbolize financial scandal.

    The school has nothing to gripe about. They've fucked up and schould be criticized. In fact, everyone there involved in money-management should be fired off the bat, and prosecuted for some kind of fraud or another.
    • Lessee,
      1. HTML source code is blatantly ripped from the original, filtered through html-tidy and lightly edited.
      2. Images, color, and layout are either exact copies or obvious light-edits of the original.
      3. Porn link [geobop.com] at the top of the page.

      4. I'd say that you're a PRIME candidate for a lawsuit. Not only are you obviously COPYING instead of RE-CREATING the content, but you're linking to porn. People are highly sensitive to that sort of thing, especially where schoolchildren are concerned.

        If you plagiarized one of MY websites that way, I'd sue you, too.

      • As I said, there are many subtle differences, all of them designed to parody the original site.

        Most importantly, none of the actual content is the same, something you seem to be overlooking. Try looking deeper than just the visual appearance of the site: the conent is all different. Sorry, but the school doesn't get to sue because someone did a parody of their fraudulent school system and website.

        Also, you don't get copyrights on HTML code. Its common practice on the web to copy and past the templates from other people's web-design to use on your own.

        The content has been copied and modified to become a parody: thus, it is a re-creation. Get a clue, you idiot. This is squarely covered as fair use under parody.
        • Well, I hope someone else with mod points sees fit to mod up Lionel Hutts' [slashdot.org] post above as "Funny" because I just blew my mod responding to this post.

          Also, you don't get copyrights on HTML code. Its common practice on the web to copy and past the templates from other people's web-design to use on your own.

          Of course you do; it's copyrightable just like any other code. The fact that it's common practice to copy and paste the stuff does not change that. It's more a reflection of the difficulty of enforcing the copyright than anything else. If there is good evidence that he has in fact copied their code verbatim and is using it himself, and they have the lawyers to pursue the matter, they can certainly go after him on that basis.

          • Please...for what damages? None. The school is not making any money off of their web-page layout, so they can't get any damages. Since this guy's site is a parody of the original, it's covered under fair use.

            This is clearly a case of the school trying to shut up accurate and valid criticism -- via parody/hyperbole -- of their illegal and sleazy financial practices.
            • *sigh*

              Here: this [templetons.com] was linked above, too, but you could stand to re-read it. There do not have to be any damages for infringement to exist. And they do not have to try to collect any to get him to take his site down if it IS found to be infringing. And it MAY be found to be fair use, but that is less likely if it is found that he copied large chunks of the code verbatim, which is what we are discussing here, and as someone else also pointed out, that's only an argument you get to use after you're already in court, having admitted to infringement.

              I don't disagree with your analysis of the district's behavior, but attributing their move to slimy tactics doesn't just magically blow away the legal argument.
              • He may have copied chunks of code verbatum, that that's irrelevant to the issue.

                The issue here is him using the school's web-site as a template to parody, attack, and discredit the school, which falls under fair use.
                • The problem is that it's not irrelevant; it can be directly used to attack his fair use defense. A parody is not a parody if it's an item for item reproduction. You're only looking at presentation at the surface, but that's not the only issue, I'm afraid. And the district's lawyers are not going to miss the trick.
        • none of the actual content is the same, something you seem to be overlooking. Try looking deeper than just the visual appearance of the site: the conent is all different.

          Sorry to have to spell it out for you, but here goes. Original site:

          INPUT,SELECT {
          font-family : Verdana, Arial;
          font-size: 10px;
          }

          .headerlinks{font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; text-decoration: underline; color: #00489B}
          #txtDate {font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #004A9C;}
          .blue { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 11px; color: #26428F; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold}
          .content { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 11px; color: #000000; text-decoration: none}
          .copyright { font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #577D1C; text-decoration: none}
          .crumb { font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #577D1C; text-decoration: none}
          .animation { position: absolute; left: 150px; top: 20px; z-index: -1}
          .headerlink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1em; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .text1 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .text2 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .mhlink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; text-decoration: none; color: #00489B}
          .search {font-size: 11px} .appheading {font-size: 12px}
          .cmenu {} .mnheaderbg {background-color: #AEDC6B}
          .csublink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 500; margin: 0px, 0px, 0px, 0px; line-height: 1em; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .bordertable {background-color: #3F75B5}
          .bordertableSub {background-color: #FFFFFF}
          .bgtable {background-color: #3F75B5}
          .deplabel { font-size: 20pt; color: #3F75B5; font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica; text-align: left}
          .bgtablecomps {background-color: #FEFBF3}
          .fieldshow { font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; color: #000000}
          .fielderrorshow { font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; color: #aa0000;}
          .msgshow { font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #000000}
          .errormsgshow { font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #aa0000;}

          Parody site:

          INPUT,SELECT {
          font-family : Verdana, Arial;
          font-size: 10px;
          }

          .headerlinks{font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; text-decoration: underline; color: #00489B}
          #txtDate {font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #004A9C;}
          .blue { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 11px; color: #26428F; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold}
          .content { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 11px; color: #000000; text-decoration: none}
          .copyright { font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #577D1C; text-decoration: none}
          .crumb { font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #577D1C; text-decoration: none}
          .animation { position: absolute; left: 150px; top: 20px; z-index: -1}
          .headerlink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1em; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .text1 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .text2 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9px; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF}
          .mhlink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; text-decoration: none; color: #00489B}:
          .search {font-size: 11px}
          .appheading {font-size: 12px}
          .cmenu {}
          .mnheaderbg {background-color: #AEDC6B}
          .csublink { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 500; margin: 0px, 0px, 0px, 0px; line-height: 1em; text-decoration: none; color: #FFFFFF} .bordertable {background-color: #3F75B5}
          .bordertableSub {background-color: #FFFFFF} .bgtable {background-color: #3F75B5}
          .deplabel { font-size: 20pt; color: #3F75B5; font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica; text-align: left}
          .bgtablecomps {background-color: #FEFBF3}
          .fieldshow { font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; color: #000000}
          .fielderrorshow { font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; color: #aa0000;}
          .msgshow { font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #000000}
          .errormsgshow { font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #aa0000;}

          You figure it out. As you say, I'm just an idiot who can't distinguish appearance from "conent" (sic).

          • Who cares? This is just superficial appearrance -- a template. The content of the sites is vastly different, and obviously different. Any copyright claims the school has are undermined by the fact that: 1. They haven't licensed their web-site code; 2. Lifting web-site code is common on the web.
            • Who cares? This is just superficial appearrance -- a template. The content of the sites is vastly different...

              The point is that over 90% of the content (i.e. the actual characters stored in the file) are an exact duplicate (copy) of the original. That does not qualify as "vastly different" in my book.

              For a parallel example, try taking a Windows XP iso, using a hexeditor to replace instances of "indows" with "indow$", and posting the result on a public website, claiming "fair use" because "it's a parody of the original work." I doubt you'd survive the resultant lawsuit.

              What this guy did isn't parody; it's plagiarism. Now if he had created a brand-new site FROM SCRATCH, making it look like the original WITHOUT ACTUALLY COPYING IT, then there'd be no grounds for complaint.

              They haven't licensed their web-site code

              Neither have they announced that it's okay to copy, with or without modifications for the sake of parody. In the absense of such declarations, copyright law clearly states that you DON'T have permission to copy somebody else's work.

              Lifting web-site code is common on the web.

              Shoplifting is common in my neighborhood, too, but that doesn't make it legal.

  • Oou ought to be able to make whatever fun of them you want, even if the implications are false (see: www.bushoncrack.com). But legally, the bastard lawyers could probably win a libel lawsuit. IMHO that is a crock of shit because 99% of everything is a matter of opinion anyway. Congressman Baughtandbribed could sue every newspaper that claims he had an affair with the new intern, but he can't prove it didn't happen.
  • One minor suggestion - perhaps you should add a more prominent disclaimer somewhere on the site?
  • Call me an idealist, but....

    Amendment I

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
    • Gee ... so copyright must be unconstitutional?

      No, wait, there's also a Copyright Clause in the Constitution.

      I'm ribbing you a little; but my point is that First Amendment absolutism doesn't actually solve all that much. This is a tension within the Constitution itself, and I doubt the 1st A. was meant to amend away copyright.
  • It's amazing how many people lately seem to be consulting Slashdot for qualified legal advice.

    I hope that you realize submitting your own site to Slashdot will be more effective in bringing it down than an infinite number of lawyers in an infinite number of courts in an infinite number of years could ever hope to do.

    Hmm... think I'll post a question to Slashdot: "What is users' experience using online forums for obtaining legal advice? Is the wild speculation of random, ill-educated, bug-eyed computer junkies a valid substitute for a consultation with an attorney? And most importantly, is Slashdot considered 'permissible evidence' in court?"

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