Brittany King
COM 405
Ginny Whitehouse
Case Paper
In 1989, 2 Live Crew released an album called “As Clear As They Wanna Be,” with a song called “Pretty Woman” which they made a parody from “Oh, Pretty Woman,” from Roy Orbison’s ballad they released in 1964. “Pretty Woman” only used two lines from the original song, the remainder consisted of satirical lyrics, replacing “pretty woman” with lyrics such as “big hairy woman,” “bald headed woman,” and “two-timin’ woman.” A year after 2 Live Crew released their album, Orbison sued for copyright infringement. (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 1994)
The District Court granted 2 Live Crew a summary judgment, but then the Court of Appeals reversed the decisions saying that the defense was barred. Then the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the holding for 2 Live Crew. (Onelbriefs.com, 2009)
Acuff-Rose didn’t present any evidence that “Oh, Pretty Woman” suffered from financial harm, and the appeals court neglected to consider all four parts of the fair use test, enacted in the 1976 Copyright Act. (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 1994)
In the 1988 case Hustler v. Falwell, the Supreme Court decided that Copyright protection for parody is considered to be protected by the First Amendment. (Hustler v. Falwell, 1988)
One of the many copyright cases is Berlin et al v. E.C. Publications of 1964. Mad magazines published “More Trash from Mad No. 4” which was a song with 57 different parody lyrics, one being from Irving Berlins, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” After publication 25 of the parodies were used to sue E.C. Publications, publisher of Mad magazine. Berlin was named plaintiff but the case was brought about by many other publishers. The trial court established a legal prec...
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...e they already had precedents to go on and to add to for future cases.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose is significant for future cases because the ruling says courts need to use all four parts of the fair use test, the work as a whole, not just certain parts of it. The defense didn’t cause harm on the plaintiff and that will be significant for future cases involving fair use with anything, not just music. It would work for photographs, videos, books, etc. As long as a new object is created fair use of an object can be used.
Works Cited
Association, The Music. Court Decisions.
(2nd Cir.1964). Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc. 329 F.2d 541.
(1994). Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S. 569.
(1988). Hustler v. Falwell. 485 U.
Onelbriefs.com. (2009). Copyright (c) .
(1992). Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301.
(2nd cir. 1992). Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301.
In prior cases regarding parody, the court has adopted different statutory interpretations. In Harley Davidson, Inc. v Grottanelli, 164 F.3d 806 (2nd Cir. 1998), the defendant like Pets, Inc., admitted to purposively creating an association with the plaintiff’s mark, the wordings used by the CEO of Pets, Inc. are not as explicit as that of Grottanelli, however, he clearly states that he designed Petpel No. 13 to evoke fun of Chapel. His statement
Trina’s intent was to create a song that liberated women from the double standards and stereotypical views placed upon them. Her song however can cause harm to young women that listen to take this song to heart. Instead of liberation, we are moved further down into the hole of degrading and devaluing women. Trina should’ve sent the message that these things were wrong. Instead she endorsed and encouraged them.
There have been many Supreme Court cases that dealed with many concepts of the law, like obscenity for example. As a matter of fact, obscenity is a concept that Miller v. California deals with. To be more specific, this case deals with what is considered obscene, and if the specific obscenity mentioned in this case is protected by the first amendment, the freedom of speech. I will now explain this case in more depth.
California, in 1931, was seen as a violation of the First Amendment after Stromberg was arrested for displaying a red flag as a sign of resistance against the government. This was the first declaration that symbolic speech is protected under the First Amendment (“Timeline of Flag...”). In 1943, the issue of a law requiring people to salute the flag was raised in the West Virginia v. Barnett court case. In this case, the importance of freedom of expression under the First Amendment was highlighted by Justice Jackson (“Supreme Court Cases”). In 1969, Street v New York it was decided that no state is able to convict a person based on verbal comments insulting the flag. Street was arrested after burning the flag and yelling “we don’t need no damn flag” into the crowd. Instead of focusing on the burning of the flag and deciding whether or not it is protected under the First Amendment they focused on Street’s oral remarks (“Timeline of
The 1996 movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt, is a story about Larry Flynt, owner of Hustler Magazine, getting in trouble with legal issues due to his magazines containing sexual explicit content. Larry had previous history of owning many strip clubs throughout Ohio, which initially led him into producing these magazines. People throughout the country attempted to stop Larry from producing these magazines saying that it violated many “community standards” but that didn’t stop him and he was willing to speak up for his rights. Later, Jerry Falwell sues Larry for publishing a parody of him having a sexual experience with his mother. The trial court found Falwell and his intentional infliction of emotional distress claim to be true and
A solution, based in precedent, must be found to illustrate that judges are not consumed by their own opinions and agendas. Setting new precedent in the courtroom is essential to
Notable First Amendment Court Cases: Evans v. Selma Union High School of Fresno County American Library Association, 1924. April
Caruso, David B.. "Harry Potter case illustrates blurry line in copyright law - USATODAY.com." USATODAY.com. USA TODAY, 20 Apr. 2008. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
In 1951, the US supreme court upheld the convictions of 12 communist party members convicted under the Smith Act were not protected by the first amendment. Speech supporting the upthrow of the federal government is not protected. Another example is in 1971, under the New York Times v. United States, the US supreme court upheld the publication of Pentagon Papers. They state that this case establishes that the press has almost absolute immunity from pre-publication restraints. There are many other cases such as the black rights movement and the feminist movement.
Music censorship of the lyrics begins in the early age, and it is usually used to regulate the lyrics in Rock music because the furor characteristics of this music genre. Thus ac...
Another amusing example was in June 1965, radio stations across the country ban the Rolling Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" because they believe the lyrics are too sexually suggestive.
Music Copyright is a very important aspect of the music industry. The Copyright law was established to preserve the creativity and rights of authors, composers, performers of expression. Copyright is the law that protects the property rights of the creator of an original work in a fixed tangible medium. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/copyright) A fixed tangible medium is something substantial like copying lyrics on paper or putting a song on tape or CD. Copyright can be seen every where in the music industry. Many music artist of our culture today have been involved in copyright issues. Recently, on MTV news it was stated that, "As the music industry becomes increasingly concerned about protecting the integrity of artists copyrights in the age of MP3. Prince has now filed a motion in New York federal court aimed at shutting down several websites offering free downloads of the Artist's songs." (http://www.mtv.com…19990304/prince.jhtml) In addition, in recent music news, "Nine Inch Nails lead man Trent Reznor copyright infringement suit was dismissed. Another artist claimed that the Reznor had stolen material for his last album." (http://www.mtv.com…19991202/nine_inch_nails.jhtml) The copyright law has become an important legal aspect to know our music generation.
Miller v. California. 413 U.S. 15 (1973) Argued January 18-19, 1972. Reargued November 7, 1972. Decided June 21, 1973
Copyright and fair use laws are laws that allow for creators of works to have rights to their creations. But, they also allow the free use of works, in the effort to get your point across. Fair use can be defined as the doctrine that brief excerpts of copyrighted material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder. This doctrine shows how the general public is available to reproduce copyrighted material without acquiring consent. While, this is true, we are only allowed to reproduce part of the information, not the entirety of the work. These can include news reporting, teaching purposes,
On December 17, 1999, in Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, the Ninth Circuit struck down the law as a content-based restriction on protected speech not in furtherance of any compelling governmental interest because the prohibited images are not of actual children. According to that C...