Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Congrats to JibJab!



The JibJab case is officially over via settlement, with full-on victory for the Jib Jab crew. As it turns out Ludlow, the company that threatened to sue JibJab over the use of the Woody Guthrie song "This Land is Our Land," no longer owned the copyright in the song anyway. The copyright expired in 1973, duh!

Well, that's what happens when you indiscriminately send out cease and desist letters. There go a bunch of royalties Ludlow has been collecting for years. You really would think that the supposed copyright "owner" would be the one tracking this sort of information, instead they'd rather let a defendant pay to do their work for them after attempting to chill their speech. Actually sending C&Ds indiscriminately probably works just fine since in 99 out of 100 cases like the JibJab one the defendant just gives up immediately because they can't afford to fight.

Well, chalk one up for the EFF and the public domain. As for Ludlow...get with the program guys.

Here's the EFF press release. Here is a WIRED story on the settlement.

Via The Importance of... & Seth Finkelstein


Some of my former JibJab related posts:
JibJab video: parody or satire? [original post stating that the video is satire, linked to on Slashdot, etc.]
JibJab video: am I to be labeled a flip-flopper? [follow-up post in which, due largely to new information, I entertain the idea that the JibJab video may actually be parody ]

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