Analysis Of 2 Live Crew

636 Words2 Pages

Brittany King
COM 405
Ginny Whitehouse
Case Paper
In 1989, 2 Live Crew released an album called “As Clear As They Wanna Be,” with a song called “Pretty Woman” which they made a parody from “Oh, Pretty Woman,” from Roy Orbison’s ballad they released in 1964. “Pretty Woman” only used two lines from the original song, the remainder consisted of satirical lyrics, replacing “pretty woman” with lyrics such as “big hairy woman,” “bald headed woman,” and “two-timin’ woman.” A year after 2 Live Crew released their album, Orbison sued for copyright infringement. (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 1994)
The District Court granted 2 Live Crew a summary judgment, but then the Court of Appeals reversed the decisions saying that the defense was barred. Then the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the holding for 2 Live Crew. (Onelbriefs.com, 2009)
Acuff-Rose didn’t present any evidence that “Oh, Pretty Woman” suffered from financial harm, and the appeals court neglected to consider all four parts of the fair use test, enacted in the 1976 Copyright Act. (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 1994)
In the 1988 case Hustler v. Falwell, the Supreme Court decided that Copyright protection for parody is considered to be protected by the First Amendment. (Hustler v. Falwell, 1988)
One of the many copyright cases is Berlin et al v. E.C. Publications of 1964. Mad magazines published “More Trash from Mad No. 4” which was a song with 57 different parody lyrics, one being from Irving Berlins, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” After publication 25 of the parodies were used to sue E.C. Publications, publisher of Mad magazine. Berlin was named plaintiff but the case was brought about by many other publishers. The trial court established a legal prec...

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...e they already had precedents to go on and to add to for future cases.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose is significant for future cases because the ruling says courts need to use all four parts of the fair use test, the work as a whole, not just certain parts of it. The defense didn’t cause harm on the plaintiff and that will be significant for future cases involving fair use with anything, not just music. It would work for photographs, videos, books, etc. As long as a new object is created fair use of an object can be used.

Works Cited
Association, The Music. Court Decisions.
(2nd Cir.1964). Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc. 329 F.2d 541.
(1994). Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S. 569.
(1988). Hustler v. Falwell. 485 U.
Onelbriefs.com. (2009). Copyright (c) .
(1992). Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301.
(2nd cir. 1992). Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301.

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