With Microsoft releasing Windows Phone 7 they celebrated by holding uhm – a funeral. Yes ladies, gentlemen, and the in-between, Microsoft employees held a funeral slash parade carrying a giant dead iPhone and a BlackBerry in all their costumed transvestite glory dancing to the tune of “thriller” and I’d bet all that nudity (there was a naked angel and some naked unicorn riders) would make all of us forget about iPhones or Black what was that again (?). Anyways when I saw this news I thought that this is a good example of the two defenses mostly used for copyright violation, I remembered that youtube case wherein a video was taken down due to alleged copyright violations when the person used thriller as his or her background music, I think in that case as in this case there shouldn’t be any copyright problem, people were just having fun, usage is limited and non-profit placing it well within the fair use protection. As to the usage of the iPhone and BlackBerry item design and altering it to make them look dead, well if the copyright owners sue these employees they (employees) can raise the defense of parody but such will only protect them if the parody is within fair use parameters, I guess they can always argue that it’s for “news-reporting” ; but if I were the copyright owner I wouldn’t sue them for copyright infringement, with the parade being described as a “freak” parade, it probably did more harm to Phone 7 than to iPhone or BlackBerry.
they have good coordination though..
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