Rusty Law

App For That

Federal copyright code is one of the cheapest apps available for legal research and reference.  For a buck ninety-nine, you can read it without infringement.  Purchasing music online is similarly easy and comparatively inexpensive, making piracy less excusable.  

You may disassociate music with the media it comes on.  Unlike vinyl, cassette tape, and 8-track, digital media copy very well, making downloading feel like a normal function.  Piracy is easy, but it is still stealing.  

The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra paired with heavy metal rock band, Metallica, in 1999.  In 2000, Metallica paired with the Supreme Court to put Napster out of business.  Metallica continues to rock on, receiving two Grammy’s in 2009, while Napster discontinued service eight years ago.    

If you steal a CD from Wal-Mart, you are going to get arrested.  If you download, you could get sued.  You get caught quicker stealing from a store, but either way, it is morally wrong and criminal.  If you like the music, support the musician by purchasing the song or CD.  

With iTunes, you do not have to buy the whole CD.  You can buy a single song without purchasing 12 songs you do not want, plus you do not have to go to the store, or pay for shipping and handling.  Buying music has never been easier!   

And by the way, the Constitution of the United States is at your fingertips as a free app on your iPhone, but paying for an attorney to interpret it…that is another matter.  

Facing South

You cannot shout “Let’s get ready to rumble!” on the radio without getting a bill.  You cannot mimic Toys R Us using a backwards R in a business name.  Cyber squatting on domain names is a no no.  Even news used to be copyrighted as it travelled from the East Coast to the West.  Now we have a clothes debate:  South Butt started as a joke and escalated into a Federal lawsuit about trademark infringement on North Face.  We have yet to see how the anatomy of this case will play out.  

The South Butt offers a direct opposite in name and logo to the well-established, The North Face.  The North Face claims there is customer confusion with brand ambiguity.  This is in South Butt’s favor in establishing a paradoxical stance, in which the original must be recognizable, but communicate satire, ridicule, or amusement.  In other words, North Face has got to be the butt of the joke.  

The South Butt also has the Goliath effect in its favor—the American way, free market where the little man can compete against the big company.  South Butt made about $4000 in profit last year.  (Fortunately South Butt is enjoying free legal representation.)  Thus South Butt has very little to lose in the lawsuit except the recent sales spike prompted by North Face’s threat.  

South Butt was founded to encourage alternatives, to break the status symbol of North Face clothes.  This may be the weak point of the defense, where “alternative” may fade to “knock-off” in courtroom lighting.  South Butt is selling the same type of items to the same group of customers; whereas, in the Louis Vuitton v. Chewy Vuiton case, the former sold high-priced handbags in exclusive boutiques while the later was selling dog toys in pet shops.  Chewy Vuiton prevailed—dogs can distinguish between a tote and a toy and will always maul the more expensive.  However, the similarity of product and consumer target may cause South Butt to lose face.  

Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old owner and founder of The South Butt, Jimmy Winkelmann, continues to pursue his degree in biomedical engineering with a business minor.  He may not be old enough to drink in Old Milwaukee, but we will see who prevails in Federal Court there, and who gets fleeced.  

Statue With Limitations

As stone mermaids are an entirely rare and endangered species, the sighting of one in Greenville, Michigan makes for conspicuous news.  At least it caught the attention of the Danes.  The Little Mermaid is the icon of Denmark, based on the fairytale of Danish author, Hans Christian Anderson.  The art police claim that Greenville violated a copyright set in stone. 

There is room for debate.  While the Michigan version does sport a plaque saying it’s a replica, it is not an exact replica.  The one in Michigan has larger breasts.  Furthermore, the original in Copenhagen is also not the original, and there are other copies, such as the one on the grave of Victor Borge (also in Greenville).  The Greenville statue embodies the Danish heritage that immigrated to the United States.  They might have used a different Anderson archetype, like the Ugly Duckling, to avoid disDane. 

Could this debacle happen closer to home? 

Are Saint Augustine’s lions subject to such critique?  The answer is no.  While the lions have been in hibernation during extensive bridgework over the Saint Augustine landmark, they’re not going to emerge behind bars.  The Saint Augustine lions were bought and donated to the city by a former mayor who knew what he was doing, a man who shares that famous Danish namesake:  Mayor Andrew Anderson.  

Audacity of Art

Just as St. Augustine officials struggle to define artisans from junk-a-thons in the Plaza, the definition of art is being argued at the federal level as well.  An iconic photograph of President Obama in graphic reduction—his head recast in gray, black, white, and red—has become a visual debate between the Associated Press, who took the original photo, and the artist who re-rendered the image and sold “Hope” posters to the election campaign.  

In the beginning, art was not sterilized into galleries, each piece to be viewed individually with little physical context.  In the beginning, art was literally a written language, pictographs played out in Egyptian hieroglyphics and other visual communication systems.  The question in this debate is to whether the “Hope” poster is significantly transformative from the photograph.  

The hand-held camera has enjoyed a hundred years of amateur history in America, and now almost anybody with a cell phone can capture an image instantly, and just about as quickly broadcast it to the world.  Not everyone runs around with a copyright tag hanging off every picture the way the Associated Press does, but we’re not professional photographers.  It doesn’t take much training to use a cell phone.  

If a horse can hold one or two riders, then a wagon certainly adds value to the horse in its passenger capacity, but in this case, it could be the surrey with the infringement on top.  

If a picture says a thousand words, why do we spend so much time typing?  

Unwritable Wrong

The difference between libel and slander is that one is written and the other is spoken.  Both are a defamation of character, and both can be prosecuted, unless applied to a public figure, such as Tina Fey on Sarah Palin, but even then…. 

In the literary world, novels can share titles without copyright infringement, but they cannot share significant content in any way.  Song lyrics are sacred, and song titles are individually protected.  Novels can refer to songs by name, but cannot quote any of their words without express permission of the record company and/or artist.  

The ancient texts, however, are popularly plagiarized because no one’s going to sue from Virgil’s estate.  Happily the same was true with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, allowing Dale Wasserman to write the musical, The Man of La Mancha, which borrows heavily from the 1700’s text as well as using Cervantes himself as a character.  Through the trick of antiquity, Wasserman violates neither libel nor slander laws, and updates an epic story.