Expelled

Ben Stein defeats Yoko Ono in fair use victory

The producers of Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled," have won an important victory for fair use. Fair Use is a doctrine in U.S. copyright law that carves out some exceptions to the exclusivity of copyright in certain areas. In this case, the film, in which Stein makes an argument for intelligent design, used a 15 second clip of John Lennon's song, "Imagine." Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow and the rights holder of Lennon's musical catalog, sued the filmmakers saying they did not have her permission to use the song.

A District Court judge ruled against Ono, saying that, because the filmmakers were using the song clip in the contest of criticism, the use was covered under the fair use doctrine.

This is a great victory for those of us who believe that copyright holders in the U.S. (in the vast majority of cases, giant corporations and bazillionaires, like Ono) have been going on a drunken bender of litigation against perfectly legitimate uses of their copyrighted works and, in the process, trampling both fair use and the First Amendment underfoot.

(Regardless of how you might feel about I.D., this is a big win for intellectual freedom and free speech.) The producers of Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled," have won an important victory for fair use. Fair Use is a doctrine in U... more

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