Legal Question in Technology Law in West Virginia

Re: Unauthorized use of personal image in degrading manner.

I received this summary from BYTES IN BRIEF. I reproduce it here under the FAIR USE doctrine.

COURT OKS REPRODUCTION OF THUMBNAIL IMAGES

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that web sites may

legally reproduce and post thumbnail versions of copyrighted

photographs without violating the artists' exclusive right to

display their own works.

The decision in Kelly v. Arriba was issued on February 6th, affirming in part and reversing in part

the lower court's decision. The case was brought by Leslie

Kelly, a professional photographer who sued the search engine

Arriba for publishing his pictures on its site. Arriba (now

known as "Ditto.com") follows a practice common among search

engines of providing a service that canvasses the Internet for

graphics files and returns results as thumbnail images.

If a thumbnail is clicked, the site will return a framed image of the

original web site containing the image. The court said this use

of thumbnail images constituted fair use, in part because it was

transformative or added value to the work, and also because it

did not diminish the value of the underlying work.

However, the judge also ruled that Arriba's subsequent display of Kelly's

full-sized images in the framed web page is not a fair use and

violates Kelly's exclusive right to display his copyrighted

works. The panel ordered the case to be remanded back to the

district court, which will determine the appropriate amount in

damages and decide whether an injunction is necessary.

The opinion in the case may be found at

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0055521p.pdf

Re: Unauthorized use of personal image in degrading manner.

This is a gray area of copyright and privacy law. Parodies are entitled to free speech protection and may be fair use, but if done for commercial purposes can be risky indeed. Altering a copyrighted photograph, even for parody, may result in a derivative work that consitutes an infringement. A much safer route is to do original artwork for your parody. The essence is in the details, and you should not be trying this without legal review of the details. Parodies tend to be offensive to the subject of the parody and thus tend to draw fire much more often that other types of possible copyright infringement. You are contemplating walking on quicksand. You better be sure you have a copyright lawyer to pull you out. Copyright is federal law and you may well find yourself in a federal court in some remote location and then have to pay to try to get it transfered to your district, which may or may not work.

Bottom Line: Copyright Parodies are Very Risky