%20 wrote:
I didn't use 'parody' I said 'derivative works'. Parody as an example of Fair Use was still being investigated by the US courts at the time of the release of Spaceballs, 1987. (one of the major Parody/Fair Use cases was 2 Live Crew's 'Pretty Woman' case which was settled in 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v ... Music,_Inc.) Yes, as you said LFL couldn't stop Mel Brooks from making Spaceballs, but showing it could have been stopped or significantly impeded.
Are you a lawyer? I'm not asking this condescendingly as I'm torn between efforting a lesson in copyright law to one person on a board of movie fans or simply not giving a shit. I'm leaning towards the latter.
The short answer is that it doesn't matter. Spaceballs isn't a derivative work of Star Wars. Period. The point about "if LFL could have showed it was..." is completely irrelevant cause its not. If I could prove I invented the Facebook, I'd be a billionaire but I didn't so I can't and I'm not.
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Going against Brooks' case was that he agreed not to sell merchandise, prosecution would have used that as admission of breach of moral rights. Now is this a stretch, possibly, but these ideas were in flux at the time. And I used 'derivative work' because Spaceballs if Brooks lost (in this hypothetical) would have been labeled just that and not allowed to be shown. Parody would not have been discussed, as there was no case yet establishing it's authority.
The fact that Brooks agrees not to sell merchandise has close to no bearing on whether or not he infringed LFL's copyrights: that analysis is completely independent and would show Brooks did not infringe. Plaintiff's counsel would never, ever use that fact as dispositive. It would hardly be relevant unless he was able to show Spaceballs was a derivative work, and he wouldn't.
I don't know what planet you are from but these were not new ideas in the 1980s. Their application to the media of the day, sure, but it's not like we created new law to deal with any of this. These principles have existed since the the Statute of Anne and doctrines of fair use, parody, etc. were in the common law for over a century. Last I checked, the US was a common law system. There was no Spaceballs case so who's to say that Brooks wouldn't have tried a parody-like defense (spoiler: he wouldn't even have to because Mel, unlike 2 Live Crew, didn't infringe any of LFL's copyrights)? The Copyright Act 1976 codified a lot of the common law of the previous century, including the fair use test, which Spaceballs would have relied on.
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Fan Films?
That's not a moral rights issue. That's a derivative work.
For those of you paying attention:
"A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization,
fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted." § 101
If Lucasfilm wanted to, they could crack down on every fan film that uses any of Lucas's copyrighted material. They don't do it because, to their credit, they don't want to piss off the fans (a lot of the more famous fan films request licenses by the way). I suppose they do this enough in other ways.
Harry Potter fans aren't as lucky. JK Rowling has pursued actions against fans for a whole bunch of stuff. Most notably, the Harry Potter Lexicon (I don't think it pissed her off that much until it went to print for sale).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._and_J._K._Rowling_vs._RDR_Books
The question then becomes:
"If the US recognized moral rights to copyrighted works, would fan films violate George Lucas' moral rights?" First of all, the fan film infringes by virtue of it being a derivative work. It doesn't matter whether or not the fan film has violated any moral rights - the original author can already claim for infringement. Second, an author can only exercise moral rights in a derivative work if it represents a "derogatory treatment" of the work.
Just because LFL doesn't like a fan film's content doesn't mean it's "derogatory" either. There's a burden to meet here and it usually involves something particularly nasty or objectionable. So the answer, for the most part, is no: a fan film does not violate George Lucas' moral rights.
Not the right place for this discussion. Back to bitching about the blu-rays.