drteknikal's blog

Publisher peeved at political parody.: "TRO believes that the Jibjab creation threatens to corrupt Guthrie's classic -- an icon of Americana -- by tying it to a political joke; upon hearing the music people would think about the yucks, not Guthrie's unifying message. The publisher wants Jibjab to stop distribution of the flash movie.

"Of course the creators behind Jibjab don't agree.

"'We consider it a case of political satire and parody and therefore entitled to the fair use exemption of the copyright act,' said Jibjab attorney Ken Hertz."

This would be funny enough to begin with, as this is about the most obvious invocation of satire and parody possible, but it gets better. To undercut their argument comes Woody himself, with the original copyright notice:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."