(Sp)amicus curiae

Carol Burnett and her production company Whacko, Inc., filed suit in the Central District of California against Fox over an episode of Family Guy for copyright infringement. In last April's Family Guy episode "Peterotica," it was alleged that the reason that Pornoslavia, "the best dirty bookstore in town," was so because Carol Burnett was the part-time janitor, and then Burnett's copyrighted character the Charwoman was shown mopping the floor. I suppose one could simply say that parody of a copyrighted item is protected under the "fair use" provision of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 and conclude that this suit will be dismissed in short order. However, this suit draws attention to a glaring flaw in Family Guy--they don't really parody anything. They take a copyrighted cartoon janitor from four decades ago, and they depict her doing janitorial work. Truly cutting edge satire. This technique of copying something directly from another work and juxtiposing it next to Peter Griffin and his family has been used for several years, and from the few episodes that I have seen, it fails to be funny virtually every time. Family Guy routinely dives headlong into the Uncanny Valley, animating scenes that are too close to their antecedents to generate any humor. If you want to make a joke about a scene from Star Wars you have to actually modify it so that it will in fact be different from the scene in Star Wars. The time has finally come for Family Guy to be punished for failing to be funny.

In a manner similar that of the Parents Television Council and their FCC complaints, I encourage you to please email a copy this post the United States District Court, Central District of California.