Tell Me Baby... how dumb you are....

[lizardbeth]

I'm working on my con report, but I just have to make a note of this, because I'm a big fan of their stuff.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are suing Showtime over the name "Californication", the Duchovny series. This doesn't surprise me -- I figured either there was some permissions, or there'd be a suit, because, HELLO. I don't know the actual claim, but the network has not one single leg to stand on that it's not taken from the album because -- get this--

one of the characters is named "DANI CALIFORNIA."

Oh no, don't name her after one of the songs. *snicker*

Would it have killed you to ask first, Showtime? Duh. Even if it's legally sound (and I have to hope that someone over in their high-rent legal counsel looked into it), it was still a very poor public relations move.

hm, I wanna do a vid to 'Dani California' someday. Great song (though Rugrat likes 'Snow' better).

Comments

[showmewrtr.livejournal.com]

Actually titles can't be copyrighted. I'll admit I've seen just one episode of the TV show in question, but, unless it follows EXACTLY what happens in the song, then the simple name isn't an issue. Unless RHCP actually trademarked/wordmarked the name of their song (like JK Rowling trademarked everything Hogwarts/Harry Potter related) so the actual names can't be used without the R registered symbol and proper acknowledgements, etc. But if they just tossed out their song and album with those titles, they can't get mad if someone else uses the word "californication". Well they can get mad, but there's nothing they can do.

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

The band took long enough to bring the suit I suspect something was going on behind the scenes that went sour. My pure guess is that the show originally wanted to use the song as the theme and was denied. And things have gotten progressively more nasty. But I don't know, it'll be interesting if anything happens, or it's just a tactic.