New EU law: Parody copyright laws set to come into effect
 

Changes to UK legislation are to come into force later this week allowing the parody of copyright works.

Under current rules, there has been a risk of being sued for breach of copyright if clips of films, TV shows or songs were used without consent.

But the new European Copyright Directive will allow the use of the material so long as it is fair and does not compete with the original version.

The new law will come into effect on 1 October.

Owners of the copyrighted works will only be able to sue if the parody conveys a discriminatory message.

It would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny.

"The only, and essential, characteristics of parody are, on the one hand, to evoke an existing work while being noticeably different from it and, on the other, to constitute an expression of humour or mockery," the EU rules state.

"If a parody conveys a discriminatory message (for example, by replacing the original characters with people wearing veils and people of colour), the holders of the rights to the work parodied have, in principle, a legitimate interest in ensuring that their work is not associated with such a message."

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Thanks for heads up!

Except a lot of parodies satirize the originals by doing exactly that kind of over the top racist imagery to highlight the racism in the original.

In any case this was pretty much how fair use and parody has always been supposed to work...

There just isn't a lot of jurisprudence (To my knowledge) around this, people making stuff usually get stopped earlier on by C&Ds or in the UK at the BBFC level (Does that still exist?)