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#1
11-29-2012, 09:04 AM
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What's the copyright situation regarding parodies ?
As far as I can gather from researching the net, the situation varies from country to country.
Australia appears to have the most liberal approach to parody, and nobody in their right mind would initiate litigation in Australia alleging breach of copyright in regard to a parody. In the UK the situation is apparently the exact opposite, and parodies enjoy no protection whatsoever, if the copyright holder of the parodied work takes offence about the parody. In the US the situation appears to be somewhere in between these extremes. The reason I ask is because I have come up with what I modestly consider a very funny parody on a song by a well known country superstar, and I was wondering what , if anything, would happen if I recorded it and put it up on Youtube. Weird Al Yankovic gets away with it, but maybe he pays royalties to the original composers ... My modest creation is nowhere in the same league creatively as Weird Al's hilarious parodies, but I feel it could raise a chuckle. I suppose the worst case scenario would be that Youtube would pull the video if they got any complaints from the copyright holder ... 
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#2
11-29-2012, 10:29 AM
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This is an interesting point, especially in the US. A lot of folksong writers "borrow" melodies whole and put different words to them, and never get bothered. Woody Guthrie, for example, "borrowed" so many melodies from the Carter Family, it's unbelievable -- "This Land Is Your Land" simply being the most famous example. "Girl From the North Country" by Bob Dylan is a direct rip of an old English madrigal. And these songs aren't parodies, either.
John Fogarty wrote so many "swamp blues" in the key of E, that he was actually sued by his former record company (who owned the copyrights) of stealing from himself.
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#3
11-29-2012, 10:32 AM
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You may want to call the copyright office in your country, or if you have radio stations near you that produce their own song parodies, they ought to know the rules and may be able to point you in the right direction. There is a section in here about fair use and parody that lists the US cases that have been decided by the Supreme Court: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_us...use_and_parody
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