EMI vs Cricket Fans
The Serenity and ABBA cases may have been resolved, but as far as I can tell, this Cricket fan site is still under threat of legal action from EMI. The crime? Altering lyrics to copyrighted songs for parodies included in a free booklet”
EMI says The Fanatics’ Ashes songbook breached copyright because it included altered lyrics to songs such as Go West by the Village People and Daydream Believer by The Monkees.
The Daydream Believer parody included the lines: “Cheer up Michael Vaughan, How bad must it be, To a be a poor pommie whinger, And you’re watching on TV?”
The group put the songbook together in a bid to get Australian fans to outsing England’s Barmy Army during this summer’s Ashes series.
Fanatics founder Warren Livingstone said the group had removed the songs from its website and was considering what to do with 100,000 booklets that have already printed.
“We need to work out whether we have to shred these or whether we can in fact hand them out outside the ground,” he said.
“We’re giving them out for free so it’s a little bit astounding actually. We’re just a supporter group, we’re just trying to have a little bit of fun and so to have this action from EMI seems pretty heavy-handed.”
Why oh why do people think it’s a good idea to get so legalistic on stuff like this? I mean, ok, if you’re selling copies of copyright material, alright. But FREE PARODIES? Eventually we will all be afraid to be fans in case we accidently sing aloud in public and find ourselves the target of litigation.