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Comment by Crash0v3rid3 | Hacker News Reader

Question for the HN community. What if you take some copyrighted picture and make it a meme and put it on /r/AdviceAnimals, should the person submitting that post or Reddit be liable? Even if the intended purpose of posting that content was a joke/satire of some kind? I don't know what the right path forward here is. I do feel that if the intended purpose of using the copyright material was to make money then I do feel that legal action is required. I don't see that is the case here though.

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Using copyrighted material for commentary or satire, even to make money, even if the original was commercial, should be heavily protected.

Isn't Weird Al Yankovic a great example of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic

Not exactly, because he always gets explicit permission from the original artists to parody a song.

A great example would be someone who doesn't get such permission.

Weird Al always gets explicit permission from artists whose songs he releases parodies of on his albums. He's got an additional repertoire of songs he only performs but never records, some of which I believe he was denied permission for.

It's still legal.

> I do feel that if the intended purpose of using the copyright material was to make money then I do feel that legal action is required. I don't see that is the case here though.

Keep in mind that not intending to make money doesn't make it any better or more legal. By using someone else's material you're preventing them from making money.

"Fun" fact: There is a copyright on the "socially awkward penguin" image. I don't know how reddit and imgur deal with this, but people who put it on a private site have gotten take down notice. [0]

[0] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3cf12c58-370f...

I think it's covered by fair use and those takedown notices can be forwarded to trashbin. IANAL though.

Is fair use not only a US thing?

Are you asking a legal question or ethical one (if legal, in what jurisdiction?). I think either way, derivative works for purposes of satire or commentary are protected (i.e. not copyright violations) even if for commercial purposes.

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