Cases Study 3: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music ( 1994 )

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Case
2 Live Crew (Defendant) recorded a rap parody of the hit by Roy Orbison, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Acuff-Rose (Plaintiff), the copyright holder of the original song, claiming that 2 Live Crew's song "Pretty Woman" infringed Acuff-Rose's copyright in Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman." 

Held
The Supreme Court agreed with Campbellís argument and held that parody, like other comment or criticism, may claim fair use under the Federal Copyright Act. The Court recognized that "parody has an obvious claim to transformative value and the goal of copyright, to promote science and the arts, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works."

Copyright Act 1987 Section 36(1)
The Copyright Act 1987 states that an infringement occurs when a person does something without the licence or permission or consent of the copyright owner.

The copyright in a work is infringed when a person who:
(i)not being the owner of the copyright 
(ii)without consent or license of the owner of the copyright,

Copyright Act 1987 Section 13(2)
Certain conduct will not be considered as infringement of copyright. This provision provide defences to any allegation of infringement. 

FAIR USE
Where a copyrighted material is used for for purposes of non-profit research, private study, criticism, review or the reporting of current events. If such use is public, then it must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of the title of the work and its authorship.

Point of view
As I mentioned in the previous post, in its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose like criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.Therefore from my point of view, 2 Live Crew’s commercial parody is fair use because the commercial nature of the work is only one element of the 4 factor inquiry. Besides, the rap song departed markedly from Roy’s lyrics and produced distinctive music. Last but not least, it can be said that 2 works serve different market functions.

References 

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1993/92-1292

https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/playlists/27439

https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/intellectual-property-law/intellectual-property-keyed-to-merges/copyright-law/campbell-v-acuff-rose-music-inc/2/

http://ncac.org/resource/significance-campbell-v-acuff-rose-music-inc

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