A Spurned Parody of ‘Die Hard’ Returns to YouTube, Approved – New York Times
Here’s an interesting story of an “infringing” parody.
The story seems familiar to online video users: fans create a parody video using pirated studio content and post it on YouTube, and the studio’s lawyers quickly have it removed for violating copyright law. But this time the studio’s marketing team relented —and even paid the fans to repost their video.
First, the story assumes that the material that went into the material is “pirated,” despite the fact that parody is a well-established fair use. Not having seen the video, I can’t comment on how infringing it might be, but the opening of the story seems to convey that any use of copyrighted material is “piracy.”
This is also another interesting case of how user created content is finding its way into the mainstream… at least in this case the creators were paid for their efforts (plus being able to use and display the materials, plus the exposure gained by this story).