Open Rights Group wants to preserve parodies

RIGHTS PROTECTOR the Open Rights Group (ORG) is making a case for the right of internet users to create parodies of owned material.

The ORG has launched a web site and penned a blog post to start its campaign, and the fun, and so far it is fun, takes place at the Right to Parody web site.

Peter Bradwell, copyright campaigner at the ORG said that the web site, which asks internet users to upload parodies to Flickr, is part of a campaign to make parodies and pastiche an exception under UK copyright law.

"Late last year we heard about a video parodying the Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville. It featured the two cycloptic cartoons flying off a rainbow into the middle of a riot. Having become the number one comedy video on YouTube the day it was released, it was forced off the Internet by legal threats from lawyers representing the Olympics," he wrote.

This episode "seems to encapsulate the problems of parody and copyright law", he added, and it shows how far normal people are removed from the Olympics and those who organise it.

"[The Olympics] will tell a story about the UK and the people in it. Some businesses are allowed to associate themselves with this story by trading on powerful Olympic images and branding. Those organisations will be trying to suggest to us that we eat, drink, wear or use their products and services," he explained. "For everyone else, genuine engagement with the meaning of the Olympics is heavily regulated."

This heavy handed regulation affects all kinds of parodies, not just the Olympics, and has been used against Greenpeace when it parodied a Volkswagen advert, for example. Bradwell said that it stifles creativity and denies people a voice, and he reminds us that the exception was supported by the independent Hargreaves Report last year.

As well as asking for examples of parodies, the Open Rights Group wants people to sign its petition. µ