A scene from Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons shows daily images of Homer Simpson throughout his life (39 years). The segment is a parody of Noah Kalina’s famous video “Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years”.
The video is great, but there is one small issue, The Simpsons used the song “Everyday” created by Carly Comando for the original video without finalizing the agreement to use the video or work out payment. Noah writes:
A few months back a producer from the Simpsons contacted Carly about using her song “everyday” for an upcoming episode in which they were going to parody my video. She was negotiating a rate for the song, until they never got back to her. No fee was agreed on, no contracts signed. She and I both assumed that they were no longer interested in using her song for the show. Last night the episode aired and sure enough her song is part of the show.
What’s up with that?!I am thrilled that the Simpsons parodied me, but Carly should have been compensated.
UPDATE: Noah has posted an updated to his blog saying that one of the writers of The Simpsons contacted him and said that they are correcting the issue with the song usage.
Here Are A Few Related Posts You Might Enjoy:
- Real Life Versions of Homer Simpson and Mario by Pixeloo
- Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15
- Los Simpson: Creepy Live Action Spanish Version of The Simpsons
- Marge Simpson in Playboy Magazine
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
If Homer is only 39, then I’m feeling pretty good about how I’m aging.
It’s satire, therefore it’s fair use. End of story.
People need to remember that the goal of IP laws is to “further the progress of science and the useful arts.” Fair use doesn’t require attribute (despite what your high school teacher might tell you, plagiarism is not illegal), and it doesn’t matter if it hurts your feelings.
“People need to remember that the goal of IP laws is to “further the progress of science and the useful arts.†Fair use doesn’t require attribute (despite what your high school teacher might tell you, plagiarism is not illegal), and it doesn’t matter if it hurts your feelings.”
My, aren’t we feeling privileged. And feeling all lawyerly, too. Didn’t know there were so many lawyers about.
There speaks the attitude that will eventually lead to a mass exodus of art from the internet.
Now, now; just hold your horses. I’ve worked in synch licensing for about a billion years, and this has nothing to do with “fair use;” please read up further on your definitions because this is a term that gets used inaccurately all the time. I also highly doubt Fox is trying to pull anything over on anybody. The music dept. for The Simpsons doesn’t send out confirmation letters/requests for formal licenses to the song’s copyright holders until they receive the final cue sheet from their post-production department noting what was used in the final edit, and for this show, that’s usually about a week after the show airs. It would have been a much better idea for Carly to simply call Fox’s music department (the people who asked her for a quote on this months ago when the show was being produced) for an update on what was going on, rather than letting Noah cry foul on her behalf.
p.s. I don’t work for Fox. I license music to them, and in fact called them this morning because one of our songs was also used in last night’s episode and I wanted to know when we could receive payment.
It’s no longer available.
Odd, it’s watchable on this page but unavailable on the youtube link.
I hear Mike from techcrunch pushed carly down the stairs for “acting up”. Then he punched a baby.
This sort of thing is rampant. John Dvorak’s blog stole an image from me this morning and had the audacity to use my bandwidth to serve it!
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15143
If they’d asked, I would have said “sure, use it, but give me attribution.”
Sheez, this stuff isn’t hard…
First off. Why is the video NOWHERE to be found? And what about the “UPDATE”?
UPDATE: Noah has posted an updated to his blog saying that one of the writers of The Simpsons contacted him and said that they are correcting the issue with the song usage.
So what did Fox do to “correct” them stealing the song?
You don’t tell us.