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"This Land Is Your Land" Web Parody Creators Victors in Copyright Spat

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 25, 2004 - 1:54am.
San Francisco -- JibJab.com, creators of a popular Web cartoon called "This Land Is Your Land" that parodied the presidential candidates, announced on Wednesday that it has settled a copyright dispute with a music publisher claiming ownership of the Woody Guthrie song used in the cartoon. JibJab's attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued Ludlow Music, which claims ownership of the song, after Ludlow threatened copyright litigation against AtomFilms and Speedera Networks, who distributed the cartoon online. The EFF said it found evidence that the song was already in the public domain -- meaning that copyrights had expired and it could be used without permission or paying royalties -- on top of what it said was JibJab's "fair use" right to use the song for the purpose of a parody. JibJab dismissed its suit against Ludlow after the company agreed to allow the site to distribute the cartoon without interference. "The idea of copyright law is that, after a time, every work comes back into the hands of the public, where it can be reused, recycled, made part of new creativity without having to pay a fee or call in the lawyers," said EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann.
tags: JibJab | This Land Is Your Land | Parody | Victors | Copyright Spat |