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Copyright
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
James Boswell
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Luther R. Campbell aka Luke Skyywalker
v.
Acuff Rose Music, Inc.
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Copyright
Justice Souter Opinion
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March 7, 1994
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Excerpt:
In 1964, Roy Orbison and William Dees wrote a rock ballad called
"Oh, Pretty Woman" and assigned their rights in it to respondent Acuff
Rose Music, Inc. Acuff Rose registered
the song for copyright protection.
... On July 5, 1989, 2 Live Crew's manager informed Acuff Rose that 2
Live Crew had written a parody of "Oh, Pretty Woman," that they would
afford all credit for ownership and authorship of the original song to
Acuff Rose, Dees, and Orbison, and that they were willing to pay a fee
for the use they wished to make of it. Enclosed with the letter were a
copy of the lyrics and a recording of 2 Live Crew's song. Acuff Rose's agent refused permission, stating that "I
am aware of the success enjoyed by 'The 2 Live Crews', but I must
inform you that we cannot permit the use of a parody of 'Oh, Pretty
Woman.' "
... Almost a year later, after nearly a quarter of a million copies of the
recording had been sold, Acuff Rose sued 2 Live Crew and its record
company, Luke Skyywalker Records, for copyright infringement. The
District Court granted summary judgment for 2 Live Crew,
reasoning that the commercial purpose of 2 Live Crew's song was no bar
to fair use; that 2 Live Crew's version was a parody, which "quickly
degenerates into a play on words, substituting predictable lyrics with
shocking ones" to show "how bland and banal the Orbison song" is; that
2 Live Crew had taken no more than was necessary to "conjure up" the
original in order to parody it; and that it was "extremely unlikely
that 2 Live Crew's song could adversely affect the market for the
original."
...The Court of Appeals, however, immediately cut short the enquiry into 2 Live Crew's fair use claim by confining its treatment of the first factor essentially to one relevant fact, the commercial nature of the use. The court then inflated the significance of this fact by applying a presumption ostensibly culled from Sony, that "every commercial use of copyrighted material is presumptively ... unfair." In giving virtually dispositive weight to the commercial nature of the parody, the Court of Appeals erred.
The language of the statute makes clear that the commercial or nonprofit educational purpose of a work is only one element of the first factor enquiry into its purpose and character ... Congress could not have intended such a rule, which certainly is not inferable from the common law cases, arising as they did from the world of letters in which Samuel Johnson could pronounce that "[n]o man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." (Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON)
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