Warner Bros. Smarter Than The Average Studio? Won't Fight Yogi Bear Parody

from the well-that's-nice dept

Fri, Dec 17th 2010 5:58am — Mike Masnick

We recently pointed to an amusingly dark parody ending to the new Yogi Bear movie, which was getting a lot of attention -- and wondered how Warner Bros. would react to it. Warner Bros. General Counsel has been upfront in the past, saying that they try not to shut down "fan art" unless it really goes over the line, but the company's actions don't always live up to that. In this case, however, the good news is that Warner Bros. has said that it won't fight the parody video and will let it live on. It just asked the artist to put a specific disclaimer on the video (which he did). The studio did ask YouTube if it could put an age limit on the video, because it was afraid of kids seeing Yogi get shot... but that didn't happen and WB still seems okay with. So, kudos to Warner Bros. for not overreacting. It's sad that it still needs to be highlighted when some of these firms don't overreact, but hopefully it means they're learning.

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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, parody, yogi bear
Companies: warner bros.

6 Comments

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cc (profile), 17 Dec 2010 @ 6:24am

They don't like the right to free speech, but at least they put up with the right to arm bears.
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- Dark Helmet (profile), 17 Dec 2010 @ 7:27am
  
  Re:
  "They don't like the right to free speech, but at least they put up with the right to arm bears."
  
  That has to be comment of the day material....
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TechnoMage (profile), 17 Dec 2010 @ 6:28am

The original Warner brothers had a history of seeing future trends before they became popular. Making the first "Talkie(s)": movies with audio, is the perfect example of this and is what propelled Warner Bros. studio into being one of the top studios. Perhaps we're seeing some of that forward thinking showing itself again.
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Anonymous Poster, 17 Dec 2010 @ 6:32am

A quote.
[i]The studio said the video was likely a protected work of parody and it would have required an excessive amount of legal work to have it pulled from YouTube, if that were even possible.[/i]

They admit that because the law is on Earle's side, it wouldn't be worth it to fight it - rather than admitting that they shouldn't fight it.

The studio essentially admitted that they would have said "Screw the law", regardless of who was in the right, if it were actually cheaper to do so.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Dec 2010 @ 7:41am

Earle's got a foot in the door as well....
Even though the legal suits may/may not have a problem with it, I'm sure the animation department is probably loving it for the most part. I'm sure Earle has gained a lot of clout with this and if he ever interviewed for a position at WB, pretty much EVERYONE would know who he was in a good way. I've seen a similar situation at my work with someone that did a "spoof" commercial for our product which ended up on Facebook and within 45 seconds after walking in the door and realizing who he was, the guy was hired!
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dave (profile), 20 Dec 2010 @ 9:38am

hmm
i don' know yogi. the ranger's not going to like this! :)
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