The company that licensed the US rights to Orwell's 1984 doesn't really understand copyright, so they're threatening the people who made the now-infamous Hillary Clinton/Apple 1984-ad mashup. Apparently, these people weren't paying attention when the carpetbaggers who bought out the Woody Guthrie estate tried to shut down Jib-Jab's "This Land" parody, and got their asses handed to them.
"The political ad copies a prior commercial infringement of our copyright," said Gina Rosenblum, president of Rosenblum Productions Inc. "We recognize the legal issues inherent under the First Amendment and the copyright law as to political expression of opinion, but we want the world at large to know that we take our copyright ownership of one of the world's great novels very seriously."
Rosenblum purchased rights to "1984" from the Orwell Estate and Sonia Orwell in 1981 and the Orwell novel is still under copyright, at least until the year 2044. The company has utilized these exclusive rights to produce a number of products based on the novel. "We produced Richard Burton's last film, '1984', which opened that year to great critical acclaim," Gina Rosenblum said. "We also authorized a number of related products such as videos and soundtracks, and later released the film for television viewing and an '1984' Opera. Currently, we are in discussions with major Hollywood companies to make a new motion picture of the classic novel."
(Thanks, Micah!)
