...of Christmas, my Zombie gave to me: ♪
2 Live Crew
and Tom Waits in a treeeee!
2 Live Crew is a hip hop group from Miami, FL. They are notorious for their controversial and sexually-explicit songs but are almost better known for the 1994 copyright case concerning their parody of Roy Orbison and William Dees' song Oh, Pretty Woman. 2 Live Crew's version was on the album As Clean As They Wanna Be, which was created and released with much less profanity and vulgarity than their normal output. Their Pretty Woman version featured the same bass riff, but completely different lyrics. The Woman of 2 Live Crew needs to shave, is bald, and is apparently a cheater.
The whole case was an excellent example of the Fair Use section of the existing Copyright Act of 1976. Because the song didn't cause Orbison to lose fans, market-share, or his reputation as an artist, the 2 Live Crew parody was deemed as fair use, even though 2 Live Crew profited from it.
And that was that.
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