The disappearance of “Dylan Hears a Who”

Salon has a piece on the fate of “Dylan Hears a Who,” a brilliant cultural mashup of Bob Dylan and Dr. Suess that unfortunately ran afoul of copyright law.

Tangled up in Seuss
When a musician recorded “Green Eggs and Ham” in the voice of vintage Bob Dylan and posted it online, the Grinch estate promptly replied: One fish, two fish, cease and desist.

By Dan Brekke

…. Ryan took the text from seven Seuss classics, including “The Cat in the Hat” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” and set them to original tunes that sounded like they were right off Dylan’s mid-’60s releases. He played all the instruments and sang all the songs in Dylan’s breathy, nasal twang. He registered a domain name, dylanhearsawho.com, and in February posted his seven tracks online, accompanied by suitably Photoshopped album artwork, under the title “Dylan Hears a Who.”
….

It was clever and delightful. Ryan had immersed himself so fully in Seuss’ words and Dylan’s style that he managed to merge two quite different creative intelligences. Many who have heard the tracks come away convinced they’re really listening to Bob Dylan.
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So if there was a legal defense for Ryan using Dr. Seuss’ words and images — and Dylan’s name and likeness, for that matter — it probably lay in the Copyright Law’s “fair use” exception. The provision, which reaches back at least to early 18th century English law, allows “the fair use of a copyrighted work … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching … scholarship, or research.”

What does that mean when it comes to the unlikely trio of Dylan, Seuss and Ryan?

I asked Jennifer Rothman, an assistant professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis who specializes in intellectual property, entertainment law and the First Amendment. Her take surprised me, coming from someone who said she’s on the side of small creators vs. corporate intellectual property interests.

Read it and learn.