The second letter from The Smiling Sun

Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for your comprehensive answer to my letter concerning your infringement of the Smiling Sun logo.

I aggree that your network is operating on a completely non-commercial basis and I certainly commend you for referring to the Smiling Sun website and to the Wise Smiling Sun shop, although these links, for what ever reason, are not working on my computer.

This said, I cannot agree with your point that your use of the Smiling Sun logo just is a parody and that the modification just serves the purpose to criticise and discuss the original logo and as such fully acceptable. The use by your network and all those who may have taken your offer and copied your version of the logo have in my view, done so with the intention of creating a friendly pro nuclear logo. To achieve this purpose you have made use of the most vital part of the protected Smilng Sun logo and accordingly violated our copyrights.

I will of course discuss your argumentation with our board and return to you in due course.

Best regards
Siegfried Christiansen
opyright consultant
OOA Fonden

Hello again Siegfried. I hope you are having as splendid a May Day as I am and that this discussion is not causing you too much work.

The links are not working for you? Hm, that is odd. If that is the case then I must fix them because I truly want them to be working. If you could provide me with some information as to what operating system and browser you are using, including version number of the browser, I will try to bugfix them as soon as I can.

About the purpose of the purpose of the artwork… if I have created a work for which I have the copyright I cannot see how I would be limited in using the work in any way as I see fit. This means I have the right to distribute the work freely and grant other rights to use the work. The fact that the work may serve some additional purposes apart from that of discussion and criticism I cannot see would be a factor in this. Why would something cease to be a parody if it is used for more purposes?

But I admit I’m not an expert on these the finer points of Swedish copytright law, so I could be wrong. Hence, if your investigation into Swedish copyright law shows that parody must be the single and only purpose of the work in order constitute a valid copyright and not be an infringement upon the rights of the original work of which the parody stems, please let me know and I shall then of course concider the matter again. I would very much apprechiate if you could point me to paragraphs or legal precedents that shows your point.

You should then of course be aware that even if I do limit the use of the artwork to that of discussion and criticism, this does not change much. All I need to do is add the condition that the work is to be used only for this very purpose and then it can still be distributed. In fact I don’t see even how today’s usage of the artwork, both by me and the peope ethat have downloaded it and displayed it so far, could be anything but this. As you surely are aware, parody was granted this special status for the sake of securing freedom of expression. And this I feel is how we are using it: expressing our opinion by displaying the artwork.

So I must stress that I cannot see there is much you can gain in trying to impose restrictions on us apart from the ones we have already imposed on ourselves. Instead you risk tarnishing OOA’s image for very little gain when all we really seek is a dialogue with people on the subject of nuclear power.

If you see it differently I am as I said above always prepared to hear your arguments. My mailbox is open for you.

with best regards and wishes for a continued sunny May Day
/Michael Karnerfors