| The Onion actually recently submitted a hilarious satirical amicus brief to the Supreme Court for the case Novak v. City of Parma [1] that made a splash in legal Twitter, for a case where a man who was arrested for making a parody Facebook page of his local police department. The amicus brief is itself a parody, an irreverent joke that has been submitted as a sincere legal document. (Thanks to LegalEagle for making a video on this [2]). The entire point of the amicus brief is an argument that labeling a parody as a parody destroys the point of the parody. The four arguments: I. Parody Functions By Tricking People Into Thinking That It Is Real II. Because Parody Mimics "The Real Thing," It Has The Unique Capacity To Critique The Real Thing III. A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody IV. It Should Be Obvious That Parodists Cannot Be Prosecuted For Telling A Joke With A Straight Face It seemed a bit relevant to this. It's pending certiori and might go ignored, but the Supreme Court could rule that parody is protected under the first amendment, which would make Twitter an opponent of actual free speech (the legislative definition, not the new internet definition). [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxTWonQvXkw |
The Onion files Supreme Court amicus brief defending the right to parody - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33481989 - Nov 2022 (53 comments)
Defending parody: the most important amicus brief yet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33175057 - Oct 2022 (22 comments)