Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Moral Majority, Inc., 606 F.Supp. 1526 (C.D. Cal., 1985), on appeal, 796 F.2d 1148 (9th Cir. 1986), an important Fair Use precedent. Hustler Magazine, whose publisher was a well known free speech activist and pornograper published a satirical mockup of a Campari liquor advertisement mocking Jerry Falwell, a right wing US TV evangelist and the head of the group Moral Majority. In turn Moral Majority used copies of the the parody in a fundraising campaign and Hustler sued for copyright infringement. Hustler’s suit was rejected on fair use grounds, both courts holding that that defendants’ reproduction and that Moral Majority’s reproduction and
distribution was a fair use, despite the fact that it reproduced
essentially the entire work even though and were at least partially motivated by the
commercial goal of raising funds for litigation. The court found that the
as a rebuttal of a personal attack was similar to two examples of fair use set forth in Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act, i.e., criticism and comment.
