For anyone who ever needed to understand what’s so good about derivative works, presenting: 10 Things I Hate About Commandments.
Like its sibling, Must Love Jaws, it fuses many different copyrighted works together into a hilarious, farcical cultural commentary.
It might be easy to assume that the use of each copyrighted work is a fair use because the entire piece is parody. But it’s certainly not a parody of each work it uses. I wonder whether this artist might catch a lawyer letter or a lawsuit pretty soon.
These works also illustrate why there’s some weakness to the argument that there can or should be hermetically sealed copyright-based entertainment and non-copyright based entertainment. If cultural referents from the copyright side can’t be used in the non-copyright side, the non-copyright side is diminished.
(ht: IPCentral)
UPDATE: I e-mailed the creator who declined comment. The conclusion I would draw is that he is not confident that these pieces do not violate copyright.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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