Tag Archive for: Roy Orbison

Back to the Future: Will the Seventh Circuit Transform Fair Use?

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Last month, the Seventh Circuit in Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation signaled what may be a seismic shift in how “fair use” cases are judged. In order to see why, let’s briefly review the statutory and judicial framework.

First, fair use is not a “right” as some “copy-left “ advocates would argue, but is a defense to copyright infringement codified since 1978 in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. And contrary to popular belief, there are no bright line rules as to what is and is not a fair use. For example, there’s no magic number of bars of music you can borrow or any certain number of seconds of a clip you can post or, as we’ll see, a prescribed portion of a photographic portrait that one is automatically free to use.

Rather, as the Supreme Court reiterated in the 1994 case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, fair use is determined by the courts on a case by case basis using the four factors of Section 107:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In Campbell, the Supreme Court held that 2 Live Crew’s use of a portion of the Roy Orbison hit, Oh, Pretty Woman, in its similarly titled song, Pretty Woman, constituted a fair use parody of the Orbison song in that only so much of the original work as was necessary to comment on that original work was used in the 2 Live Crew recording. In its analysis of the first statutory factor, the Court cited with approval Judge Pierre N. Leval’s influential 1990 Harvard Law Review article, Toward a Fair Use Standard, as to whether the use of the Orbison in the 2 Live Crew work was “transformative,” in that “it adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message….” The Court, noted, however, that “transformative use is not absolutely necessary for a finding of fair use” but that “the goal of copyright, to promote science and the useful arts, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works.”

Since Campbell, the Second Circuit, historically the nation’s second most important copyright court, took the “transformative use” ball and ran with it. Recent cases, such as the Google Books decision and Cariou v. Prince, held that copying of entire works constituted fair use on the basis that the use was “transformative.” Cariou, for example, involved Richard Prince’s alteration of entire photographs taken by Cariou. The Second Circuit held that the use was “transformative” and therefore a fair use, even though Prince’s works did not comment on Cariou’s, as was the case in Campbell. Any cursory Google search will yield a plethora of articles critical of Cariou.

This leads us to the Seventh Circuit and Kienitz. The case concerns a photo of the Mayor of Madison Wisconsin, Paul Soglin, taken by Kienitz. Soglin, with Kienitz’s approval, posted the portrait on the city’s website. The controversy arose because Soglin wanted to shut down an annual street party that he had once attended as a student many years before. Sensing some irony, defendant Sconnie Nation downloaded the headshot from the website, removed the background, changed the coloring and shading and added the slogan, “Sorry for Partying.” You can see the before and after pictures in the Court’s opinion. Sconnie Nation sold a total of 54 shirts, clearing a modest profit, and engendering the infringement action by Kienitz. Relying on Cariou, the parties argued whether or not defendant’s use of plaintiff’s photograph was “transformative”, with the District Court deciding that it was. Writing for the Seventh Circuit in his typically pithy manner, Judge Easterbook took a cynical view of this:

Fair use is a statutory defense to infringement. The Copyright Act sets out four non-exclusive factors for a court to consider. The district court and the parties have debated whether the t-shirts are a “transformative use” of the photo – and , if so, just how “transformative” the use must be. That’s not one of the statutory factors, though the Supreme Court mentioned it in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. The Second Circuit has run with the suggestion and concluded that “transformative use” is enough to bring a modified copy within the scope of §107. Cariou applied this to an example of “appropriation art,” in which some of the supposed value comes from the very fact that the work was created by someone else.

We’re skeptical of Cariou’s approach, because asking exclusively whether something is “transformative” not only replaces the list in §107 but could also override 17 U.S.C. §106(2), which protects derivative works. To say that a new use transforms the work is precisely to say that it is derivative and thus, one might suppose, protected under §106(2). Cariou and its predecessors in the Second Circuit do not explain how every “transformative use” can be “fair use” without extinguishing the author’s rights under §106(2).

We think it best to stick with the statutory list, of which the most important usually is the fourth (market effect). [Citations omitted]

In the remainder of its 7-page opinion, the Court went through each of the four factors and affirmed the District Court’s finding of fair use, noting that while non-copyrightable elements, such as the Mayor’s face, were used in the Sconnie Nation shirts, the copyrightable expression in Kienitz’ photo was largely expunged: “Defendants removed so much of the original that, as with the Cheshire Cat, only the smile remains.”

Despite its rejection of the Second Circuit’s approach, the Seventh Circuit reached the same conclusion as under a transformative use analysis. It remains to be seen whether any other courts will adopt the Seventh Circuit’s retro approach in eschewing “transformativeness” as the touchstone of fair use. And if so, will they then find against fair use in cases, as in Author’s Guild v. HathiTrust and Cariou, where far more copyrightable expression was retained in the wholesale copying of works? In sum, adoption of this “new” approach may not necessarily signal a reversal of the trend to expand fair use.

Finally, it would be interesting to see what the Court would have done if Soglin, a public figure, had filed suit for violation of his right of publicity in the unauthorized commercial use of his likeness, albeit one with political overtones.

The Good Wife and the Parody Defense

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Imagine my surprise when I tuned in to yesterday’s episode of The Good Wife, expecting the usual sexual and political intrigue and found myself in the middle of a copyright infringement case that seemed to have elements of the Supreme Court’s  decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (the case where the high court held that 2 Live Crew’s use of the Roy Orbison hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman” was a parody of that 1960s classic), Glee and the recent furor over the Goldiblox ad using The Beastie Boys’ song, Girls. What fun!

Although the technicalities of these types of cases were somewhat glossed over for dramatic effect, things like “parody”, “transformative use”, “derivative copyright” and “compulsory license” were bandied about in the middle of the battle between Alicia Florrick’s client and that of her nemesis, former lover and head of her former firm, Will Gardner.

The fictional case involved a duo that had done a “cover” of sorts of a rap tune where they kept the original rap lyrics but wrote a new melody for the song, “transforming” it into a bouncy pop tune. This version was, in turn, “covered” by yet another artist and was broadcast on a fictional Glee-like show.

Now, those of you who’ve read my previous blog posts both on here and on ScoreStreet, are already familiar with these concepts. But, for you fans of The Good Wife who want to know what all the fuss was about as these legal terms went whizzing by, here’s a brief explanation of some of what was going on in the case where one party was portrayed by F. Murray Abraham (who won an Oscar for his role as the composer, Salieri, in the film, Amadeus), and where the judge was Dominic Chianese, Uncle Junior of The Sopranos  fame and someone who released a recording of Italian songs. Kudos to the casting department for the inside jokes!

The manager for the budding pop duo spoke about getting a “compulsory” license. This, is in fact,  known in the music biz as a “mechanical” license. Typically, a record label (on behalf of its recording artist) obtains this license from the copyright owner of the song to be “covered,” which is usually a music publisher. It is a compulsory license under Section 115 of the Copyright Act in that once a song has been commercially recorded and released, any artist can “cover” that song and the copyright owner  must grant permission (hence, the “compulsory” license), provided that the artist (or more likely, their label) pays the “statutory” rate, which is currently 9.1 cents unit distributed for a song that is 5 minutes or less in duration. So, if an artist sells 100,000 downloads of a song that’s less than 5 minutes long, the record label owes the publisher $9,100.00.

Compulsory mechanical licenses only give the artist rights to make an audio-only recording. And while an artist under the mechanical license can arrange the covered song to his own style, he can’t make fundamental changes such as material alterations to the song’s lyrics. The right to make other uses of the song requires additional rights – as was noted during the show. This is where this “derivative copyright” stuff comes in.

A copyright owner has a “bundle of rights” including the right to make and distribute copies and to create – or authorize others to create – “derivative works.” What’s a derivative work? You can look it up in Section 101 of the Copyright Act, but arrangements, translations, adaptations and the like are derivative works. For example, making a film from a novel is creating a derivative work of that novel. So is making a video of a song or doing a new arrangement of a song, such as keeping the lyrics but writing an entirely new melody to them, as was done in The Good Wife. Such derivative uses are often viewed as being “transformative,” in that the new work has recast and re-purposed the original work.

Most derivative uses of a copyrighted work need to be authorized or licensed by the copyright owner of the underlying work. For example, if a producer wants to use a hit song in an upcoming TV show, they need to get a “synchronization” license from the copyright owner of the song (typically, a music publisher) and permission from the copyright owner of the recording of that song (typically, the artist’s label).

However, there is an exception under the doctrine of “fair use” for a “parody” of a work. An artist may use another’s copyrighted work without permission if the new work  is commenting in some manner on the underlying original, as was held to be the case with 2 Live Crew and “Oh, Pretty Woman.”  Such a “parody”  is said to be a “transformative” use of the work, and under certain circumstances, no permission would be required and the use, even without permission, would not constitute copyright infringement.

But there’s a catch:  what was not made clear in last night’s episode, probably for dramatic purposes, is that in order to have a fair use “parody” of the work, one can only use so much of the underlying work as to “conjure” the original. One cannot simply take the entire underlying work and use it wholesale, such as taking an entire lyric and writing a new tune to it. In the “Oh, Pretty Woman” case, 2 Live Crew only used a portion of the original song and the rest was original material, thereby creating a “transformative” use of the Orbison hit. Got that?

Who knew that copyright and music licensing could be so dramatic!

Why The Obama Big Bird Ad’s Going Bye-Bye

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Since last week’s Presidential debate, Big Bird’s eight-foot high profile has grown even larger.  It started with a comment that Republican contender, Gov. Mitt Romney, made to the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS , about cutting federal funding for PBS programs, including Lehrer’s own NewsHour and Sesame Street. Mr. Romney specifically singled out Big Bird for the budget ax.  Thereafter, Big Bird, who claims he’s normally in bed well before 11:30 p.m., made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update to address the issue.  Being non-partisan, however, Mr. Bird declined to make any political pronouncements, stating, “No, I don’t want to ruffle any feathers.”

Unfortunately, he’s managed to do so, courtesy of a TV ad from President Obama’s campaign.  Prominently featuring Big Bird and the familiar green Sesame Street  sign, the ad has a satiric quality to it that one doesn’t typically see in Presidential campaign ads. It seemed, at least to me, more like one of the fake ads produced by Saturday Night Live. But it’s real and Sesame Workshop, the company that owns the rights to Sesame Street and its many characters, made it known that they are not amused.

Sesame Workshop’s demand that the Obama campaign cease using the Big Bird ad has been widely publicized.  But you might well ask, “doesn’t the President’s campaign have a First Amendment right to use Big Bird?” After all, “political speech” is the very core of our right to free speech.  And wouldn’t the use of Big Bird constitute “fair use” under copyright law? Wouldn’t it be considered a protected “parody”?

Well, probably not. Let’s first look at “fair use,” something that’s often misunderstood. Much ink has been spilled in recent years over so-called “fair use rights.” Actually, “fair use,” which is codified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, is a defense to copyright infringement – not a “right.” And one of the purposes of “fair use” is to balance first amendment speech rights with copyright law’s limited monopoly.  Section 107 does state that use of a work may be “fair use” when used “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research….” Moreover, the courts have repeatedly held that there are no black line rules for determining fair use and that each decision is to be made on a case-by-case basis through an analysis of Section 107’s four factors. These include the “the purpose and character of the use”, such as whether it’s a “commercial use” and how much of the underlying work is used in the allegedly infringing work.  More recent cases also look to see if the use is “transformative,” meaning that the underlying work is not merely reproduced but is used in a new way.

One thing’s clear: just because it’s a political ad doesn’t mean you can use someone else’s copyrighted work.  The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but it doesn’t give you the right to freely use someone else’s speech.  A few years ago, Joe Walsh of The Eagles sued Joe Walsh the Congressional candidate over the use of one of his songs in a TV ad.  Many composers won’t allow their works to be used for political purposes. For example, Aaron Copland’s estate won’t allow the use of the iconic “Fanfare for the Common Man” to be used in political campaigns. A few years ago, when I was at Boosey & Hawkes, I was able to slap Comedy Central on the wrist for an unauthorized use of the Copland anthem on The Daily Show that was discovered by my staff. The result: a hefty license fee and some tickets to a taping of the show.

So what about the Big Bird ad? The use of the clip of Gov. Romney from the Presidential debate is likely  a fair use. It’s a short clip of a public, newsworthy event and the ad is commenting on Gov. Romney’s views and criticizing them.  With respect to Big Bird, it’s a bit more tricky.  He’s not the subject of the criticism, but his name and likeness is being used to criticize Gov. Romney’s statements.  And there’s an awful lot of Big Bird in the ad.

But, isn’t it a “transformative” use? After all, parody is one of the uses that may be considered transformative.  But, sometimes a parody is not a parody in the legal sense. The 1994 Supreme Court case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (involving 2 Live Crew’s unauthorized use the Roy Orbison hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman” in one of its songs) and many subsequent cases, hold that a new work is a protected parody under copyright law only when it is commenting on, i.e., parodying, the underlying original work.  In the 2 Live Crew case, the Supreme Court found that the rap group’s song did, in fact, comment upon the Orbison hit.  In the Obama ad, it appears that the parody is directed not at Big Bird (the underlying copyrighted work), but at Gov. Romney. That would tend to defeat the parody defense. For example, it’s not a legally protected “parody” if you take a popular song and merely change the lyrics to comment on some topical issues of the day as opposed to scorning the song itself. But what about Weird Al Yankovic? Actually, Weird Al gets permission from the copyright owners of the songs he “parodies.”  And, as the Supreme Court noted in the 2 Live Crew case, the parody doesn’t have to be either good or funny.

So, it’s murky at best under copyright law as to whether the Obama campaign can use Big Bird in its ad without permission.  But it doesn’t end there. Remember the “Sesame Street” street sign? Sesame Workshop has a trademark in that famous logo.  Not surprisingly, there’s a “fair use” provision in the federal trademark act (that’s Section 33(b)(4) of the Lanham Act for you footnote freaks) and the courts construing it typically consider three factors, including whether the use of the mark suggests sponsorship or endorsement by the owner of the trademark.  Under that test, it looks like Sesame Workshop has a legitimate gripe about the use of its trademark “endorsing” the President’s position.

And remember, I mentioned the use of Big Bird’s “name and likeness.” That’s typically an area of law known as the right of publicity, which allows celebrities, often very dead ones, to make lots of money off of their name and likeness and to prevent others from cashing in without their consent.  However, unlike copyright and trademark, the right of publicity is a matter of state law, not federal law, and every state’s law is different. And while I know of cases where actors portraying fictional characters have successfully made publicity claims (e.g., George Wendt and John Ratzenberger suing over a “Norm” and “Cliff” robot impersonators), I’m not aware of any right of publicity cases involving characters such as the likes of Big Bird, Mickey Mouse or Spiderman.

So, the Big Bird ad, on intellectual property law grounds, is likely to fly the coop. However, that’s not why it’s going bye-bye. While I’m sure the lawyers working for the Obama campaign know that they’re not on solid ground, the Sesame Workshop folks aren’t likely to file a lawsuit. For one, Sesame Workshop’s gotten a lot of favorable free publicity.  But more importantly, the Big Bird brouhaha has a shelf life that will last only until the October 11 Vice Presidential debate and I suspect both sides know this and don’t want to spend a lot of money fighting over something so ephemeral.  Even if there weren’t any legal issues, I’d be very surprised if the Big Bird ad continues to air after this week, by which time it’ll be as fresh as last week’s leftover chicken.