EFF wins JibJab case
p2pnet.net News:- Still smiling because of its victory over Hollywood, the EFF has chalked up another win.
This time, Music publisher Ludlow Music has officially backed down on its threats against web animation studio JibJab Media over the widely circulated This Land parody lampooning president George W. Bush and Senator Kerry.
JibJab asked the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) to file suit on its behalf, looking for judicial confirmation that JibJab’s work was a protected ‘fair use’ and didn’t infringe Ludlow’s copyrights.
“During the course of investigating the case, EFF learned that ‘This Land is Your Land,’ the classic Woody Guthrie song, is part of the public domain and has been for several decades,” says the EFF.
“We believe that Guthrie’s classic tune, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ belongs to all of us now, just like Amazing Grace and Beethoven’s symphonies” said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with EFF. “The idea of copyright law is that, after a time, every work comes back into the hands of the public, where it can be reused, recycled, made part of new creativity without having to pay a fee or call in the lawyers. That’s a great thing, the real genius of copyright.”
JibJab dismissed its suit against Ludlow and as part of the settlement, it’ll be able to to continue distributing its ‘This Land’ animation “without further interference from Ludlow,” as the EFFÂ puts it.
August 25th, 2004 at 6:01 pm
Its always great news to see creativity empowered!
August 25th, 2004 at 7:12 pm
the EFF found a copy of a Woody Guthrie song book in the Library of Congress that was used to make the point that the song was now in the public domain. It’s worth a read – especially page three where Woody gives his views on the industry and the record labels.
http://www.eff.org/IP/20040823_Jibjab_Copyright_Scans.pdf
August 25th, 2004 at 10:45 pm
hi