IP: CIVIL LIBERTIES GROUP PLANS EFFORT TO PROTECT NET PARODY: Edupage, July 11, 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) this fall intends to
>open the "Chilling Effects Clearinghouse," an online repository
>of letters sent from lawyers for copyright holders to those
>engaged in parodies of those copyrights. Calling such letters
>"broad" and "unfounded," EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said the
>organization hopes to dissuade corporate attorneys from bullying
>the rights of online parodists. Indeed, such a letter spurred
>the EFF's action. Lawyers for the children's TV show "Barney"
>contacted the EFF, asking it to remove from its archive an
>article from the online magazine Computer Underground Digest in
>which an author makes negative comments about the singing purple
>dinosaur. The EFF, although in the process of removing the
>magazine's archive to another site, has taken up the challenge
>and contends that the lawyers have misinterpreted the point of
>copyright law. Cohn said the author's noncommercial use of
>copyrighted material not only fails to violate copyright law,
>but is, in fact, protected by it.
>(Newsbytes, 6 July 2001)



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