Question and Answer
1) What process did Else go through to use The Simpsons in his documentary?
Jon Else, worked on a documentary about Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 1990. The focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands playing checkers and in one corner of the room was a television set playing The Simpsons. Else felt that a 4.5 second touch of cartoon on a tiny television set captures the flavor of what was special about the scene. The Simpsons was copyrighted and to use a copyrighted material, permission is required from the copyright owner unless “fair use” or some other privilege applies. Else attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds on The Simpsons, so he got permission from Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s and Gracie Films, the company that produces the program. When Else tried to get permission from Gracie’s parent company Fox, they wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for the use of 4.5 seconds of unsolicited Simpsons in his documentary.
1) What process did Else go through to use The Simpsons in his documentary?
Jon Else, worked on a documentary about Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 1990. The focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands playing checkers and in one corner of the room was a television set playing The Simpsons. Else felt that a 4.5 second touch of cartoon on a tiny television set captures the flavor of what was special about the scene. The Simpsons was copyrighted and to use a copyrighted material, permission is required from the copyright owner unless “fair use” or some other privilege applies. Else attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds on The Simpsons, so he got permission from Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s and Gracie Films, the company that produces the program. When Else tried to get permission from Gracie’s parent company Fox, they wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for the use of 4.5 seconds of unsolicited Simpsons in his documentary.
2) Why didn’t Else rely just upon “fair use”?
Else did not rely on “fair use” for a few reasons. Else said he should not have asked Groening in the first place but he knew Fox had a record of tracking down and stopping unlicensed Simpsons usage. He decided to be careful because he thought it would be free or a cheap license to the 4.5 seconds of the show. The last thing he wanted was legal trouble. He spoke to a graduate of Stanford Law School who conformed it was fair use. However, Fox made it clear it would boil down to who had the bigger legal department and the most money, Else or them.
3) What’s the difference between fair use theory and fair use in practice?
In theory, fair use states there is no permission required. It supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture. However, in practice, fair use works very differently. As stated in the book, “the law has the right to aim; practice has defeated the aim.” The law started to protect publishers’ from pirates, but has turned into something completely different.
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