JibJab and their political parody "This Land" are in the news again. (my previous post) They are being sued for copyright infringement by Ludlow Music, Inc., a unit of The Richmond Organization whom owns the rights to Woodie Guthrie's classic song.
Oddly enough Woody Guthrie once used this as a copyright on one of his early recordings.
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."Publisher peeved at political parody. - Jul. 26, 2004, CNN
This Land Isn't Your Land, EFF: Deep Links
Wired News: Sue You: This Song Is Our Song
Using Copyright to shut down satire
If Woodie Guthrie were alive he wouldn't be suing Jib Jab, he'd be praising them.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying this to say that coporations are evil, that would be absurd, but what is clear is that if copyright ended after the original artist died or soon thereafter then we wouldn't have this ridiculous mess.
On another note Ludlaw is not looking to "protect" themselves, they are looking to persue this legal matter as a source of profit. Doesn't the law require Ludlaw to show damages. This does NO damage to Ludlaw. If anything it exposes more people to Woodie Guthrie and potentially sells more records. Perhaps they are also suing to increase their visibility.
Bottom line the whole thing smacks of hipocracy and greed. If Ludlaw looses, Jib Jab should be able to go after damages. I as a citizen am paying for Ludlaw's greed and it's costing me more money than Job Jab has cost them, can I sew Ludlaw?
Also, I believe Boing Boing or someone had a post about how this relates to the Induce Act. The point being that this was shown and distributed on hundreds of TV stations and networks. If the Induce Act were passed it would make all those TV stations and news networks lible for "inducing" copyright infringement.
Why don't we just cut out the courts and the middle men and throw Ludlaw and Orin Hatch in a dog fighting pit and let their greed and stupidity tear each other apart.