2. Family Guy and Slander
- Family guy has never sued for Slander, but has been sued for other things
such as song parodies, for example:
“The owner of When You Wish Upon a Star is irate about what he calls an
unseemly spoof of the familiar tune, saying the dreamy classic was twisted
into an anti-Semitic ballad and widely distributed as part of a comedy
television program”
“Family Guy used an altered version of Burnett's theme music and had a
character performing her signature ear tug, but the episode cast the
Charwoman as a cleaning lady for a porno shop.
Burnett played the character in her long-running TV variety series, The Carol
Burnett Show, which ran 1967 to 1978.
Fox said it was surprised to be sued over an 18-second scene.”
3. Acquired Programmes
“Acquired programmes must comply with our Editorial Guidelines on Harm and Offence. We should check
them prior to broadcast to ensure the content is suitable for the likely audience. A film classification is
only a guide and special care should be taken with films rated as "18" certificate, which should not play
before 9pm on any service.”
This includes Family Guy as it is previewed after 9pm on BBC3, this is because various episodes include
violence, bag language and sex references which aren’t appropriate to be shown before 9pm as Children
may still be up.
4. United States Copyright Law
Copyright law in the United States is part of federal law, and is authorized by the United States constitution.
The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the copyright
clause, which states:
“The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
This clause forms the basis for U.S. copyright law (“Science”, “Authors”, “Writings”) and patent laws (“useful
Arts”, “Inventors”, “Discoveries”), and includes the limited terms (or durations) allowed for copyrights and
patents (“Limited times”), as well as the items they may protect (“exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries”)
In the U.S copyright is administered by the United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress.
More information on U.S. Copyright law can be retrieved from the Copyright Office’s web site.
6. The Office of Communications commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and
competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United
Kingdom.
• Ofcom has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a statutory
duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the
public from what might be considered harmful or offensive material. Some of the main areas Ofcom
presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio
spectrum from abuse.
• The regulator was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and received its full
authority from the Communications Act 2003.
• Ofcom licenses all UK commercial television and radio services in the UK. Broadcasters must comply by the
terms of their licence, or risk having it revoked. Ofcom also publishes the Broadcasting Code, an extensive
series of rules which all broadcast content on television and radio must follow.
• As the regulatory body for media broadcasts, part of Ofcom's duties are to examine specific complaints by
viewers or listeners about programmes broadcast on channels that it has licensed. It does not oversee
unlicensed channels broadcast to UK viewers. When Ofcom receives a complaint, it asks the broadcaster
for a copy of the programme, it then examines the programme content to see if it is in breach of the
broadcasting code. Ofcom requests response from the broadcaster to the complaint. On the basis of this
response, Ofcom will mark the complaint as either "upheld" or "not upheld", or alternatively simply
"resolved".
