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Dilbert Hole now Closed Down 159

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-was-only-a-matter-of-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Dilbert Hole now contains an image of the letter they received and an explanation about why the site is now down. " For those who missed it, the Dilbert Hole was terribly offensive parody of Dilbert. Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?
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Dilbert Hole now Closed Down More

Dilbert Hole now Closed Down

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  • Idiots (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, but for a slightly different reason. The parody branch of fair use analysis allows appropriation of a much greater amount of the original than the general fair use exception. But to qualify as parody, the object of the use must be the original work itself. It's not parody to use someone else's copyrighted work for unrelated humor. Justice Souter put it this way in Skyywalker v. Acuff-Rose Music:*

    "For the purposes of copyright law . . . the heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material, is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works."

    Or, as Justice Kennedy put it in his concurrence:

    "The parody must target the original, and not just its general style, the genre of art to which it belongs, or society as a whole. . . ."

    The Supreme Court has indicated that it might be more charitable to parodies that are not widely disseminated in the market, or that readers are not likely to substitute for the copyrighted work. Both of these factors are descriptive of the rotten.com strip. But the Court has not actually applied this exception yet, and I understand rotten.com's reluctance to be a test case.

    That aside, while putting a bunch of offensive stuff in the mouths of the Dilbert characters may be funny (I didn't think so in this case, but everybody is entitled to an opinion), it doesn't relate to or comment on Dilbert in any way I can see.

    Now if you did the same thing with the Family Circus . . .

    ---

    *510 U.S. 59 (1994). This was the case about 2 Live Crew's naughty "Pretty Woman" parody.
  • So only parodies with good taste are ok? Really though, there was plastered all over that this is not official Dilbert comics and all. Just like the linux.de incident recently, it's a cute mock of another product. If someone went to linux.de a couple weeks ago, and saw that slogan, are they going to think, "Oh my god! Microsoft has changed its slogan and now has a German Linux web site?"

    Freedoms exist despite the content. But I'm sure there won't be the large surge of polite letters to the Dilbert folks like there are any other time this sort of thing happens...

  • Huh (Score:1)

    by whoop ( 194 )
    I particularly liked the "fatty queercakes" phrase. You don't see this sort of innovation at other humor sites. :)
  • Awww... c'mon guys... can't you see that this is all a lead up to a massive April Fool's 2000 gag???
  • Not that I'm telling anyone where I put it. I mean, that sure would be dumb.

    OK, so I told some people. But still.

    -A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • I have to defend South Park here. South Park is the show where Matt and Trey, the creators, do hysterically funny and twisted (and very subtle- 'tis all in the reactions, priceless) cameos on the storebought video tapes (at least the first one).
    South Park is the show where Cartman, controlled by an alien anal probe, gets zapped from space and does a few bars of a weird old-fashioned song (I Love To Singa) and is zapped again, stops, and STARES for seconds. A dog barks (or something.) I'm already helpless with laughter looking at his stunned stare even before another kid goes 'Cartman, what the hell was that?' with great conviction...
    South Park is the show where, in the middle of all the business about four-assed monkeys (pretty lowbrow, sure), we get a brief glimpse of the result of the scientist splicing swiss cheese, chalk, and a beard. Say what? It's already gone before you can even react- but talk about a high form of dada, _where_ did they get that one? The Simpsons is almost never quite that just plain weird- the Simpsons does good jokes and cleverness, but South Park has a wild streak of madness that has nothing to do with the foul language, and it's way, way better than those idiotic Dilbert graffitiings.
  • Posted by lemru:

    It doesn't matter if it's funny or not.

    'Fair use' is a constitutionally protected right. I happen to think the parodies in Mad magazine (et al) blow chunks. But that doesn't alter the fundamental right folks have to 'steal' material from others and warp it.

    The fact that folks found it offensive doesn't matter. It's free speach and it's an obvious parody.

    The law is pretty clear on what you can and cannot do and one time parodies are pretty far into protected speech territory. If he put out a book of these, or just altered one word in the cartoons claiming them as parodies, then they would be on shaky ground.

    As it stands, these guys would win a court battle (see the supreme court case of 2 live crew doing a raunchy parody of Pretty Woman.)
    The real problem is they couldn't afford it.


  • Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:

    A guy came into my house with a gun and made me look at all the cartoons. Now you see how flimsy your aruments are.
  • Depends on WHO'S lawyer it is! ;>
  • WTF? So it's ok to post pictures of gruesome molested bodies, but if I post pictures of modified cartoons I get sued?
    Guess that money rules everything. This makes me really sick!

    J.
  • Just remember your words should you be on the creation end of a parody.
  • The Dysfunctional Family Circus has many of the same factors weighing against it (using the original strips with just the words replaced, racist, homophobic, etc), and yet it has managed to stay alive. Why?

    BTW: I hope the UserFriendly/Segfault people realize that *this* is why we didn't like their AFJ - it's too damn true to life. And when the lawyers really do come for them, we're all going to sit back and say "nah, it's just another joke."
  • I looked at all the Dilbert Hole cartoons, and all but one of them I could remember the Dilbert cartoon that they had used. They didn't even rearrange panels.
  • Good points. I think you're right about DFC being more of a true parody, but don't you think that leads down a slippery slope if the courts have to rule on whether something is a parody or just uses the characters in an attempt to make humour?
  • "Upon receipt of this actual letter, you must immediately remove all DILBERT uses from the Internet."

    Are they expected to write an Internet WORM to do that?
  • Rotten.com didn't have a legal leg to stand on from what I saw. First of all they didn't do a parody of Dilbert, so that differentiates them from MAD magazine, who apparently did do a parody. Parodies are generally legal, but parody has a definition. Hence, not every form of humour is a parody. Second of all, MAD magazine didn't scan in the original strips, black out the copyright and scribble in their own humour. They actually inked their own version of Dilbert and worked from there.

    Rotten.com did that most likely because they knew they'd get a nastygram from United Media's lawyers. They were dredging for publicity.

    Parody would be finding a picture of Bill Gates and his laptop or computer and grafting in an image of Tux or something obviously Linux and publishing it. As long as you don't misrepresent it as real you'd probably be safe (not to say you wouldn't get a letter from Microsofts attourneys)

    You can't even say they crossed a fine line in this case, they steamrolled over it. Even the original text that accompanied the cartoons said they were expecting them to be yanked.
  • Just because you don't find it funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed to be there.

    I am glad I kept a copy. That was too easy to see the Lawyers coming to the poor artist's rescue.

    So could I use tracing paper and trace the exact image and use that as parody? What is the limit.

    Ed



  • It was very MST3K-ish. Frankly, I liked the PHB better in the parody as a sort of anti-hero.

    Oh well.

  • I suppose if it had some kind of political theme or some kind of statement to make, it could have some value. I mean, what was the point? It seems you could hire the services of rotten.com to really disgrace some company in a bad way.

    Something like this may have been good as private joke, but it got out of hand in a massive way. I can almost feel the heat from the legal team right now. Ouch, that hurts. :(
  • Agreed

    I beleive it was Voltaire, a great French philosopher. He did influence the whole freedom of speech thing.

    I sent email to scottadams@aol.com telling him what I thought (I have not seen the site nor do I care to see it, but I can't imagine anyone mistaking them for dilbert or them getting any money/etc for it) and will be taking those dilbert cartoons down. Oh well. Userfriendly is more applicable anyway :)
  • Grrr, I think they hit leisuretown.com as well.

    LT is definately an adult online comic strip type site. You might find it insanely funny or completely offensive. UAYOR!

    Anyway, he had this incredibly funny Dilbert parody stuff on there ("A Comedy Crisis")...
  • > Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?

    Not this time.
  • There's parady and then there's shameless copyright violation with no redeeming value whatsoever. This falls squarely in the former case.
  • Well, they were incredibly foul. Certainly I can understand how United Media was so quick to take action.

    OTOH, it was funnier than South Park, in the same sort of 'I can't believe that this isn't being piped in from another dimension that wasn't taught any manners' way. (Although not in the way that the Simpsons is funny. They've had a lot of good writing, which usually doesn't depend on the novelty of foulmouthed little kids. Usually)

    Certainly I can't believe that UM would get away with this if it did go to court. It falls pretty squarely into the parody box.
  • In the context of LeisureTown, these were actually
    pretty powerful parodies of the vapidity of Dilbert. Here, the parody defense was strong apposite.

    On the other hand removing the cartoons from that context was a pretty stupid thing to do. In my opinion they had _no_ value and were little more than red-rag to UFS and its lawyers.

    This is an interesting case in as much as freedom of expression rights collide with trademark legislation. If we "forget" that Dilbert is a cartoon and simply consider the Dilbert name and characters as trademarks, the lawyer's reaction is much more understandable. Unfortunately Dilbert is more than a cartoon strip. It's the "brand" for a slew of merchandising one small part of which we see in our newspapers.

    I can fully understand why a lawyer would find that these images damaged the Dilbert branding. And having said that, the parody defense might still stand - but it was stronger when the images were isolated to the LeisureTown strips.

    Finally, before you flame me, I love the Dilbert cartoons and own some of the merchandising myself.
  • I think rotten.com won't fight, because I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Fair use DOES cover the right to parody - and putting other words in the mouths of someone else's characters could reasonably be construed as parody.

    BUT:
    What rotten.com put into the character's mouths was just profanity. It wasn't a jab at some pompus windbag. It wasn't a commentary on some social or economic trend. It wasn't a commentary on the original characters. It didn't even have a POINT! In short, I don't think that it has any standing as parody.

    While I don't think that The Dilbert Hole was really much of a threat to the 'Dilbert Marks', I also sympatize with the owners of those marks - I wouldn't want my trademarks abused without reason!

  • Hmm. Perhaps you are correct, and I just don't see it, but the Dilbert Hole seems to me to have been designed for the purpose of provoking a response from the copyright holders.

    Perhaps my objection is one of intent - I don't think that rotten.com was intending parody, I think they were intending to get told to take the dilbert hole down.

    Thanks!
  • Does anyone remember the Quicktime MOV "trekkies"? It's a parody of Star Trek TNG + original. They fire on a shuttle containing Wesley Crusher (yeah!) and the scene where Mrs. Crusher made a come-on to Picard, they superimposed some other [naked] woman from the neck down.

    Juvenile, sure, but the first time I saw it I absolutely died laughing! :-D

    The video disappeared, I presume when Paramount decided fansites were competition or maybe they just flipped when they saw it. It's got a home on my "classic net flicks" CD, right next to the Exploding Whale, Troops, and the Spirit Of Christmas.

  • The problem was that Ian Fleming sold the movie rights for Casino Royale to someone other than the people who bought the rights for all the other stuff so there was no way that there was going to be a Casino Royale movie with Sean Connery, George Lazenby, or any of their "nothing like the guy in the book" successors (although if Fleming's character had been born 20 or 30 years later, Dalton could be appropriate). Trying to use the ownership of the movie rights to that one book to create a competing "James Bond Franchise" (especially since the Dr. No people probably had the rights any tie-in stuff--T-shirts, lunchboxes, toy guns, aftershave, whatever--all sewn up)would probably have gotten them and their first movie tied up in court cases that would be still be going on right now, 30 years later, even as we type.
    Instead they went the "no possible way could you mistake it for the Sean Connery stuff" parody route and we got that great Dusty Springfield (R.I.P.) song, "The Look of Love".
  • Mad magazine is as famous for its artists as it is for its writers, perhaps even more so.

  • I think its reasonable to say that this was a parody. Not clear-cut, but reasonable. The characters didn't seem to have anything to do with Dilbert characters other than appearance, but that could be parody as well, I suppose. It doesn't have to be funny or intelligent to be parody, I'm afread.

    But copyright - they stuck their necks out on that one. You can't make a copy of someone else's copyrighted art, make a simple change, and claim its no longer a copyright violation. 'Fair use' doesn't cover that. If they had made their own drawings, they'd be fine (though the lawyers would still try to kill them). I haven't seen it, but I'd bet my liver MAD made their own drawings, and parodied Dilbert's art right along with the content.
  • rotten.com should have known that they were on extremely shaky ground when they decided to use pre-existing, copyrighted Dilbert art, instead of making their own drawings. They deserve to get that page shut down.



  • Actually, Taiwan has some of the strongest anti-piracy laws in the world.....the problem is in having them enforced. For example, the only way the courts will take action against a pirate is for the copyright owner (in the US, UK, wherever) to find out and bring action locally. In addition, the President of the company holding the copyrights has to personally sign the papers asking the court to take action.
    If the court *does* act, it's considered a criminal offense, not civil. As a result, the President/CEO of the company doing the pirating faces serious jail time and fines.
    FYI, pirated CD-ROMs containing about 10 programs (Win98, Photoshop, etc) sell openly in the government managed Kwang Hwa Computer Market on Pa-Te Road for about $30 US.
  • Pirating Japanese products is something all together different. This has more to do with Japanese/Taiwanese relations and history than anything else. Until fairly recently, Japanese books, music and movies were completely banned in Taiwan. In addition, if you want to see some really novel aspects copyright/patent "protection", check out how Japan handles it. 14 years to recieve a patent?
    As far as Taiwan not caring about copyrights.....true. but then again, 20 years ago, the US was one of the larger pirates in the world. Take a look at the author's foreward to "Lord of the Rings". Tolkien had his books pirated by Ace in the US. American law (at that time) didn't protect foreign copyright holders. It's only now (when the US has something valuable-software) that IPR has become such an important issue.
  • Here's a good French example: "Tarzan, Shame of the Jungle". I think Jane did alot of swinging from Tarzan's vine. Anyway, the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs sued with a notable lack of success. The French courts said it was parody and thus exempt from copyright laws.
  • This time I agree with the devils.. good job..

    That dilbert hole was nothing but a racist/homophobic 15 year old trying to get fame (the wrong way). Apperenly he's been reading too much slashdot.org and though it would be a good idea to get some recognition by replacing dilbert dialogs with his own racst/homophobic dialogs. What a wuss.

    And he wanted them to send him a letter. You should see his invitation to dilbert lawyers, this was plain silly, i just wish this guy gets fined badly or thrown into jail. Would teach ppl not to get famous the wrong way.
    --
  • Guess Brant Freer knows how to edit html.
    --
  • I didn't pay attention when the Dilbert parody was announced but now I want to see it. Does anyone still have the cartoons cached?
  • Thanks to you all for mailing me copies of the cartoons. :-))

    BTW, as someone pointed out the cartoons are still on the original site at:

    http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d001.html

  • ha! (Score:1)

    by navindra ( 7571 )
    This is too funny. I've gone from being flooded with cartoons to being flooded with requests for cartoons. :)
  • I think I would entirely agree with you. I
    never looked at it because I didn't want to
    get pissed off at someone making fun of
    a hero off all engineers.

    I think it is sick for anyone to make
    fun of Dilbert but freedom has a price ...

    The day you start to limit freedom
    is the day tyrany starts.

  • The Dilbert Hole was not only completely valid parody, it has its roots in the political/literary/art movements of the 50s called Lettrism and the work of the Situationist International. The act of taking existing narrative works, especially comics but also advertisements and film, and retitling/retracking them to strip them of their cultural posturings, was called detournment and recuperation - it was considered a strategy for recovering one's cultural environment from those who would colonize it.

    Both Dysfunctional Family Circus and Dilbert Hole are latter day examples of this practice, and probably self-conscious ones.

    For more information about the Situationists, Lettrism, and the like, read Greil Marcus' "Lipstick Traces." Also, check out the careers of composer John Oswald and the band Negativland for more about the conflict between artists who reuse the cultural detritus that surrounds them and the legal minions of those who would vend that detritus.
  • I agree with your subject - there is a differencfe - but in the case of the Dilbert Hole, the obscenity and churlishness and sheer nastiness of the substituted dialogue created a different context - it turned Dilbert and Co. into libidinal , crass monsters, and transformed the vision of corporate America from a struggle between goofy PHB's and their Oh So Superior professional staff to that of a den of barbarians.

    Like Beavis and Butthead, it begs to be misunderstood as engaging on the stupidity and crassness it uses as a device. I not only thought that Dilbert Hole was parody, I thought it was particular barbed, savage parody. It reminds me, too, of Tom Tomorrow's attack on Dilbert.

    There are quite a few artists who work with appropriation, and their legal fates vary depending on their resources, standing, and millieu.
  • These Dilhole cartoons have been around for well over a year or so now. There was a big stink about it when it was first published, then it quietly disappeared.

    It looks like rotten.com just dug these up from the grave to pull a nice little publicity stunt using the traffic of slashdot.

    A blatant mention to NOT post it on slashdot. A mention how "it won't be around for long," then the expected legal action.

    *YAWN*

    But I'm sure their traffic has soared because of it, and everyone remembers the rotten.com domain again.

    Let's hear it for marketing!
  • There is nothing original about their cartoons, it was just an attempt to be offensive, and to do so by using a very popular comic strip.

    Since they were simply redoing the conversations they don't deserve the right of being a parody. If they had added their own interpetations of the drawings (as in drew the pictures themselves) then it would be okay...

    well offensive and stupid, but okay
  • Okay, then how did Woody Allen get away with it in What's Up Tiger Lily? (dang funny movie, tho, IMHO) He took a Japanese spy movie, dubbed his own script on top of it and released it as a new movie.
  • As was pointed out in the Supreme Court scene of 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' (and the speech given by Flynt's attorney is virtually the same as Alan Isaacman's actual oral argument) you can't make legal distinctions based on taste.

    I keep seeing a disturbing number of posts making note of how disgusting/vulgar/nasty the Dilbert Hole was while discussing its legal merits as parody. TASTE has NOTHING to do with the legal definition of parody; get used to it. If something offends your delicate sensibilities, LOOK AWAY. No one that I know of was ever forced to view the page.

    In another vein hand, the way they got the source material (i.e., simply repasting new words on existing strips) may (I repeat, may) have gotten them into genuine legal hot water. Then again, it could be argued that Dennis Miller does the same thing on his HBO show, where at the end of each episode he puts captions and words into the mouths of people from real photos from news organizations. It's not nearly as cut and dried as some might prefer, and personal taste is definitely a poor measure of constitutional legality.
  • I'm not sure how I feel about this Dilbert Hole thing, but I really don't think you can compare it to the Dysfunctional Family Circus. The Family Circus is well known to be a ultra-conservative white-bread "happy-happy" comic. Thus DFC really is a parody of Family Circus. The Dilbert Hole, on the other hand, doesn't really parody anything. It doesn't try to jab at Scott Adams pseudo-proworker stance, it doesn't parody the characters in Dilbert. In other words, it isn't a parody. But DFC most definitely is.
  • "We hate you" and the file path down at the bottom make it seem like it's fake. Not to mention that this is a (not too funny) humor site. The comics being so stupid are enough to take it down, but since they are still up there and given the letter, I just don't believe it.
  • As of a few seconds ago, the links all disappeared and were changed into a link to the letter.

  • I thought it was funny. How is that "no redeeming value"?

  • > That dilbert hole was nothing but a racist/homophobic 15 year old ...

    Yeah! Free speech is only for people that agree with me!
  • > I also feel that rude and obscene parodies are not good, and could hurt the real Dilbert.

    That is often the POINT of a parody. If you find something banal or offensive to your sensibilities, a parody is an excellent way to express your dislike. It can be offensive, sick, stupid and annoying. It does NOT have to be "funny".

    > I like the way the folks at the site seem to be taking this very well.

    I disagree. The right to parody is not a small thing. Just one more step taken against ALL of our freedoms. Taking down OLGA and the lyric servers were also small steps. Making cddb proprietory was another small step.

    How many small steps make a big one?
  • Although completely purile, it was, without a doubt in my mind, a legitimate parody. I don't know copyright law, particularly regarding the use of the original images but, the devices used in orginal dilbert comics were still there. A mean spirited, utterly clueless, PHB stomps all over his employees. One can see Dilbert getting fired up to ask for a raise, then ending up blowing the boss as a pure Dilbertism carried to the nth degree. It's extreme but, parody (and literature in general) often makes its point with exageration. This is just an extreme case.
  • I thought the Dilbert Hole was unfit for a toilet wall, let alone a website linked to from Slashdot. (Indeed I have a great respect for toilet walls.)

    Although the main page of the Dilbert Hole has indeed changed to have the scanned in letter from the lawyers, the 17 comic strips themselves are still there. If anyone hasn't read them yet but, for some reason, wants to, start here:

    and work your way through to here:

    As far as I'm concerned the comics haven't been "removed from the Internet" so hopefully the lawyers will get medaevil on this guy's ass. Freedom of speech is all very well but the copyright holder has rights, too.

    If people try to tell me that this qualifies as a parody one more time I'll have no choice but to reach for my bucket and be violently sick.

    Andrew.
    (Who remembers when all the Internet's crap was just on USENET, and the web was nice and clean and new.)

    --
    The Yautja
    "It was all so different before everything changed."

  • Yeah, they are all still there.. the links between pages even work. So if you missed it like me you can go check it out.
  • I don't know how the lawyers define a parody but, personally, I don't see how Dilbert Hole had much of a case. Was Dilbert Hole makeing fun of some serious aspect of the Dilbert universe? Not that I could see. Parodies generally serve to highlight absurdities in the assumptions of the subject being parodied. But Dilbert has few assumptions and Dilbert Hole didn't address any of them. As far as I could see, it's just a different comic that uses Dilbert characters and happens to be offensive.

  • Just do a whois rotten.com. Sheesh, what do they think they're protecting there. If you're worried about your name, don't post offensive stuff under a domain you have registered using it or anything correlatable to it.

  • It seems that there are three issues here:

    • Was copying the exact drawings copyright infringement?

      Maybe. It certainly didn't make things look better for the rotten.com folks. If I was the artist I would be understandably upset that my drawings were being used for that. So this may be a copyright violation.

    • Was the whole thing trademark infringement?

      Again, maybe, depending on your reading of fair use. If they had called it anythingelsebert, they would be in better shape, versus using the Dilbert name. I don't see how you could trademark the suffix -bert. However, I don't think there was any way that the public could mistake these for the being the real Dilbert/United Media cartoons, and I don't think that rotten & company could have made any money off of that confusion (not that they were trying to).

      As I understand it, the real point of trademark law is to prevent other people from using your trademark and your hard-earned reputation for their financial gain. There was no chance of that happening here - the site was clearly plastered with notices that they were not associated with Dilbert, United Media, and so forth. So I think using parody and fair use as a defense on the trademark law grounds would work. Of course, IANAL.

    • Was it funny?

      Fooled you - whether it was funny or not doesn't matter at all in these circumstances. Why should the legal standing of the previous two arguments be affected by what you think is humorous? I found the cartoons in bad taste too, but I don't see why that makes it a less affective parody. Some people on Slashdot found it funny, others didn't. That suggests to me that it was a not entirely effective parody, not that it failed to be a parody at all.

    The bottom line is that the right to poke fun at a anything should be protected, whether or not the majority agrees with with the humor. If we went along with what the majority thought all the time, this forum wouldn't exist.

  • The original site had a request not to publicize it on slashdot, apparently because they feared that would get them shut down.
  • If your country of residence has signed the Berne Convention then you must respect the copyright. France has signed the Berne Convention (it was drafted in Paris I think). I beleive that France would enforce, though I don't know all the details.

    Taiwan is one of the major countries that hasn't signed the convention, as a result you can legally buy all kinds of pirated stuff there. Of course the minute you bring it into a Berne Convention country you are breaking the law.

    Of course I beleive that parody is somehow acceptable, I am a little fuzzy on this though.

    Of course I am not a lawyer, so take this all with a grain of salt.

  • What good are laws if they are not enforced? Might as well not have them in the first place.

    My understanding is if the company does not have a Taiwan copyright then they cannot bring action. Taiwan does not honor other countries copyrights. Possibly it has changed recently? I get most of my info from my Anime hobby. Sonmay pirates all of the Anime audio CDs. They've been doing it for many years now (5+), they have gotten really good at it, everything looks as good as the original for half the price or less. And these are not just CD-R's, real screen printed pressed CDs, with booklets. How can they get away with this? Taiwan doesn't care about copyrights. Pretty ridiculous.

  • There's a difference between taking a piece of a work and using it in a different context, and
    grabbing someone else's work and using it in the
    same way.

    If they had cut up a bunch of Dilbert panels and
    glued them on a canvas, it might be a little
    different, but the "Dilbert Hole" stuff are comic
    strips much like any other comic strips (with
    cruder dialog). They created another comic strip using the Dilbert artwork and worse the Dilbert
    *name*.

    There's a tradition in parody of using transparent
    aliases for the target... how hard would it be to
    change Dilbert and Dogbert to Dildo and Dogdoo or
    something like that?

    These days, I'm leaning toward the view that we
    don't need any intellectual property laws... but
    even in the absence of laws, I would still regard
    the "Dilbert Hole" as crossing an ethical
    boundary. It deserves to be boycotted, and the
    people who perpetrate it deserve a storm of angry
    email rather than a legal warning.

    A final thought:
    If you're trying to contrive a test case, it's
    not a bad idea to actually create something of
    some sort of artistic value, so that the people
    shooting it down will have trouble claiming that
    they're the good guys.

    If you really want to weaken laws against
    appropriation, you need to set up a series
    of test cases, where at each little step it's
    difficult to claim that there's something
    unfair about the usage.

    That's the method that was used to roll back the
    obscenity laws... From "Lady Chatterly's Lover"
    through "Tropic of Cancer" to "Naked Lunch".

    --
    "redbreast, weeping, autumn light, and tenderness"
  • They didn't do a damn thing original.I hate to say it....but the lawyers scored one this time.
  • I don't see what the big deal is.
    I had the main page cached, so when I loaded it up, I didn't get a view at the cease and desist letter. Interestingly enough, all the links still work, so if you know one of 'em, you can still read 'em.

    For example:

    http://thump.rotten.com/dilbert-hole/d013.html

    It's not worth reading, anyways, though, so.. [shrug]..


    Fork
  • I saw them, and back then I thought I should download them.
    How about mailing them to me [mailto], please.
    Please..........hello?
  • Another one I liked was "jizzmop", I gotta use that one sometime :)
  • You did not remove
    All the files from the internet
    What a bunch of dorks

    These lawyers suck cock
    To think it is possible
    Lets shoot them all now

    Ass full of pork fat
    Jiggles like a jello mould
    Mouth is flapping too
  • Already there.

    http://www.linuxsucks.com/ [linuxsucks.com]
    --
    - Sean
  • The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work.

    I disagree. If they had just been any old characters, it would have been a pointless excercise in swearing and homophobia.

    As it is, I don't think it was. I didn't find it perticularly funny, per sé, but I think it was a reasonable parody. It was making fun of the corporate culture, which places employees in subservient, demeaning positions. This is exactly what (the original) Dilbert does. But in a slightly different way. Dilbert (for the most part), focuses on ignorant bosses with stupid corporate policies that end up hurting the employees.

    This comic focused more on petty hostilities between employees (which are just as much a part of the corporate culture, IMHO), and people being deliberately ill-mannered to each other (the emphasis on the deliberateness). In the "real world", this is usually done subtly, and within the confines of the workplace rules, but is still destructive. This comic was an attempt to bring it out into the open.

    Granted, it was in poor taste, but nonetheless, I think it was trying to make a valid point. The Dilbert connection was an attempt to garner recognition of the objective. With "just any old characters", I would probably not have "got" it. (As it is, I suspect that a lot of people here still didn't "get" it, but that's a separate issue.) Since the Dilbert world is already well-entrenched in most people's minds as representing a parody of corporate culture, using the same characters here instantly garners (or tries to) that same recognition.

    Thus, it tries to be a parody of Dilbert in unmasking those behaviours which still go on "behind the scenes", but which never get explicitly examined in Dilbert.

    Very much like "the shadow knows" type of approach (for those who don't know, it's a comic/picture depicting 2 people interacting "normally", with their shadows (in the background) acting out their true feelings toward each other. For a good example, check out the promotional poster/box cover from the movie "What About Bob?").

    Now, the copyright issue, dealing with the fact that the author just lifted the Dilbert images directly, and didn't bother to draw his own, is something else. I'm not sure where I stand on that. I think the Dilbert lawyers probably would have a case there.

    But, of course, IANAL.
    --
    - Sean
  • i never got to read those comics, but it looks like the layers are using windows =/ at the bottom it shows the url for the server the file is on.

  • mirror (Score:1)

    by Gog ( 19835 )
    I know many of you are actually happy that they got shut down, but for the ones that must see those bad jokes, Brecht Sandlers' Joke database [livingstone.be] still got them. Do a search on Dilbert.
  • I thought it was one of the Founding Fathers who said:

    I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death [the speaker's death, presumably!] your right to say it.

    I can't find it in Bartlett's, though, so I'm probably misquoting...
    --
    Mark Conty
    mdc@isd.net
  • "dilute the distinctiveness of our client's marks"

    --- only lawyers talk like this.

    Infringer: "what happens if we mix dilbert with water?"

    oh my god. they diluted dilbert!!

    say that 3 times fast :)
  • I remember some DFC-type parodies in MAD Magazine back in the early 90's. In the subsequent issue they had a letter from Keane complimenting them on the quality of their satire.

    While the MAD parodies were of a much higher quality than the Dilbert-Hole, Scott Adams should have done the same thing. Ignoring them, or even complimenting them, just deflates their "cutting-edge"-ness.
  • Rob is my hero and all, but I have to aggree, he did screw up on this one. The creators of those strips knew that they didn't have a legal leg to stand on and that any serious publicity would get them shut down. Rob saw some "fighting the Man" content and slapped a link onto /. Guess what happened?

    Rob needs to give more publicity to Swatch's attempt to broadcast commercials from space using a pirated amateur "sputnik". That's a front where the Man needs fighting. -Barry

  • It is definitely possible that these strips can be seen as a parody of society, or of the workplace (though I personally think that's a bit of a stretch). However, I don't really see them as being a parody of Dilbert. They just used Scott Adams copyrighted art work to try and get a message across. I'm not quite sure what that message is, but I guess that's up to whoever is reading it to decide.

    I do wonder, however, whether copyright laws differentiate between using part of a copyrighted work to parody that work, and using part of a copyrighted work to parody something completely unrelated. In this case, it seems that if there is parody, it is of the second kind, and whether or not it is legal depends on how the law differentiates these two issues.

    Unfortunately, I'm a programmer, and I'm not up to date on copyright law. Does anyone know if the law treats these two situations differently?

    Dave
  • well, I thought it was funny...
  • I feel both ways on this. While the site is correct that they have the right to parody, I also feel that rude and obscene parodies are not good, and could hurt the real Dilbert.

    I like the way the folks at the site seem to be taking this very well. Their attitude is wonderful, in my opinion. They think that they're in the right, but the also see that it's stupid to spend thousands fighting over a relatively little thing.

    Before you jump on me and say I'm opposed to freedom, let me point out that there are bigger more important battles to fight! This is a tiny thing, and should not take precedence over more important issues.
    --
    Matthew Walker
    My DNA is Y2K compliant
  • I think it was being on Cruel Site of the Day [cruel.com] that did them in.
  • Parody is all very well, when you have actually done the work yourself. All this guy on Rotton did was scan the dilbert cartoons, cut out the text, and put his own in instead. Had he drawn the cartoons himself I think he could count it as parody, and UFS would have had less of a case, because it was his own work. As it is, he's displaying Scott Adams' work and UFS own the copyright on that.
  • And they weren't very funny either. 14year old humour really.
  • I'm sorry, I got this thing, came free with age. It was called maturity. I would have found it funny when I was, oh 13/14. But yes, it is a form of comedy. Just not one that I find funny.

    It was exactly like "voicing over vulgar dialog at just at the right moments on TV" but I don't find that funny either.
  • Rotten.com are a bunch of shit disturbers, which is good. There's definitely a place for freaks like that on the net, it would be a much blander place without them.

    The Dilbert Hole wasn't an attempt at comedy (it shure as hell wasn't funny), it was a challenge to Dilbert's creators and admirers to fight back. Well they did.

  • "I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as parody"

    Well, the southpark parody of the Star Wars preview simply had the original audio track, with the images changed. Surely this is the same thing - according to your arguments, the southpark skit of the star wars preview should also be removed then. Why haven't GL's lawyers sent them any letters?

    Because the issue at heart here isn't the copyright violation, is it? It's the fact that Dilbert-hole was horrible filth.

    So the question is really if a disgustingly filthy parody (with seemingly little other purpose than to be disgusting) still qualifies as parody. I don't know.

    You can warble on and on about copyrights forever, but the fact is, the only reason the lawyers attacked this parody and not others (like Mad's) is the filth. If it was mildly funny, family-friendly, and rotten made no attempt to sell it or claim it represented Dilbert officially, the lawyers would not have pounced.

    On a side note, I personally doubt seriously that ANYONE on the planet is thick enough to mistakenly think that a Dilbert-hole strip is somehow an "official" Dilbert. Why do so many arguments put forth by lawyers seem to be based on the assumption that the general public is incredibly stupid, naive and gullible? When last did you read a "disclaimer" on anything that didn't ONLY apply to incredibly thick single-digit IQ people?

  • "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
    - Noam Chomsky

  • It doesn't matter if you thought it was funny or not (I for one didn't think it was funny either). The fact is that other people did.

    Whether or not *you* or *I* think something is funny or not, is NOT relevant when determining whether something should be censored or not. Is it "right" to censor things that *you* don't like but "wrong" to censor things that you approve of? Sorry, but that isn't free speech at all.
  • I remember getting pissed off a few months ago because someone was passing around a petition at my university hostel to get some or other movie banned (because it portrayed Christ as gay or something like that.) I was horrified that "in this day and age" people still thought it was okay for one group of people to control what everyone may or may not look at.

    I asked one of the guys who signed the petition, "do you believe in free speech", and he immediately answered "yes" .. he did not even realise the inconsistency between his answer and his actions. That is disturbing.

    I sometimes wonder how I would feel about it if someone put up a "linuxsux.com" website or something like that. (How would the slashdot people feel about such a site being closed down?) The fact is, other people have the right to say that Linux sucks, even if I don't like it. (It's probably only a matter of time before someone does put up such a site :)

  • Second paragraph first. I think we just disagree on this one. I don't think the Dilbert style is what you say it is, and therefore I don't believe the substituted captions are a comment on it.

    I also think you're wrong on the first paragraph. Parody gives you a little more freedom to use the authors original work (the drawings in Dilbert, the video in SW), but not unlimited freedom. I do not think the courts would agree that you could appropriate the video for a whole movie. In the same way, I don't think they would side with the Dilbert Hole in taking the drawings of a bunch of strips. Just as you could probably get away with 10 minutes with SW, you could probably get away with 1 or 2 completely copied strips from Dilbert. But simply to claim parody gives you unlimited freedom to copy is incorrect.

    But even with all that, it has to be a comment on the original work. You think this was, I think it wasn't. Let the court decide (that's what they're there for). As such, I think UFS has a legitimate case.

    --

  • The characters didn't seem to have anything to do with Dilbert characters other than appearance, but that could be parody as well, I suppose.

    I think this is where you're wrong. I believe one of the requisites to being a parody is that it has to be a comment on the copyrighted work you are including. This wasn't. The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work. Therefore, it's not really parody. It's just an attempt to piggy back off of someone else's success.

    --

  • according to your arguments

    Nope, these aren't my arguments. You've changed them around and applied them to something else. Unfortunately, you deleted the gist of my argument in the process.

    A trailer is not the same as a movie. A trailer is a pretty short version of a movie (manner of minutes). As I said in another reponse, you could probably get away with using a few minutes of a movie in a parody. This is my point. There are limits. You can't just go hog wild and use as much of the material as you want. I think DH could have gotten away with a couple of panels, maybe even a couple of strips.

    And, as I've said in other threads, I like offensive humor, this just wasn't humor. Offensive, hell yeah. Funny, well... I mean funny in a sense of most people thinking it's funny. People are different enough that theres always a few people that will laugh at a given work. But I doubt it was funny to most people.

    Don't call my like of offensive humor into question. I busted a gut laughing at this one:
    http://www.prehensile.com/tales/c ircus/circus.htm [prehensile.com].

    "Mommy, your flashlight smells funny!"

    --

  • nope, they were right (Score:3)

    by JEP ( 28735 ) on Friday April 16, 1999 @12:20PM (#1929986) Homepage
    Doncha hate seeing Lawyers win?

    Actually, Rob, I hate the fact that the lawyers were right in this case. They just lifted the strips and changed the text on them. Let's forget for a moment that it wasn't even funny (you can be offensive and funny, this wasn't). It saddens me that people like this (the ones who made the strip and the ones who posted it) are around, because it means there really is a legitimate reason for lawyers.

    And before everyone cries parody, I think you're stretching it a bit. I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as "parody". Parody only covers you so far.

    [posted this twice because i think it rejected it the first time for forgetting the subject ("cat got your tongue" - interesting error message)]

    --

  • Right. If the author (parodist?) had drawn his own characters (maybe a bunch of bunnies) and given them the exact same words, the humor --or lack thereof-- whould have been exactly the same. As it is, he was just using the Dilbert artwork as a backdrop for his seemingly random spewage of dirty words. Nothing in the Dilbert Hole parodied the Dilbert strip, its characters, or its primary subject matter (corporate idiocy).

    If you're going to use offensive language, at least let it serve some purpose. And no, some vague notion of "Free Speech" is not a worthy purpose, IMHO.

    Also IMHO, the Dilbert Hole was singularly, profoundly unfunny. I found more humor (albeit bittersweet) in the death of my pet lovebird.

    --

  • First, I disagree with the idea that whether the cartoons were funny or tasteless has anything to do with this. Certainly, yes, they were tasteless, but some people find that sort of thing funny. It's immature, but it doesn't hurt anybody, and it gives some people entertainment.

    As for directly copying the strip, this kinda treads on the same ground as the usual IP arguments that we get plenty of with the whole Linux/OSS thing. By the letter of the law, copying the strip like that probably does step over the line, but I am of the opinion that the letter of the law is often broken.

    Theft would be legitimate, but I don't think I see that here. They used the characters that somebody else created, yes. Does this prevent the original creator from using those characters, or in any other way fall into the usual "You had this, but now I have it and you don't" sort of thing that makes theft wrong? Not in any way that I can see. Libel? Not really. The characters are saying tasteless things, but this doesn't really attack anybody. Since they go out of their way to say that the comics are parodies and not created by the people who do Dilbert, they aren't trying to pass the strips off as something that came from those people. Nobody in their right mind would think any less of Dilbert just because some jackass with a paint program figured out he could cut and paste text into a Dilbert comic.

    As for the strips not being a parody, just trying to be obscene, I'm not sure I agree with that, either. I don't think it'd be that far-fetched to say that they're parodizing office life. The pointy-haired boss calling Dilbert "fatty queercakes" isn't really all that funny, but I did get a chuckle out of these strips because they take place in an office environment. I'm used to the office environment being formal and professional, so something like that strikes me as kinda funny in small doses. Scott Adams doesn't own office humor. He owns the Dilbert characters, yes, but like I said before, this doesn't effect that ownership of them. He owns them as much now as he did before Dilbert Hole ever happened.

    If the guy who did Dilbert Hole had drawn the strips himself, it would have had a lot more creative value on its own, but I don't see how he should be punished for using the Dilbert characters any more than being told it's not that creative.
  • I don't understand rotten.com; the keep posting things like this, claiming that they believe they're in the right, but then back down, claiming "other battles to fight."

    Do they ever fight the battles, or do they just keep backing down?
  • Libel has nothing to do with copyright issues. Use your dictionary. Also obscenity ca n be quite funny. I didn't get to see the strips but I don't thing you create the definition of what is funny.

  • If I amn't in the US, lets say France, and I put up a Dilbert Parody Website (speculatively only), on a french web server.

    Whats the legality involved, could they easily prosecute me ?, would they have to prosecute me under French or European law.

    Just out of interest is all

  • http://www.boners.com/dilbert/ has nothing to do with Dilbert ... links to jerkcity.com, wherein I could not find (in a quick and lazy scan) anything relating ot our favorite engineer. What am I missing?
  • I worry that people think that to be parody requires that some standard of quality or depth be reached. Just because it was fairly inept and pointless doesn't mean it shouldn't be protected under the same law that protects more intelligent and well-thought out satirists. This was brought up in Falwell vs Flynt. Good taste isn't a legal requirement.

    However, I should note that I think the direct use of the strips with just the words changed does violate copyright laws.

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