Friday, May 27, 2011

Copying as free speech, today's version

Newsweek ran a story (apparently it was one of Newsweek's "content partners," but that wasn't so obvious) about dying cities, including Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The citizenry of Grand Rapids, 5000 of them, responded with a "lip dub" to Don McLean's American Pie showing the city as a vital organism.  I'm not quite sure why they picked American Pie, but I'd guess it has something to do with the song's position as iconic indicator of Americanness and persistence even when our best days might be behind us.  So, who's going to do the fair use analysis?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That song makes no sense in that context. They might as well have picked "Where have all the flowers gone."