Pen-Elayne on the Web

Copyrights and Wrongs?

As folks who follow comics industry news probably know, Kraft has "settled" its trademark dilution suit against CBLDF defendant Stuart Helm. The settlement is essentially that Kraft has won and Helm has lost, to which I say hoorah. Not because I mindlessly defend faceless corporations, y'all should know me better than that, but because I think Helm calling himself "King VelVeeda" and his porn-pic website "Cheesy Graphics" was a pretty clear-cut case of trademark dilution, and I believe the CBLDF was at the very least mistaken for taking on the case in the first place. The First Amendment, with a few exceptions, generally doesn't apply to commercial speech, and Helm (like Kieron Dwyer) intended to make money off a parody of a trademark someone else owned. As usual, Mark Evanier expresses this better than I ever could.

Stuff like this, admittedly, leaves me torn. I enjoy when creative folks attempt to Stick It To The Man, as it were, but I consider this a good example of how the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. In selling subversion and revolution rather than just creating it, in your parodic work becoming a commodity itself, the message isn't "see what I've gotten away with, aren't I a naughty lad?" as much as it's "see how I can profit from swiping others' work and ideas? Yours may be next and there's nothing you can do about it!"

And I think the laws are all still murky on this anyway. How can Adbusters "get away with" what they're doing? They sell their subvertisement magazine, don't they? Is it that they're a non-profit advocacy organization rather than a commercial enterprise? Then what about MAD Magazine, or Topps with their Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids? Are those somehow considered affectionate tributes rather than infringement or dilution of other corporate product? And how about writer Micah Wright's marvelous Propaganda Remix Project website (via Tom Tomorrow, link at sidebar)? The way he's subverted old propaganda posters is terrific, and I'm looking forward to the book, but don't the estates of those artists actually own the copyrights to their work? (I've written to Micah, who's also an activist with the Writer's Guild of America so probably knows his way around legalities, for clarification on this, and hope to talk about it more in a future blog entry.)

Like I say, I don't cry for corporations. But I know how I'd feel if I spent a good deal of time and energy creating something and someone decided to make money from it without my permission. If copyright and trademark laws aren't enforced for the big guys, they sure as hell aren't going to be enforced for the little guys.