When can you file a lawsuit against a &quot;parody&quot; website? Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to make a website about 4 different lawyers and 2 different firms and promote it as a parody website using elements of breaking bad, better call saul, etc. Assuming statements are either based on objective facts or in reference to pop culture for comedic reasons: What grounds would those lawyers have to sue you? What legal precedent exists on either end?
In the United States, a website that is labeled as parody and that a reasonable reader would, upon reflection, recognize as not stating true facts is protected under the First Amendment, so no liability will attach. The key case on this point is Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). At the time, Campari Liqueur was running an ad campaign in which people talked about their first time drinking Campari, but in a context setting up extended double-entendres about losing their virginity. Playing off that format, Hustler ran a fake interview with Jerry Falwell about his &quot;first time,&quot; which can really only be understood if reprinted in full: Falwell: My first time was in an outhouse outside Lynchburg, Virginia. Interviewer: Wasn’t it a little cramped? Falwell: Not after I kicked the goat out. Interviewer: I see. You must tell me all about it. Falwell: I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I figured, &quot;What the hell!&quot; Interviewer: But your Mom? Isn’t that a little odd? Falwell: I don’t think so. Looks don’t mean that much to me in a woman. Interviewer: Go on. Falwell: Well, we were drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari, ginger ale and soda—that’s called a Fire and Brimstone—at the time. And Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation. Interviewer: Campari in the crapper with Mom. How interesting. Well, how was it? Falwell: The Campari was great but Mom passed out before I could come. Interviewer: Did you ever try it again? Falwell: Sure. Lots of times. But not in the outhouse. Between Mom and the shit, the flies were too much to bear. Interviewer: We meant the Campari. Falwell: Oh, yeah, I always get sloshed before I go to the pulpit. You don’t think I could lay down all that bullshit sober do you? Campari, like all liquor, was made to mix you up. It's a light, 48-proof, refreshing spirit, just mild enough to make you drink too much before you know you're schnockered. For your first time, mix it with orange juice. Or maybe some white wine. Then you won't remember anything the next morning. Campari. The mixable that smarts. Predictably, Falwell sued, claiming defamation and extreme emotional distress. A jury awarded Falwell $150,000, and Hustler appealed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Falwell could not recover for defamation because the ad &quot;was not reasonably believable,&quot; and that he could not recover for emotional distress because the First Amendment does permit such claims when &quot;the conduct in question is the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody involved here&quot;: Despite their sometimes caustic nature, from the early cartoon portraying George Washington as an ass down to the present day, graphic depictions and satirical cartoons have played a prominent role in public and political debate. ... From the viewpoint of history it is clear that our political discourse would have been considerably poorer without them. ... There is no doubt that the caricature of respondent and his mother published in Hustler is at best a distant cousin of the political cartoons described above, and a rather poor relation at that. If it were possible by laying down a principled standard to separate the one from the other, public discourse would probably suffer little or no harm. But we doubt that there is any such standard, and we are quite sure that the pejorative description &quot;outrageous&quot; does not supply one. Since then, the principles from Hustler have evolved and distilled into a test that generally requires the plaintiff to prove that reasoanble readers would view the material in question as actually telling the truth about the defendant. For your hypothetical, then, the question would become whether people reading the website believed that about it. This is a trickier question than it might sound like. For more elaboration on the boundaries of parody and how we identify, you could check out the decision in Novak v. City of Parma, 932 F.3d 421, 427–28 (6th Cir. 2019).
Copyright in the US is usually a civil matter. Meaning that the copyright owner can sue (typically for money damages or injunctive relief) an infringer. The criminal laws that we have are aimed at the reproducer and/or distributor. In other words, chances are that you won't get in any criminal trouble for accessing academic articles of dubious origin. But never say never. RIP Aaron Schwartz.
If a website takes down something that infringes on your copyright because of a DMCA request, the legal effect is that you can’t sue the website, only the person who put the content on the website. If a website doesn’t respond to a DMCA request, then you can sue the person responsible AND the website. And that’s what you would have to do: Sue them. And in extreme cases copyright infringement can be criminal; in that case the police might go after the website.
It would be copyright infringement. The script that you are planning to copy from is protected by law, so requires the copyright-owner's permission to create a derivative version (your own interpretation). If instead you write a completely different story inspired by the original book, you might not get sued. The problem is that there is a reasonable chance that you would accidentally duplicate part of one of the myriad adaptations, then the jury would have to decide whether it was just a coincidence, or copying.
Not very novel What you are talking about is a derivative work. This is arguably the most famous example: It's an interesting example because Leonardo da Vinci did not have copyright in the original but Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia do have copyright in the derivative. Even though the changes are physically small, they are enough. A crucial factor in current legal analysis of derivative works is transformativeness, largely as a result of the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. The Court's opinion emphasized the importance of transformativeness in its fair use analysis of the parody of "Oh, Pretty Woman" involved in the Campbell case. In parody, as the Court explained, the transformativeness is the new insight that readers, listeners, or viewers gain from the parodic treatment of the original work. As the Court pointed out, the words of the parody "derisively demonstrat[e] how bland and banal the Orbison [Pretty Woman] song" is. For an author to have copyright in the derivative they must: Meet the (low) threshold of originality for copyright to exist. Make their derivative lawfully - either because they have permission or because their use falls under an exception to copyright like fair use or fair dealing. However, they do not have copyright in the original elements. For example, I could take the Mona Lisa and give her different clothes, a different background or a hat I will not be infringing their copyright. If I give her a different style of moustache? However, there is an issue with "I have copyright on the contents of the post" when you don't. Even if your work is derivative, you do not have copyright in the original parts and do not have the right to licence them. So, for example, this post is a derivative work of the Wikipedia page linked to above and I have copyright in my original contributions because: They meet the threshold of originality I have permission to make the derivative either through the Wikipedia licence or because my use is fair use. I can give Stack Exchange a licence for my work but I cannot give them a licence for the original work including, for example, the image and quote above. So, someone could quote my entire answer subject to the licence or fair work, but they couldn't copy just the image or quote.
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There is really no point in hiring a lawyer until you can identify a culprit. Lawyers can't sue people until they have a way to serve the person at fault with legal process. You need an IT professional instead.
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