I was a fan of the original Power Rangers series growing up, even though I can admit now that it was terribly produced. The brand was redeemed this week by a brilliantly-produced fan film that quickly went viral, yet the owners of the franchise want it removed.
Do they have a case? Maybe. It all comes down to fair use.
NOTE: THIS VIDEO IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK!
According to US copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits the limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of works covered under fair use include parody/satire, commentary, criticism, and research.
Fan fiction is usually protected under “fair use”, and most franchise owners turn the other way in order to avoid upsetting the fanbase. For example, the rubbish that is 50 Shades Of Grey was birthed from Twilight fan fiction.
However, Saban is clearly not about that life. They already got it removed from Vimeo, and have been harassing Joseph Kahn (the fan film’s director) to get it taken down from YouTube.
Yet, Kahn isn’t letting this one go down without a fight.
Every image in Power/Rangers is original footage. Nothing was pre-existing. There is no copyrighted footage in the short. I am not making any money on it and I refuse to accept any from anyone. It was not even Kickstarted, I paid for it myself. This was made to be given away for free. It is just as if I drew a pic of Power Rangers on a napkin and I gave it to my friend. Is it illegal to give pic I drew of a character on a napkin to someone for free? No.
I just wanted to make Power Rangers good for once. It’s kind of a silly franchise. It was an experiment in tone; it was a challenge. I took the silliest property I could think of and tried to see if I could make it serious enough.
MY THOUGHTS
This is a tricky one, but I’m going to have to side with the fan film.
Kahn’s rationale is flawed: there may be no copyrighted video footage, but he did interpolate the theme song during the song playing over the end credits. In addition, I’m sure the Power Rangers brand is under trademark, which is a whole other can of worms.
Nevertheless, as I see it, it successfully falls under the Fair Use Doctrine. Yet, that isn’t for me to decide. Fair use is a very complicated issue, one with a gigantic gray area that only a court of law can decide on.
What I can say is that Saban can’t win this fight. They’d likely lose in court, and even if they successfully got it taken down, they would lose cool points from the fan base that put up with his poorly executed series for the last 20 years.
