Friday, 9 November 2018

Satanic Temple sues Sabrina makers

quote [ Netflix and Warner Brothers face a $50 million (£38m) lawsuit over a statue of goat deity Baphomet. ]

Cue the arguments over how copyright works. I think they have a solid case.
[SFW] [art] [+4]
[by 5th Earth@3:21amGMT]

Comments

hellboy said @ 5:49am GMT on 9th Nov [Score:1 Interesting]
This may come down to boobs.

There are multiple public domain historical images of Baphomet which could have been used as the basis for the statue (and the Satanic Temple doesn't own Baphomet). However, their statue, and the one on the show, are distinctive because they feature a male chest instead of the female breasts that Baphomet is usually depicted with. That makes it harder (though not impossible) for the production company to claim their statue was based off the prior art. There's also the adoring kids, present in both statues (almost identically) but missing in the historical art, but let's face it, we'd all rather focus on the boobs.

There was a lawsuit recently where the US Postal Service was sued for issuing Statue of Liberty stamps that showed the head of a statue from the top of the New York New York casino in Vegas instead of the actual Statue of Liberty (the difference is not immediately obvious, especially on a postage stamp). The USPS lost (and probably sued whoever gave them the image), but it was a more clear-cut case as the image in question was an actual photograph of the NYNY statue, not a drawing or painting or statue based on the NYNY or original statue. In this case the defendants could point to things like the shape of the wings and argue that they developed their statue from the historical drawings in the same way that the Temple did. And they would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddlesome boobs. And kids, meddlesome kids. Pretty much a dead giveaway, those damn kids.

There's also the argument of fair use; Green Day was sued because they released a live concert video in which a poster is visible on the wall behind them. In that case the ruling was that the poster was incidental to the concert; Netflix can't make that argument here since the statue is pretty central to the storyline.

Finally there's what is essentially a defamation argument; I suspect they'll have a hard time making that one stick, as Baphomet and at least the notion of Satanism have been around for a lot longer than the Temple. Though it is interesting to consider what would happen if there were a TV show about a depraved suicide cult that practices cannibalism, sexually oppresses women, and worships a dead Jewish hippie insurrectionist.

Netflix should settle, as they'll likely lose the lawsuit (kids ruin everything, even plagiarism).
Ankylosaur said @ 6:08am GMT on 9th Nov [Score:2]
Another thing to consider is that the point of making a public stink about this is so there will be a widely seen record of their rejection of any associations that Sabrina may create with their statue.

An important part of the ST's shtick is to make their "religious beliefs" as innocuous as possible so there can be no secular objections for their use of public spaces, only sectarian religious objections based on superficial use of Satany stuff.

If their statue becomes associated with, say, cannibalism, then those Christian groups that are trying to have exclusive use of a public space, that the ST's purpose is to undermine, could argue the ST should be excluded for advocating illegal acts. It would be an argument that wouldn't stand up to fair scrutiny, but the premise here is that they are dealing with people trying to subvert the anti-establishment clause using deceit, so unfairness and bad arguments should be assumed.

The ST could bring up this lawsuit should anyone try to use that argument against them.
Ankylosaur said[1] @ 4:21am GMT on 9th Nov
I'm sure Archie Comics or whoever would be just fine with the Satanic Temple introducing a new advertising campaign centered around Sabrana the Teenage Wizard who lives with her two wizard uncles and a talking black cat named Salami.
hellboy said @ 5:20am GMT on 9th Nov
Read recently, "Laveyan Satanism is just Ayn Rand with candles."
Ankylosaur said @ 5:39am GMT on 9th Nov
This is not Laveyan Satanism. The Church of Satan doesn't like the Satanic Temple, which is just a pro-secularism political org dressed up with satanic imagery to troll Christian groups abusing religious freedom arguments to get around the establishment clause into admitting their real, and unconstitutional, motive of Christian-exclusivity.
hellboy said[1] @ 5:50am GMT on 9th Nov
I know, it just reminded me of the thing I'd seen that made me laugh. Though it sounds like the Temple is trying to be taken more seriously as a religious affiliation with the defamation language in this suit. Though that may just be them pointing out Christian exceptionalism again.

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