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South Park Sued For ‘What What (In The Butt)’ Parody

Posted by majestic on November 15, 2010

South Park ParodyYou have to love the way that Trey Parker and Matt Stone keep getting themselves into legal trouble for the scripts of South Park. Keep up the good work gentlemen! From the Hollywood Reporter:

Less than a month after South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were forced to apologize for lifting material for a spoof of Inception from the website CollegeHumor, the show is again facing accusations of content theft. The producers of the animated hit, including Viacom and Comedy Central, are being sued for allegedly ripping off a copyrighted music video for the viral phenomenon What What (In the Butt).

The video was produced by Brownmark Films based on a song by Samwell. Released in 2007, it became a massive hit and was featured on PerezHilton.com and VH1’s Best Week Ever, and has been downloaded over 33 million times on YouTube. According to the site, it’s one of the most watched music videos of all time…

U.S. copyright law allows people narrowly limited rights to use copyrighted works without permission under what is known as “fair use,” and parody is an established fair use. (For those interested in learning more about fair use exceptions to copyright, Standford University has a useful guide.) So what do you think? The original and the South Park parody are both shown below. Comments welcome!

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  • MoxAmok

    If they weren’t getting sued, something would be seriously wrong. Trey and Matt have so much pull with Comedy Central now that all of their shows are free online! I just hope nothing jeopardizes that.

  • MoxAmok

    If they weren’t getting sued, something would be seriously wrong. Trey and Matt have so much pull with Comedy Central now that all of their shows are free online! I just hope nothing jeopardizes that.

  • Jbittrich

    I am shocked to learn that Samwell had not already been compensated, and hope he wins a million spacebucks.

  • mojoesque

    maybe i’m missing some subtlety of the law, but is this not clearly parody? the South Park piece is making no attempt to pass the content off as their own, but rather using it both as an obvious pun on Butters’ name and for the simple humour of having Butters sing about doing it in the butt.

  • Hadrian999

    the real comedy is a hip hop artist suing anyone over copyright abuse

  • http://www.media-underground.net/ Mort

    I think Samwell is probably pissed off because the South Park version is better.

  • http://twitter.com/FliXFantatier Christopher A. Jones

    isnt samwell a little late to the party i mean the episode ist a couple of seasons old already…

  • Ironaddict06

    Yes it is.

  • Synapse

    It’s a parody of a parody. Fortunately, the SP guys have more than enough money to fight this (should be thrown out pretty quick) and maybe even turn the tables. Companies just sue to instill fear these days anyhow.

  • http://twitter.com/tastytrixie Trixie Fontaine

    Bullshit. I love SP as much as most, but just because you have some fucking cartoons ripping off a song for money doesn’t make it an instant parody. This is theft, not fair use.

  • http://twitter.com/tastytrixie Trixie Fontaine

    Bullshit. I love SP as much as most, but just because you have some fucking cartoons ripping off a song for money doesn’t make it an instant parody. This is theft, not fair use.