Cassetteboy – the comedy partnership made famous by their parody videos on YouTube – have recently been discussing how changes to copyright law mean they no longer fear a lawsuit being taken out against them.
The pair, who have over 160,000 subscribers on YouTube, gave a talk at the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, which took place last week.
Their humorous dubbed videos of politicians and celebrities, including David Cameron and Jeremy Clarkson, have been responsible for their fame, but they use footage and clips taken from other sources, which they have not filmed themselves.
Under previous rules, Cassetteboy ran the risk of being sued for breach of copyright whenever they used footage without the owner’s consent.
However, the European Copyright Directive now allows people to use any material as long as it is for parodic purposes, meaning it has to be ‘funny’ and cannot compete with the original.
One of the duo, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “We were infringing copyright for 20 years before the law changed, and never dreamt that our work would ever be legalised.
“The change in the law has had a huge impact on the work we’ve been able to do, and we’re very happy to be able to talk about it and share our experiences.”
Parody videos from other uses, which had been taken down from video sharing websites, have slowly reappeared online over the last 12 months, since the law came into effect in October last year.