ARCH DANDY'S LESSONS IN COPYRIGHT LAW FOR LAZY STUPID WEBMASTERS WHO THINK THEY CAN THREATEN ISPs WITH LAWSUITS FROM RECORD COMPANYS THEY DONT REPRESENT


EXHIBIT A; CD Cover parody containing various elements that may or may not be from much larger copyrighted images.





US LAW PERTAINING TO FAIR USE

TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 107. Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors

Source; http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

ARGUEMENTS DEMONSTRATING USE OF IMAGE CONSTITUTES FAIR USE

My CD cover parody can be considered a criticism and a comment
It reflects my attitudes and opinions about the BBS under Starks control and expresses it better then mere words.
The main purpose of the whole front end of my site is one big criticism of Stark and his mishandling of the BBS.
This site also has the goal of educating Stark to respect Marilyn Mansons fans and to educate others as to his misbehavior.
My parody, and this entire site is not for profit, so under factor one it is acceptable.
The amount of the original image is not only minimal, but highly distorted so it also passes factor 3.
The potential market or value for Starks original image is zero. He wasnt charging people to see it and distributed it
freely on the world wide internet himself.
So factor four also supports my use of the image as fair use.
The second factor is the nature of the copyrighted work. Since we dont know exactly what was copyrighted, (just the image or the site as a whole) its hard to discuss this factor presently.

So even if Stark did get off his lazy ass and bothered to file a copy of the image with the US Copyright office and received an actual copyright for it, Im still well within my rights to make the use of it I did.
And now that I have included the section of US code with regards to Fair Use, and am using the image in question in a discussion of the application of Fair Use, my use of said image now serves a clearly non-profit educational purpose. I could now also include Starks original image to demonstrate the changes I made to it to increase the factors of Fair Use acceptence. I could also provide an example of the use of a copyrighted image that wouldn't qualify as Fair Use at all, except for the fact I was using it for a non-profit eductional purpose to show why it wouldnt otherwise be Fair Use.
Fair Use, Gotta love it.



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