Wal-Mart Parody Site Censored by DMCA 469
davidwr writes "Wal-Mart used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to temporarily shut down a university student's parody of the Wal-Mart Foundation." The story's details are also available via BusinessWeek. From the article: "Papasian launched the Web site April 16 for an art class at Carnegie Mellon University called 'Parasitic Media.' The class teaches students about the political uses of satire in the media. He acknowledged using Wal-Mart's graphics on his Web site but said he believed he could use the images as part of a parody."
And no archive.org either (Score:3, Interesting)
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get a free laptop [coingo.net]
Walmart (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is waaaaay overblown... (Score:2, Interesting)
I just hate it when people overhype crap to get attention.
Is the Wal-Mart Foundation a legit non-profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is waaaaay overblown... (Score:1, Interesting)
I graduated from an art school, and I bet anything that he was hoping to have his site shut down so that he could gain publicity and a little notoriety through controversy. Crappy artists LOVE controversy, because it lends false legitimacy to otherwise lazy work. (Not all controversial art is lazy, but a lot of lazy work milks controversy.)
I would also bet that he has an over-zealous teacher telling him that sticking up that notice that replaced his original parody also makes for great art. Art teachers love to live vicariously through their students.
I feel as though it's lame to do your best to get censored, and then make a big fuss out of it when you DO. And, again, he wasn't really censored, Wal-Mart merely asked him to remove pictures. Someone with imagination or skill would have then put up his own. It's just so much easier (and garners more undeserved attention) to cry censorship.
I hate Wal-Mart, but I can't fault them for this. I can't wait until the current trend in fine-art shifts, and we get some artists with some real ideas.
The DMCA is NOT piperazine (Score:3, Interesting)
The DMCA was NOT designed for the purpose of stifling free speech. (We have libel laws and slander laws for that.
Some humourless lawyer would argue that his client is afforded every protection of the law. I would argue that the DMCA is NOT a protection under the law.
The case is like arguing that you can ONLY have ONE of anything. Reproduction of anything at anytime for any purpose would be outlawed.
Re:Look alike graphics would be OK. (Score:5, Interesting)
Next time do a *good* job of it as call the site "Dull-Mart" or somesuch, and use a matching domain. Also ajust all the images so that they betray the intent of the site (i.e. a parody). Every last line should say something insightful or funny that it difficult to mix up with the original. Someone else pointed to this site [boringboring.org] as an example of how it should be done.
Good luck.
How is parody of WalMart copyright infringement? (Score:2, Interesting)
Vote Papasian Vice President, Student Body Finance (Score:1, Interesting)
\. got played; You can't buy this sort of publicity. At least not as an undergrad @ CMU.
He might have lost the election worse than his battle w/ wall-mart... but there's always next year.
OK, can you spot the parody (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, check out the trademark at this site [sherwin-williams.com].
Some artist decided to stick it to the man, however the man is so dense he hasn't noticed he was being mocked for, what, seventy years now?
Re:Foolish boy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly, and until the US legal system starts making those who sue and lose, pay for the defendant's legal costs, corporations and others with lots of funding, will continue to use the legal system as a business tool, used for intimidation and career advancement.
Until the legal system is changed so it applies equally to all people and not just those who can afford a good lawyer, corporations will continue to get away with all sorts of shit, at the expense of our rights.
Scare tactics (Score:2, Interesting)
Back in the day, I put up a website called "The Saint Peterbilt Steel Erection Church of Christ". For reasons that are lost in obscurity. I received a C&D from lawyers representing Paccar, the company that owns Peterbilt Trucks. They claimed images on the page (which I had made myself) were similar to the Peterbilt logo, and they would take legal action to protect their trademark. Well, I panicked. Then I researched and found out what my rights are. Then I took a look at the images, and decided I could make them look nicer and at the same time a little less like the Peterbilt logo. That served both our purposes, so I went ahead and did it. Then I sent them a letter stating that the site was parody and therefore protected, that I'd made a concession in altering the images to make them less similar to the protected trademark, and that was pretty much all they were going to get. I offered to include a verbal disclaimer on the site if they felt there was a possibility people would get confused and think that Paccar Inc. was a sponsor or somehow affiliated with The Saint Peterbilt Steel Erection Church of Christ. Their response was, "No, that's fine." My site was down for all of... not at all.
Re:Foolish boy... (Score:1, Interesting)
As far as the definition of parody being offered up, the one given mentioning confusion is more of a trademark, rather than copyright standard. TM law focuses on likely consumer confusion as the main element in its analysis. Under copyright, parody has a broader definition, which basically translates to using the original material in order to make fun of the author or work itself.
Though the website may claim parodic use, the flat-out copying is a problem. This doesn't look like something that needed to be filed under the DMCA - standard CR law would have worked.
WalMart hasn't even filed a TM claim yet. There's going to be domain name issues (Bosley Medical aside) AND in a TM claim, the confusion will be an issue, and it looks pretty bad here...
Re: Just call it MalWart (Score:2, Interesting)
Freenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's more than just DCMA (Score:3, Interesting)
That distinction only makes sense if there is a distinction between logos copied off the web site and logos faithfully reproduced by hand using some graphics software and a pen and tablet. Let's say they looked pretty recognisable, obviously referring to the retail giant, but they were a bit off in many dimensions, and they were an original work? Can a publisher or advertiser push DMCA on an artist if their work gets cut up and pasted into a collage?
The real issue here is that the DMCA C&D adds more to the art than the simple act of parody! The "CENSORED" graphics are more demonstrative of conflict, which is the real purpose of the art anyway.
Re:Foolish boy... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't read the articles, then you think it's a legitimate WalMart website. Then what? Since the images are WalMart's own images, it doesn't harm WalMart that you see those images, does it?
It's only the content of the articles that could potentially harm WalMart, but when you read them, you quickly realize that it is a parody, therefore it's no longer copyright infrigement.
Either way, there's no harm done to WalMart, or at least not in a way that their lawyers can work on.