Best Things In Life Are Free

Was Irving Berlin mad when he saw the issue of Mad magazine billed as The Fourth Annual Edition of More Trash from Mad? Mad or not, he sued. In a section headed "Sing Along with Mad" appeared parodies of numerous popular songs, including some of Berlin's best-known hits. A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody had been transmogrified into Louella Schwartz Describes Her Malady, and The Girl That I Marry into: The horse that I'm betting will have to be A sprinter that wins with consistency!

Berlin, along with a swarm of song publishers, claimed infringement of their copyrights. Last week in Manhattan, the U.S. Court of Appeals decided that no actionable harm had been done. Said the opinion written by Judge Irving R. Kaufman: "Through depression and boom, war and peace, Tin Pan Alley has light-heartedly insisted that 'the whole world laughs' with a laugher, and that 'the best things in life are free.' " The suit against Mad is "an apparent departure from these delightful sentiments." Parodists, said Judge Kaufman, must be permitted to borrow from the original, or else there could be no parody. "While the social interest in encouraging the broad-gauged burlesques of Mad magazine is admittedly not readily apparent, we believe that parody and satire are deserving of substantial freedom--both as entertainment and as a form of social and literary criticism."

Courts have held that a parodist is infringing on a copyright if he carries the borrowing to excess, but Mad's barely recognizable parodies of the song lyrics, said Kaufman, fell within the traditional "fair use" rule. It could hardly be considered unfair that the Mad versions were cast in the same meter as the original lyrics: "We doubt that even so eminent a composer as Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.