GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - XXX Toon Parodies Are Legal

Anybody ever received a C & D from an animation company over some dirty funny toons featuring well known cartoon characters?
It's legal for anybody to make a parody featuring Mickey Mouse or
Bugs Bunny, even if it's filthy dirty. Here's an article about SNL's recent parody of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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Robert Smigel seems to get paid to do two things: Write funny cartoons for ''Saturday Night Live'' and irritate people with them.

The mind and pen behind the show's popular ''TV Funhouse'' segments have goofed on everyone from Michael Jackson to Larry King and Barbara Walters, not to mention a good number of this country's past and present presidents and Christina Aguilera. If you're in the spotlight, chances are Smigel's going to get you, sooner or later.

On a recent ''SNL,'' however, Smigel ventured onto what some consider sacred turf: Charles M. Schulz's beloved holiday cartoon ''A Charlie Brown Christmas.'' How, some people are asking, could he do this without getting sued?

The segment featured the Peanuts gang waving their arms and magically transforming people and things. Peppermint Patty and Marcie, for instance, were changed into giant, voluptuous lesbians.

''I think it's terrible,'' says Edna Poehner, Schulz's former secretary, who works at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, Calif. ''I've had several calls ... from people who were just horrified.''

Horrifying, perhaps. But is it illegal?

According to Schulz's representatives and people at ''SNL,'' no. Even with the Peanuts franchise under copyright, both camps say no laws were broken.

''I can't imagine the network would have allowed that to go on the air if there were legal questions about it,'' says Marc Liepis, a spokesman for NBC. ''There was at least approval or acknowledgment from [Schulz's] people.''

Melissa Menta, a spokeswoman for New York-based United Media - which, along with the Schulz family, owns the rights to Peanuts - says ''no one's up in arms over it.''

''They created their own animations,'' she says. ''It was a parody.''

And that's the key, lawyers say.

Jeffrey Collins, an attorney for the Pennington Baker law firm in Fort Worth, says parodying an already established body of work is legal.

''You have a lot of leeway with parodies,'' he says. ''A lot of these silly movies you see today are parodies of other movies, and they're legal.''

Parodies fall under a legal umbrella called ''fair-use exception,'' says Fort Worth lawyer Guy V. Manning. Permission, in these cases, is not necessarily required.

''To parody someone else who has put themselves out in the public, particularly if that other person is making a political commentary, is a quick way of rebuttal using their own work,'' says Manning. ''Weird Al Yankovic was doing something similar. I imagine he did that with permission, but fair use assumes you don't have permission. I'm not saying what `SNL' did is fair use; it's just that it might be.''

Smigel has made a career out of satire. A veteran writer for ''Saturday Night Live,'' he appeared as one of the beer-drinking commentators on the show's ''Da Bears'' sketches. He then trailed ''SNL'' writer Conan O'Brien to his late-night NBC show in 1993, serving as head writer and coproducer.

After working with O'Brien and then, briefly, Dana Carvey, Smigel returned to ''SNL,'' his over-the-top cartoons in hand.

If Smigel has indeed been tromping on legal rights, Manning says, he probably would have been sued a long time ago.

''Sometimes it can be argued either way,'' he says. ''But if it's a true parody, no laws have been broken.''

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/36...ot_laws+.shtml