Parody copyright laws set to come into effect in the UK | Hacker News Reader

Parody copyright laws set to come into effect in the UK

bbc.co.uk

Generally, this seems to be a good law. To my understanding, it's on par with the protections we already have in the US.

It's interesting how the law singles out "discriminatory":

>If a parody conveys a discriminatory message (for example, by replacing the original characters with people wearing veils and people of colour), the holders of the rights to the work parodied have, in principle, a legitimate interest in ensuring that their work is not associated with such a message.

Why is that the only case where right holders have a "legitimate interest" like this? There are lots of other cases where somebody should have a similar case by a similar standard: obscenity, sex, violence, religion or anything else counter to a group's core beliefs. The law should be consistent one way or another, but it isn't.

A few decades ago, sex would have been the one issue singled out. And before that? Probably anti-religious messaging. Or maybe just communism, although that was more of an American concern.

Point being, it really brings to mind the idea of "moral fashion" from "What You Can't Say"[1]. As time goes on, I'm seeing the ideas from that essay illustrated more and more, especially because we seem to be in a transitionary period between two different fashions. It's a bit disconcerting, honestly; it feels like things aren't really changing, just the names and details.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

> There are lots of other cases where somebody should have a similar case by a similar standard: obscenity, sex, violence, religion or anything else counter to a group's core beliefs.

Just what I came here to say. If I wrote a children's song and someone parodied it with sexual content, I'd be miffed.

On the other hand, if original authors could define what's offensive, they could object to each parody individually on made-up grounds.

It's probably better to totally separate the questions of "can you make a parody" and "can you publish a work with content X, whether or not it's a parody" (with the answer being "yes, we believe in free speech" in all but a very few cases).

The UK is a bit more nuanced with free speech than the US, it can be illegal to make an offensive joke on twitter for example.

Sheesh!

"Nuanced" is a good word for this. It feels like there has been a gradual shift over the last few years - and the Twitter rulings (of which another just today) exemplify this - towards less freedom, supported by vague ideas like "incitement" to "terrorism" and "racial hatred".

For anyone old enough to remember the wild west of Usenet a decade or two ago, the sort of stuff we see people being imprisoned for posting on Twitter now seems extremely tame. But hey, celebrities didn't really get into Usenet too much...

There is nothing new or special about the Twitter rulings in the UK. Whether you agree with it or not, if you wrote similar messages to someone via letter 20 years ago you could get in trouble. Simply changing the medium hasn't changed the legal ramifications.

Aside from the fact that there have been actual changes to the law (mentioned in my "vague ideas" clause), what's changed is that people used to post obscene and threatening things on usenet, and whenever the police were involved, nothing ever came of it. With Twitter in the UK, in 2014, people now go to prison for posting such things.

Of course Twitter is more popular than Usenet ever was, but I'm not sure whether that's more the point than a gradual erosion of freedom of speech in the UK which I personally think we've seen.

That 'nuance' to 'free speech' where certain speech is punished by the government is actually 'not free speech'.

The US also has restrictions on 'free speech'. It's strange that the US is so passionate about protecting hate speech, but is similar to other places when it comes to libel or slander (which are similar to hate speech, in that they're about defamation). Similarly things like Free Speech Zones: 'you can say what you want, but you aren't allowed to say it in this public space'. There are a lot of nuances to 'free speech', it's not the black-and-white affair that many say it is.

If in one jurisdiction you can legally say everything you can say in another, and then also say other things too, then the first jurisdiction unambiguously has more free speech. There's not a lot of nuance, just a total ordering, from more free speech, to less.

'Hate speech' restrictions aren't primarily "about defamation" or even threats. Those are already handled by actual defamation and assault law, with stricter standards of harm.

'Hate speech' rules add extra penalties based on motivation or message. They aim to penalize when listeners are simply offended, and even when the speech is trivially true. For example, most verboten slurs against group X, when unpacked, simply mean "I see you as X and I dislike X" – which is almost always a self-certifying utterance, and reveals more about the speaker than the target. So let them speak.

Phrases like "Free Speech Zones" are a lot like saying that free speech is a 'nuanced' matter. Such words are a hint that something that's actually censorship, and unfree speech, is trying to pass itself off as 'free speech'.

most verboten slurs against group X, when unpacked, simply mean "I see you as X and I dislike X"

No, they don't mean just that. Most slurs against group X are "I see you as X, and I dislike X, and I want to prejudice people against X, reducing their opportunities". Hate speech is maligning a group to diminish them, and slander/libel is maligning an individual to diminish them.

There's not a lot of nuance, just a total ordering, from more free speech, to less.

This implies that 'free speech' is a sliding scale. It's not - it's polyvariate. Hence, nuance.

Edit: example: "You can say anything, you just can't criticise the king" versus "You can say anything, you just can't copy a company's mascot". Which of these two is "less free speech" than the other? How do you measure that? Does the king have more power over your life than companies do? Do you want to criticise the king more than you want to make a derivative work of Mickey?

"I see you as X, and I dislike X, and I want to prejudice people against X, reducing their opportunities"

Indeed, I accept your extension of such slurs' usual import.

The extended version is still a true statement, which accurately communicates the facts of the speaker's views and preferences about X, moreso than it actually defames X. So let slurs be said. When someone wants to say, "I am an idiot/bigot!", and that statement is true, why make that truth illegal?

And yes, there are many potential dimensions of free speech, as in your two reduced examples. But in practice the variables are highly correlated.

Remember the example that started this digression, fines for offensive tweets in the UK. That's not a different kind of 'free' speech, it's simply unfree speech in that dimension – and it's an accurate hint that speech is generally less-free in the UK than the US. (The UK is also notable in its plaintiff-friendly libel/slander laws and expansive secrecy/press-gag orders.)

Similarly, you justified 'hate speech' restrictions by tenuous analogy to defamation. And trademark/copyright are often enforced differentially to silence fringe expression.

A jurisdiction that penalizes one kind of speech is more prone to penalize others. The rationalizations and enforcement mechanisms become familiar, and build on each other. Each punishment of speech is the opposite of free speech, not some nuance of free speech.

The UK is also notable in its plaintiff-friendly libel/slander laws and expansive secrecy/press-gag orders.

And yet RSF still rates the UK as better than the US in it's annual Press Freedom Index (and has for years, IIRC). The US has plenty of gag orders when it comes to 'national secrets' and the like (as does my own country, Australia).

But yes, I agree that fines for tweets is not an example of free speech - but I was saying that speech is multipolar, not a continuum. Sure, in the UK, you can get fined for an offensive tweet. But in the US, there are some areas (8 states?) where you cannot state "I am gay" and legally hold political office.

Each punishment of speech is the opposite of free speech

Which implies that 'free speech' is a universal good. I would disagree - there are cases where free speech does nothing but harm. Westboro Baptist Church picketing funerals is a clear case. A funeral is a once-off event that cannot be repeated, and people are at their weakest. That picketing actually hurts people, directly, and intentionally. If instead they threw punches, there'd be no qualms about LEO's moving in and locking them up, but because they're doing psychological damage (and clearly intending to do so at people at their weakest, who have nothing to do with their gripe), it's considered a reasonable loss in defence of free speech.

The other difference between European and US ideals on free speech/hate speech is that Europe has seen close up and personal exactly the kind of horrors that come from letting hate speech progress unchecked. The WWII era is pretty painful for continental Europeans - they don't share the Anglo world's passion for reliving the glory days where we were unequivocably on the side of right, and we won. Europe suffered incredible pain from hate speech; something that the US has not had to endure. It's something to keep in mind when determining what you consider to be a workable level of freedom of speech.

s/nuanced/restrictive/

I think most American's assume that the level of free speech that we have in the US is universal in other countries with similar ideologies. Most other countries do outlaw various types of speech with discrimination and hate speech being two of the most common examples.

EDIT: Here is an educating and interesting Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

The U.S. outlaws some speech as well, though it makes a different set of choices, and generally bans less of it. Some categories of speech typically banned in the U.S. include: "obscenity", "fighting words", "incitement to unlawful action", "defamation", any false statement in some contexts, intrusion on privacy in some contexts (two branches of this are disclosure of personal secrets, and disclosure of trade secrets), etc. Though some of these categories have narrowed over the years, e.g. obscenity used to be extremely broad (including even James Joyce novels), but is now less so.

International publication often ends up arbitraging these differences. For example a good deal of American communist literature was published in Europe to escape American censorship, and vice-versa for European neo-Nazi material, which was published in the U.S. to escape European censorship.

>Why is that the only case where right holders have a "legitimate interest" like this? There are lots of other cases where somebody should have a similar case by a similar standard: obscenity, sex, violence, religion or anything else counter to a group's core beliefs. The law should be consistent one way or another, but it isn't.

I think that's because the only consistent and fair position is to allow all parodies without any restriction other than confusion with the original work. Since they still want to censor, they can't allow that, and instead use a vague term ('discriminatory message') that is unlimited in effect. The racial/religious example in the text isn't a restriction; a 'discriminatory message' could be applied to anything from painting gardeners in a bad light to slandering Texas beef[1].

It's good that it loosens up the law in spirit, at least.

[1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-01-20/business/98012...

"Turner's law is a tribute to the increasing power of the media, and a major reason why at least 12 other states have passed laws making it a crime to denigrate products, mostly fruits and vegetables."

"Owners of the copyrighted works will only be able to sue if the parody conveys a discriminatory message.

"It would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny."

Can't wait to see that lawsuit...

As soon as I read that statement I felt like the whole thing is going to be ridiculous. Time to appeal for a better sense of humor.

When I read the title, I though that the law was a parody, and somehow got into effect...

Now that I've read it, I know that my first interpretation was correct.

That first interpretation may have always been correct, at least with much of copyright law. When you google mickey mouse law and get the US copyright extension act, you gotta figure there is some high stakes satire going on somewhere.

I think it's a misunderstanding, it only has to "constitute an expression of humour or mockery". It seems to me that this means that it doesn't have to be actually funny as long as it was genuinely intended to be funny.

Note that in the US, protections are broad and being funny doesn't matter. Legal precedent clearly states that "First Amendment protections do not apply only to those who speak clearly, whose jokes are funny, and whose parodies succeed" [1]

We have 2 Live Crew to thank for firmly establishing this majority opinion in US Supreme Court 20 years ago.

[1] http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/campbell.h...

To be fair, many of our judges have excellent senses of humour. Unlike the US we don't have a constitution, at times I feel like our batty old judges are all we have to protect us.

Phew, for a second there I thought this was going to be banning parody. No idea it was already.

The most successful use of this in the US has been https://twitter.com/dumbstarbucks. Pretty great.

What if the derived work is funny and discriminatory.

We must protect the UK from the likes of Key and Peele!

It ends up at the European Court of Human Rights in the end, most probably.

Cassette Boy, who is known for his online mash-up parodies of shows

Not so many years ago, that sentence would look very weird. I love the times we live in.

I read the title to mean someone proposed the law as parody only to see it come into effect. Such a jaded and cynical world!

John Cleese will now fine you a herring for whistling any tracks by the Beatles.

@SouthPark

If copyright owners start using this law to sue everyone they see fit, the law will last 12 months tops IMHO or it will destroy both parody and satire as we know it in the UK.

Do not despair. Parody and satire are safe in this fair land for as long as we have the great British public around to angrily misunderstand everything.

This law does literally the opposite of what you are talking about.

Then, I got this entire thing wrong, which is a good thing.

We were living in your nightmare future world already and you didn't even notice. Just think of all the parody we've been missing up until now.

Read article, then type!

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