On 4/30/07, Charli Li chengli1@verizon.net wrote:
SPUI just had to cough out the following stream of bytes from the specified email client, on 4/30/2007 10:25 PM:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hotel_Wikipedia#Is_this_a_copyright_viol... Essentially it's a parody of a copyrighted song, and thus fair use. If this were on one of the Wikipedias, it would not be allowed, since it's not in article space. Does this also apply to Meta?
Probably, but Meta is not Wikipedia.
Oh, ah. Hmm.
Parody is not a copyright violation in the US. In a sense it's derived work, but there's a specific statutory exception for it. My understanding of precedents here is that as long as nobody complains, or as long as you can convince a judge that it was parody, for copyright purposes it's a new work. Weird Al for example does have his own copyrights on his parody songs.
As long as it's treated as a new work elsewhere, by law and precedent, I don't see that Wikipedia has any reason to treat it as anything but so here.