superspryte wrote:Regardless, woot descided it wasn't parodied enough. An no doubt they will keep rejecting it until it's a lolcat wearing that hat.
Most parody material (EG, Wierd Al, SNL, MAD, The Onion, etc..) gets consent from the original owners of the material before releasing it to avoid lawsuits.
Since there is no concrete definition of what constitutes "fair use", it is easier and better to avoid anything questionable without known consent from the copyright holder. You may feel that is is unfair or that you are being censored, but if the Korda's (or whoever has legal ownership now) prosecute woot.com because of the usage of his material it could be a very long lawsuit ending up costing woot.com tens of thousands of dollars even if they win.
You say it is a parody, yet I have no idea who any of those names belong to. It may just be a little highbrow for the masses, but more of something that most people would need to research &/or be educated about.
Parody is like sarcasm. If you have to explain it, then it isn't very good.
I have nothing against your work or the meaning behind your submission in any way. I'm just trying to show that "fair use", infringement, and derivatives of original work are not 100% black and white definitions. In the case of questionable material, woot fails safe with very few exceptions that make it past.
This topic (Che's life) has picked up more and more interest as certain publications and movies have presented a one sided view of Che "recently." Since this photograph of Che became legally copyrighted there have been many lawsuits filed against copyright infringement and improper use of the image.
woot is covering their own butt... No one is saying that your design is improper, or that it couldn't constitute a parody. It is that the parody you are using is not so clear. Even more so, that the truth about how many people died actually makes it not a parody, wher as if the words all talked about revolution and such would actually be the parody?
See how gray the area is about the usage? That is why they would just say that the image is copyrighted and not want to deal with possible repercussions.
