Hi there. This is, at present, the four-time Licensing captain Naepic. At least two of those times have been against my will.
I make it no secret I dislike being in a position of leadership, least of all something as important as this. I have already made plans for the day I become vice captain of Licensing for the fifth time. And inevitably, forcibly promoted to captainship again once shit happens.
Until then, however, I can make no guarantees that my successor will have a better work ethic than me. And if my successor is any bit as lazy as I am, then I can imagine I'll be in for an unfun amount of work. As such, I intend to get ahead of the curve and create this:
a guide to transformative use like parodies.
This is not going to be a particularly pretty guide. I am not really well known for aesthetics - other people like syuzhet are why contest hubs look pretty.
So. What is a parody?
Well… actually no, let's not start with that. Let's start with why a parody. And that is fair use.
Fair use is, in general, the ability to use copyrighted material without first seeking permission. The US Supreme Court defines four conditions that determine fair use. Per 17 U.S. Code § 107:
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
Most of you have probably gone through this process without realizing it. When you cited an interview or did a book report, that's fair use. When you analyze a text, that's fair use. When you did a PowerPoint presentation for an assignment in seventh grade and took a bunch of images off of Google, that's (probably) fair use.
So how does this related to parody? Well, I want to also get another thing out of the way first.
Parody in a legal context is going to mean something different from how I've been using it above. Parody falls under an umbrella that includes stuff like pastiche, where the point is to build off someone else's work: in the case of the former, it's meant to mock or comment on the original work, while the latter is to build off of it.
I, for one, hate this. Don't get me wrong, I'm a simple man, and I love when things can have very basic one-or-the-other answers, but we don't live in a simple world and things aren't that easy to put into one box or the other, so to use parody as an encompassing thing would be disingenuous. However, a guide to transformative use is way too wordy and realistically a layman will understand the general impression of what I'm trying to convey.
…I'm just going to call this an essay to fair use. That should be easier.
What we do on the wiki is derivative use. We build upon SCP-173, the world that moto42 envisioned when he first posted to 4chan damn near 18 years ago, and for all intents and purposes we're building off his intellectual property. That SCP is under a Creative Commons license is why we don't need to ask for permission to create derivative content: Creative Commons is the permission.
Instead, what this is going to focus on is transformative use. To do that, I'm going to go back to the legal code on fair use, and how the US Copyright office elaborates on them.
Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes:
Generally self explanatory. What is the reasoning for using the copyrighted work? Courts love it when you're using it for a noncommercial use, especially an educational one, because it indicates you're not trying to steal somoene's thing for commercial gain, but have a reason for doing so.
Nature of the copyrighted work:
What are you trying to take here? Facts are uncopyrighted, so an article on facts is going to be in your favor to take from as opposed to a purely creative work like songs and novels. Also, the Copyright Office makes a point to note that unpublished works are less likely to be considered fair.
Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole:
Is it necessary to take what you have? This is perhaps the most subjective of the four criteria, as it examines two points.
I don't think I have to treat the reader as an idiot. You know that taking entire chunks of a novel are wrong. The issue is that this section covers taking the "essence" of a work, and the Office unhelpfully explains that it ultimately means small portions can be disallowed if they make up an important part of the work.
Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work:
Do you occupy the same niche as the original? Do you compete with the original? Does the existence of your work undercut the value of the original?
As much as I'd love to say it's as simple as satisfying all four conditions, it's not as simple as that. The Copyright Office itself specifically mentions, "…there is no formula to ensure that a predetermined percentage or amount of a work—or specific number of words, lines, pages, copies—may be used without permission."
So to give you an idea, I will highlight a recent poem I posted onto the wiki: [link]
Note: the rest of this guide will mainly center around using an example to highlight the thought necessary to have something acceptably labeled as transformative and fair use. The fact of the matter is, fair use is complicated and subjective. Every attempt at it will always lend itself to scrutiny. The following is just what's considered acceptable enough to meet the threshold.
This poem was specifically designed to be building off a song by Mili, titled Hero. I specifically took inspiration from two things:
1) Structure. The structure of the poem is meant to follow the three-section model of the song, as well as the syllabic count and flow of the song itself, with the song's instrumental as a reference.
2) Theme. I chose this song specifically for its theme regarding heroes, and the perspective it uses to comment on heroes.
I won't be posting the entirety of my poem here, as it'd probably count as self-shilling; however, please indulge what quotes do come up when I use them as examples.
"Hero" as a song takes the perspective of someone who idolizes someone else as their hero. Their three part journey (separated with the one-two-one-two-three-four counting) shows the joy of indulging in that fantasy, the depression that arises from having that fantasy broken, and ultimately confronting that broken fantasy and the resolution of creating a new dream.
At the same time, "Hero" is a song where the narrator goes through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief. In line with the previous theme of a journey, the