Movie Monsters, The Grateful Dead... And Fair Use Even In Commercial Use
from the good-news-for-fair-use dept
There's some good news on the fair use front. Many people seem to falsely believe that if a work is used for commercial purposes it cannot be fair use. They think fair use only applies to non-commercial efforts. But that's not true. Commercial use is factored into the analysis, but just because it's commercial does not mean that it's not fair use. A few years ago, an important case made this point, involving Grateful Dead concert posters that were used in a book. The Bill Graham Archives, who owned the posters in question, claimed that because the book was published commercially, it wasn't fair use. But the court ruled that even though the images were used commercially, and even though they were used in their entirety without modification, the fact that they were used in the context of a book describing the history of the band, made it fair use.It looks like we now have another, quite similar, ruling -- this time involving movie monsters, and whether or not magazine covers could be used in a book. And, once again, a court has ruled that this is fair use, despite the commercial nature. In this case, the book was a look at the artwork of Basil Gogos, who apparently designed numerous magazine covers concerning monster movies in the 1950s and 60s. The magazine publisher claimed that the use of the magazine covers in the book violated its copyrights and trademarks, but the judge ruled that this was fair use, noting that the use (if not the works) was transformative. That is, the original works were designed for use as magazine covers, but this use -- as a biographical and retrospective look at the artist -- was entirely different.
"The fact that the Gogos book is inherently biographical renders it so fundamentally transformative in nature, coupled with the fact that Spurlock utilized such a quantitatively and qualitatively minor portion of the magazines, requires this court to conclude that Spurlock's use is fair use and to grant Spurlock's motion for summary judgment on the copyright claims,"This is definitely an important fair use ruling, though will likely still go through appeal. Hopefully, it'll be allowed to stand.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: basil gogos, commercial use, copyright, fair use, grateful dead, movie monsters
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
a court gets it right
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I don't get it
Do these pro-copyright believers really feel so wronged?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Good Judges vs Bad Judges
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
But then again, instead of a lawsuit, I don't see why the magazine in question doesn't collect the artwork from the covers, remove the copy to reveal more of the artwork, and then sell that themselves with the covers at a higher resolution than the book was using (at full magazine dimensions or larger) and release their photo book, possibly work in stories of working with the artist from people who were working at the magazine at the time. Then, interest in the book with its smaller covers, would only work to promote the magazine's compilation of larger, less obscured covers. And interest in the compilation of covers would create interest in the artist, and take people to the book and original artwork from the artist. Win-win-win, and everybody could cross-promote the products to create a larger market interest in their grouping of related products.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Good News Indeed
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: I don't get it
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fair use and copyright
[ link to this | view in thread ]