US CUSTOMS SEIZES PARODY COMICS @ BORDER, CBLDF GEARING UP

[MattBrady]

Citing that material contained therein constituted “clearly piratical copies” of registered and recorded copyrights, a shipment of comics bound for Top Shelf has been seized by US Customs in Charleston, SC. The books in question are copies of the Stripburger anthology containing the stories “Richie Bush” by Peter Kuper, and “Moj Stub” (“My Pole”) by Bojan Redzic. Top Shelf has asked the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to look in to the matter, and as a result, the CBLDF has retained counsel to challenge the seizures.

According to the CBLDF: "Richie Bush," appearing in Stripburger (Vol. 12) #37, is a four-page parody of Richie Rich that also satirizes the Bush Administration by superimposing the personalities of the President's cabinet on the characters from the comic. "My Pole," appearing in Stripburger (Vol.3) # 4-5, which was published in 1994, is an eight-page ecology parable in Serbian that makes visual homage to Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Woodstock in three panels. Customs seized five copies of the issue with the Peanuts reference and fourteen copies of the issue containing "Richie Bush." The stories were both published in the middle of their respective issues and no graphics from either story appeared on the covers.

“It’s an interesting thing – I take over as President of the Fund’s Board, and am ready to defend everyone else, and something like this comes along that falls right in my lap as Top Shelf,” said Top Shelf Publisher Chris Staros. “It’s very unusual, but at least I knew who to call.”

The path of the Stripburger books being seized is a little circuitous, but is based in Top Shelf acting as the Eastern European publisher’s American agent. “Every year they put out a major release, like Stripburger, Warburger, Madburger, or Miniburger,” Staros explained. “Their newest release, The Miniburger Dirty Dozen, which is the boxed set of minicomics, we were importing from them to solicit through Diamond and sell at conventions for them. And usually, when they ship a pallet of books to us, they'll throw in a miscellaneous box or two of their oversized soft cover anthology, Stripburger. Generally, they’ll send like ten copies of each, just so we have a few to sell at conventions.

“We import a bunch of stuff, from Actus in Israel to Oog & Blik in The Netherlands, and even though we’ve never had a shipment detained by customs before, I wasn't immediately alarmed when I heard our shipment had been detained. I just figured that Customs was searching the entire sea container that our pallet was in for pests or some such. In any event, after a two or three week delay, I finally called our customs broker to ask what the problem was, and she told me that our specific pallet was being searched. That's when I started to get a little nervous.

“About a week later, on October 27th, I received a formal letter from Customs announcing that two issues of the anthology Stripburger had been seized,” Staros continued. “In the letter, they accused the two issues of being ‘piratical works’ of Richie Rich and Peanuts, and that if we wanted to protest the seizure we had to respond to them formally within thirty days. I knew what was in the Miniburger boxed set, because I had already seen an advance copy of it, so I knew their seizure couldn't have been related to the main body of the shipment. So, I immediately emailed the people at Stripburger and found out that they had also sent along a couple issues of Stripburger that had a Peter Kuper ‘Richie Bush’ story in it, and another story that had a couple of Peanuts cameos. -- By the way, the Flash-animated version of the printed ‘Richie Bush’ story can be seen on the web at Peter Kuper's www.RichieBush.com. -- Eventually, the Miniburgers were released to us, but the Stripburgers were firmly in Customs hands.”

Stripburger asked if the CBLDF might get involved to write an article about this, so Staros asked Stripburger to send him a copy of the two anthologies that were seized so that he could see what was in them. “As soon as I received them and had a chance to look at both of the stories, I realized instantly that they were obvious instances of parody and fair use, and it seemed very odd to me that customs would get involved with something like this.

“I then got Charles Brownstein [Executive Director, CBLDF] involved, and he in turn got Burton Joseph, the Fund's legal counsel, to give us a legal opinion on the issue. He definitely felt that these stories were protected under the First Amendment, so we presented the details to the CBLDF Board, and they voted unanimously that we take on the case. I was the only person who didn’t vote, as I recused myself since I brought the case to the Board. We then retained local counsel in South Carolina, and filed all the paperwork to legally protest the seizure. If Customs doesn't change their mind and release the materials to us now, we'll end up in court.”

According to Staros, customs seized five of the issues that contained the Peanuts cameos and 14 that contained the Richie Bush short story. As mentioned earlier, the cover artwork of the volumes was not related to either of the stories in question. “In addition, the Richie Bush story was a four-pager, and in the eight-page piece with the Peanuts cameos, Snoopy appears in two panels, Charlie Brown in one, Woodstock appears in another, and this second story is in a foreign language,” Staros said.

Brownstein explained the Fund’s view of the works. “Both ‘Richie Bush,’ and ‘My Pole’ are uses of parody,” Brownstein explained. "’Richie Bush’" pokes fun at Richie Rich, creating new meaning of ‘Poor Little Rich Boy.’ Through this use of parody, Kuper also creates a potent political satire that is perfectly in line with what political cartoonists across the country did when they depicted Bush as resembling Alfred E. Neuman.

"’My Pole’" is a very subtle use of parody. The story isn't in English, so if you're judging it on its visual merit alone it is poking fun at Peanuts by putting the characters in an unfamiliar milieu. The parody here strikes me as being very similar to cameo parodies that you see all the time in shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Drawn Together. Art, particularly humor and parody, is very self-referential and this strip is no exception. The three panels in this ten year old strip that reference Peanuts do not constitute piracy of Schulz's strip any more than last week's episode of Drawn Together depicting Charlie Brown being led around on all fours does. Both instances gently parodied the characters by briefly placing them in unfamiliar milieus for satirical effect.”

Given the explanations of the works, as well as the fact that neither appeared on the covers of their respective volumes, Staros said he still can’t understand Customs’ classification of the stories as “piratical.” “It's Customs job to look for explosives, pirated goods, infestations, etc., and it is expected that they would do random checks,” Staros said. “But in this case, calling an anthology pirated is really strange. Piracy is when someone manufactures something like bootleg CDs or DVDs and passes them off as the original. And since nothing of that kind was done here, the seizure doesn't make any sense.

“This country has always been extremely protective of freedom of the press and the importation of all kinds of published materials. Canada and England stop a lot of things at their borders, based on … basically the tastes of the customs officers, where they become the literary police. I find that extremely distasteful – that customs would be the arbiters of taste. And since this is the first time I’ve seen something like this, especially on my watch at the Fund, it's definitely something worth a fight.

“This seizure is a precedent-setting event, even if they only seized a handful of books in this case. Because if it was a huge publishing run printed overseas and published by Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly, per se, and it was seized for the same reasons, it could literally put the publisher out of business if the books couldn't be brought to market. Therefore, this is an important issue for the Fund -- to fight it now before it impacts the industry on a larger scale in the future.”

As for the next step? “Like most matters of law, it's a lot of waiting,” Brownstein said. “Our attorney hand-delivered the letter requesting that the comics be released or court action initiated on November 24. Now we need to wait for Customs to do one thing or the other. I'm hopeful that Customs will recognize that the works are clearly protected by the First Amendment, and respect the case law demonstrating that by promptly returning the books. But if not, we are prepared to go to court.

“It's the principle that matters in this case,” Brownstein continued. “U.S. Customs does not exist to act as the parody police. They police actual piracy, but anyone viewing these comics can clearly see that these comics are not representing themselves as copies of the real thing. They are poking fun at the real thing, an exercise of the rights the First Amendment affords parodists and satirists. It's a very slippery slope for Customs to start deciding what non-obscene literature can and can't come into the country, and it's something we want to see stopped, and stopped right now.”

[A Green Jedi]

Edited to tone it down.

I'm against censorship, and since this is a parody/satire, this is definitely unjust censoring of a product.

What's up with Canadian Customs anyway?

[Cherokee Jack]

Originally posted by A Green Jedi
Edited to tone it down.

I'm against censorship, and since this is a parody/satire, this is definitely unjust censoring of a product.

What's up with Canadian Customs anyway?

Maybe I'm misreading it, but I though it was US customs that confiscated these books.

[Biggest Nimrod]

Originally posted by Cherokee Jack
Maybe I'm misreading it, but I though it was US customs that confiscated these books.

Yeah, it says US Customs in like, the first paragraph.
And...
Geez, this kinda crap literally makes me sick to my stomach.
If this thing has anything to do with the politics of the book(the Bush parody), then it's even worse.
This isn't even like a lawsuit for copyright infringement, it's all the US Customs doing.
You'd think the friggin' US CUSTOMS would have bigger fish to fry.
Ugghhh....sick to my stomach.

[John Osen]

Maybe we should ban John Stewart's show, Saturday Night Live, Second City TV, Mad Magazine and the TV show, National Lampoon, and all political cartoons also.

Main Entry: pi·ra·cy
Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratEs pirate
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

[Calamari Kid!]

You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

~~~JD~~~

[The Enemy]

What's up with Canadian Customs?[P][/P]
Maybe I'm misreading it, but I though it was US customs that confiscated these books.

[BR]

On the off-chance he did mean Cdn Customs, they have a rep for stopping porn -- not only the extreme stuff (i.e. pregnant amputee minors in bondage) but esp. anything gay or lesbian in nature that would otherwise be considered quite tame.

They're usually pretty good about other kinds of content unless it violates Canada's Hate Laws (can't encourage violence against minorities, can't promote "knowingly false" beliefs against minorites -- i.e. Holocaust deniers, etc)

[DrTzinTzin]

To intentionally misquote Plutarch "qous Custodies et Customs" or who watches Customs?

[Vyper]

Originally posted by Calamari Kid!
You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

~~~JD~~~

I take it you've never seen the "South Parknuts" (i.e. "South Park" + "Peanuts") cartoon skit on MAD TV?

[IanZL]

Originally posted by Calamari Kid!
You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

~~~JD~~~

Wow, the Schulz estate has some long arms if they can reach customs. Thats a pretty odd statement since they probably never even heard of this story until now (if that even). It's a very small story, it just wouldn't come up on their radar.

This probably comes down to a bunch of customs agents trying to do their job right. They see "Charlie Brown" in an inllegal work as they flip through it and they flag it. This isn't censorship or even neccesarily unjust, they just saw it as a pirated work and knew that they weren't supposed to let it in. Is it a shame that something that is a parody got mislabeled? Absolutely, and it stinks that the dozen or so people won't get their books, but this is far from Bush being evil (although, he is) and far from censorship.

[Biggest Nimrod]

Originally posted by Calamari Kid!
You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

~~~JD~~~

LOL
Some people will say the silliest shit just to try and piss off fan boys.

[TVerBeek]

Originally posted by Calamari Kid!
You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

Whether you personally could do without it is quite completely irrelevant. In the United States and other free countries, people have the right to publish things that not everyone else likes. It's the same reason you're allowed to post garbage like the above, so you really shouldn't complain about it.

And this is not a violation of the Schulz estate's copyrights (or trademarks), as any first-year law student can confirm, and even the most big-brother Supreme Court jurist will uphold. Whoever instigated this seizure was acting as an unlawful censor.

[TVerBeek]

Originally posted by IanZL
This probably comes down to a bunch of customs agents trying to do their job right. .... Absolutely, and it stinks that the dozen or so people won't get their books, but this is far from Bush being evil (although, he is) and far from censorship.

It's either censorship or its incompetence. If that's the best these agents know how to do their job... then they simply don't know how to do their job. Either give them some training, or if that won't work, find people qualified for the job.

[Blind Assassin]

Originally posted by Calamari Kid!
You know, it's most likely somebody tipped off Customs to the content of that book. (And before the paranoid among you start screaming "Bush Administration! Bush Administration!), it's most likely the Schulz Estate protecting their copyrights on the characters.

Good for them!

Too many "satirists" just jerk people's chains in the name of being "in-you-face" and "out there."

Frankly, I could do without the image of Snoopy taking a leak on a lightpole. I hope the whole friggin' shipment gets pulped.

~~~JD~~~

So YOU don't approve of it, or want to see it, so you 'hope the whole shipment gets pulped'

That's a bit extreme. I don't like comics about kids (Runaways, Ultimate Spider-Man, Invincible), but I don't think they should be pulped, just because I don't want to see it.

[Regulator]

This just doesn't make any sense. The same people here who would accuse the Bush administration of some vast Big Brother conspiracy are the same people who would say that Customs and port security is too incompetent to carry it out.

When I was in driver's ed, one of the teachers told me that you could be driving 1 mph over the speed limit, but depending on whether the police officer got kissed by his wife or slapped as he left, you still might get a speeding ticket. I think this is the case here. One particular agent probably had a bug up his ass and confiscated some stuff that looked questionable to him. It's a very odd case though.

[Blind Assassin]

What I was curious most about is why customs decided to check/seize them in the first place.

The article states that no preview art of the 'copyrighted' characters was ever distributed to the public, the comic front and back cover do not feature these images. They were merely featured in stories printed in the middle of the book.

Are customs officials well versed in copyright law? Did the customs agent flip through the book and say "Wait a minute! This book contains crass distorted images of copyrighted characters. They must be removed!"

If MAD MAGAZINE was checked , would it be confiscated at the border for the same reason? (crass spoof/parody of copyrighted chracters/movie properties, etc.)

[MurrayC]

Originally posted by A Green Jedi

What's up with Canadian Customs anyway? [/b]

Overall, Canada is pretty laid-back about these sort of things. When theatrical movie is presented on Canadian TV (and I'm talking major Canadian networks, and not just the extended cable channels), it rarely gets edited for "objectional content". The same goes for pornography and comics.

Whener you hear about "something objectional being seized at the Canadian border", it's usually just to justify someone's cushy government job.

[Blind Assassin]

oops

[ssava]

Sorry guys.
I think what I'm getting from this is simply a matter of Customs seeing Peanuts and Richie Rich done by someone else and flagging it.

It's not a conspiracy.

It's not a freedom of speech thing.

It's PIRACY!

If it was another company making profit off of YOUR characters I'm sure you'd feel differently.

I for one am glad there's people out there catching these things before it gets out of control.

I'm sure Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) wishes someone would have caught the person who made those Calvin pissing on (insert ANYTHING here) stickers before they flooded the world.

Call it satire if you want...I call it what it is...Piracy.

[Blind Assassin]

Originally posted by ssava
Sorry guys.
I think what I'm getting from this is simply a matter of Customs seeing Peanuts and Richie Rich done by someone else and flagging it.

It's not a conspiracy.

It's not a freedom of speech thing.

It's PIRACY!

If it was another company making profit off of YOUR characters I'm sure you'd feel differently.

I for one am glad there's people out there catching these things before it gets out of control.

I'm sure Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) wishes someone would have caught the person who made those Calvin pissing on (insert ANYTHING here) stickers before they flooded the world.

Call it satire if you want...I call it what it is...Piracy.

Again, I ask-- would you call what they do in Mad Magazine (satirize/parody pop culture movies, tv shows, comics, and celebritites) piracy as well...?

[ssava]

No.
Because they're actually satirizing the properties themselves.
Not USING a property like Peanuts to satirize politics or something non related.
They're using other people's properties to tell a completely different story.
Mad magazine would satirize Peanuts.
Plus....Mad magazine would actually have some respect for the properties and not have them pissing and cursing and such.

I also like Mad magazine too...

[Nat Gertler]

Originally posted by TVerBeek
And this is not a violation of the Schulz estate's copyrights (or trademarks), as any first-year law student can confirm, and even the most big-brother Supreme Court jurist will uphold.

If for no other reason than simply that the Schulz estate has neither copyrights nor trademarks on Peanuts. Those rights are owned by United Feature Syndicate.

And, rather than cracking down on parody/tribute uses of Peanuts, members of the Schulz estate actaully participated in publishing a book of mostly previously-published uses. The book Tribute to Sparky is available through the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

[Biggest Nimrod]

Originally posted by ssava
Call it satire if you want...I call it what it is...Piracy.

Well, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Avast yee matees!
So, I guess, "ssava", you can just go ahead and shiver mee timbers and call me a scurvy pirate, cuz I own (and would gladly buy more of) many a product of parody similar to these ones.
Cuz, I mean, if it's not that "pirate" blood in me, what could it possibly be, right?
Couldn't possibly be that "founding father" blood, or any of that nonsense about freedom of speech , eh?
And that goes for downloading music, too.
Call me a pirate, or a thief, or Captain Morgan, or whatever helps ya sleep at night, all ya want, I'm the captain of my own ship, pal, an' I ain't walkin' no plank.

[Biggest Nimrod]

Originally posted by ssava
Not USING a property like Peanuts to satirize politics or something non related.

To me, and maybe it's just me, but it looks like that "Richie Bush" comic has just a little something to do with politics.

[Nat Gertler]

Originally posted by ssava
Because they're actually satirizing the properties themselves.
Not USING a property like Peanuts to satirize politics or something non related.

While I haven't read the Peanuts-related piece (and cannot read the language that it's in!) I can tell you that Richie Bush can indeed be seen as a parody of the Richie Rich material, a sarcastic look at the underlying conceit of that series that a family of American capitalist multizillionaires can have clean hands and consciences.

Mind you, I don't think it's a very good parody, and I would not agree with that message. But it is a mistake to believe that Kuper not parodying the Harvey comic in addition to attacking the President.