This week, Sony/ATC Music Publishing in New York City wrote to Rev. Fred Phelps and his church group, known for picketing soldiers’ funerals across the nation, telling them to stop what it claimed was “unauthorized use” of the song “Holding Out for a Hero,” featured in the 1984 film “Footloose.” Sony accused Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church of violating copyright laws with their online video parody, “There Are No Heroes.”The video highlights the church’s controversial stance against homosexuality in connection with the belief that soldiers’ deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars serve as God’s punishment for the U.S. tolerating homosexuality.
Fred Phelps’ daughter and the church’s attorney said the group will continue hosting its video of the song on its Web site. She maintains that Sony “said in their letter that it is a parody, but they lost their perspective. They hate these words. We said plainly there are no heroes and that is what the song is about. Under the fair use doctrine, this is proper for us to do.”
Phelps responded to the letter from Peter Brodsky, Sony’s executive vice president for business and legal affairs, this past Friday, claiming that Westboro’s use of the song is exempt from copyright laws because the video is a parody.
This is the second time in recent years that a music company has accused Phelps and his church of copyright infringement. Last year, Warner/Chappel Music Inc. in Los Angeles viewed the group’s parody of “God Hates the World,” to the tune of “We are the World” as a violation of its copyright.
Find this article in Business Week. Further details on this story and a link to the “There Are No Heroes” video can be found here.
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2 comments:
Of course, Sony would like to prevent the use of its copyrighted music from being associated with a highly controversial message that can taint the public's association with that music. The last thing Sony wants is for people to associate its copyrighted material with an aggressive anti-homosexuality rhetoric. But legally, these uses are probably beyond Sony's control. This controversy illustrates the innate tension between protecting artists' works under copyright law and allowing others to appropriate and alter those works for parody, as protected under the First Amendment. Should we introduce new doctrine that draws a line in the sand prohibiting parody that destroys the image of a work when the parody IS NOT a comment on the work itself? The parody here is not of the song, but of the notion that fallen soldiers are heroes. The song is only being mocked insofar as it embraces a heroism that the protesters claim does not exist in this particular case. Presumably the protesters cannot deny that there could ever be heroes. The parody then, if there is any, is at best secondary. How would a doctrine that only allows parody to trump copyright only when the parody is the primary intent of the use fare? For another instance of this debate, see Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders v. Pussycat Cinema wherein the Dallas Cowboys sued the makers of Debbie Does Dallas for their use of the Cowboys' cheerleader uniforms under the federal Trademark laws. That case, of course, must be read in the context of its sexually explicit nature, which surely tainted the judge's opinions. Nonetheless, that very qualification makes it apt for the present circumstances, involving a marginalized and outspoken critique of homosexuality.
It is ironic that an intolerant reverend like Phelps would select a song featured in a movie whose plot is about using song and dance to overcome the narrow views of an essentially fanatical minister.
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