Changes to UK legislation are to come into force later this week allowing the parody of copyright works.Under current rules, there has been a risk of being sued for breach of copyright if clips of films, TV shows or songs were used without consent.But the new European Copyright Directive will allow the use of the material so long as it is fair and does not compete with the original version.The new law will come into effect on 1 October.Owners of the copyrighted works will only be able to sue if the parody conveys a discriminatory message.It would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny."The only, and essential, characteristics of parody are, on the one hand, to evoke an existing work while being noticeably different from it and, on the other, to constitute an expression of humour or mockery," the EU rules state."If a parody conveys a discriminatory message (for example, by replacing the original characters with people wearing veils and people of colour), the holders of the rights to the work parodied have, in principle, a legitimate interest in ensuring that their work is not associated with such a message."Continue reading the main story ANALYSISimage of Clive Coleman Clive Coleman Legal correspondent, BBC NewsIn the past comedians like French and Saunders and many others have parodied famous films, TV shows and songs using the copyright material in them, but there has always been a risk they could be sued by the copyright owner.Copyright owners would often grant a licence to those who wanted to use their work, and charge a fee for doing so. That meant many people wanting to parody were deterred from doing so. However, the view that parody is a form of free expression and creativity has driven the change to the law.Recently there's been an explosion of online parodies made by comically re-editing or "mashing-up" snippets of TV, film and songs. A mash-up of The Apprentice has had more than five million hits, while a parody of the Miley Cyrus song Wrecking Ball has had more than 50 million.The new law should lead to a growth of that kind of creativity by parodists who can now plunder copyright material from movies to boy bands.'Being censored'Cassette Boy, who is known for his online mash-up parodies of shows including The Apprentice and Dragons' Den, told the BBC's Clive Coleman that current rules meant he had to negotiate many legal issues which often led to frustration."It feels like our chosen form of expression is being censored," he said."It's like being a painter in a country where paint is illegal. In the past, our work has just disappeared from the internet overnight."Comedy writer Graham Linehan, who was behind TV shows such as The IT Crowd, Father Ted and Black Books, agreed the rules had been "quite restrictive" in his experience."It seems harder to do innocent mentions of anything to represent something that is part of our lives," he told the BBC."Artists need to be protected, but recently there's been an automated quality to some of the legal challenges. You might do something and you know full well the author of the original work will love the thing your doing and see it as a tribute or friendly nod, but the lawyers - they don't see any of that, they just see something they have to act on."We had an annoying thing recently where have a joke in the new series of Count Arthur Strong that involved a guy in a Predator costume and where the word 'predator' is the thing that makes it funny."Quite a long time after we wrote the script, we were told we couldn't use [the word], so we changed it to "alien bounty hunter" and suddenly the joke goes. It's ok, but it's not the joke we wanted."Linehan added the new legislation change was "a brilliant thing"."The thing it's most important and useful for, is the explosion of creativity that's come about because of the internet and the ability to share it," he said."People like to create new work and up until now those people have been in such a legal limbo. They can do something that's incredibly clever and very funny but it gets taken down in moments."
That's the EU I like to see. Still greatly supporting the Union here.But all y'all best be looking out for an upcoming Commission proposal I worked on the Deliverable of. Still classified for now, but it's going to be exciting for European criminal law.
It doesn't, I'm afraid. It has more to do with solving crimes than the actual prosecution.
Spoiler
Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 10:31:59 AMQuote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:28:13 AMIt doesn't, I'm afraid. It has more to do with solving crimes than the actual prosecution.Does it involve robots? >.>
Quote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:28:13 AMIt doesn't, I'm afraid. It has more to do with solving crimes than the actual prosecution.Does it involve robots? >.>
Quote from: Risay117 on September 29, 2014, 10:55:15 AMQuote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:35:37 AMQuote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 10:31:59 AMQuote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:28:13 AMIt doesn't, I'm afraid. It has more to do with solving crimes than the actual prosecution.Does it involve robots? >.>You are just teasing me, i really want to see what happens. Personally canadian, but if EU does something hopefully the next government if not Harper, will also slightly follow suit.Sorry man, I was forced to sign several different non-disclosure agreements and agree to confidentiality clauses before I was even told what the project is going to be about. Not that I suspect being spied on, but I'd rather not stake my academic future on something like this.Besides, I'm pretty sure there's going to be general information released soon, if it hasn't already. I might make a thread about it sometime when/if that feels appropriate.
Quote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:35:37 AMQuote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 10:31:59 AMQuote from: Flee on September 29, 2014, 10:28:13 AMIt doesn't, I'm afraid. It has more to do with solving crimes than the actual prosecution.Does it involve robots? >.>You are just teasing me, i really want to see what happens. Personally canadian, but if EU does something hopefully the next government if not Harper, will also slightly follow suit.
It would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny.
Quote from: Mr Psychologist on September 29, 2014, 10:14:07 AMIt would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny.Uhhhhh
Alright, I'll try to keep this brief. Basically, the current European situation is as follows: it is completely legal for you to make a parody of virtually anything. Only when you directly use source material that happens to be copyrighted (fragments of a movie, show, song, image...), it is possible that you're infringing on the rights of others and are breaking the law.The holder of the copyright has the sole rights to whatever he has copyrighted. He is the only one who can reproduce, spread and monetise it. If others wish to do so, they require the explicit permission of the holder. Now, member states of the Union have the choice to include a whole bunch of exceptions to this rule. All of the exceptions can be found in the link below, but the most common ones include the use for educational/scientific purposes, "fair use" and charity. The one most relevant to this topic is, of course, parody, which can be found in article 5.3(k) of the current European Copyright Directive, which reads:Quote5.3: Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2 and 3 in the following cases:(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;However, this is an entirely free choice. Member states are free to include all of those exceptions, or none at all. It's all at their own discretion. And unlike Belgium for example, the UK, for reasons that I don't care to look into, decided not to include parody as a valid exception to copyright. Now, in response to Dustin: as said above, parody most definitely is legal in the EU. This is exclusively about the direct usage of copyrighted source material, which was only illegal in certain EU countries such as the UK. This new Directive will "force" the UK (although force isn't the right word as it seems unlikely to me that the UK voted against this piece of legislation) to allow parodies of copyrighted material as long as they're fair, do not aim to compete with the original and do not convey a discriminatory message. This has already been the case in several other EU countries.For reference, it isn't all that different from the US situation, where they basically made it more abstract by just calling it all "fair use" and leaving it to the judge to decide. That has its benefits, but on the other hand, there have been US cases where people doing a parody were successfully sued because of it. Definitely not a perfect system either.In response to Mr. P and Kinder: it is not up to the judge to decide whether or not he personally thinks it's funny. He merely has to rule on whether the parody has any sort of potentially humorous value to it. The CJEU has decided on the revelant legal elements of a parody, which are "‘first, to evoke an existing work while being noticeably different from it, and, secondly, to constitute an expression of humour or mockery". The parody can be done in the poorest taste imaginable, but as long as it holds any element of humor or mockery, it'll be passable. It has nothing to do with how funny the judge thinks it is, it's all about whether it's an actual (attempt at a) parody, or sheer plagiarism of a copyrighted material.I hope someone actually reads and responds this, because it took me like half of the first part of the class I'm in now to write, lol.
5.3: Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2 and 3 in the following cases:(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;
Did the EU just do something good...?
