Following from the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property in 2011, the UK government entered a consultation period to consider making changes to the existing IP law in the UK.  The Intellectual Property Office has commissioned Bournemouth University researchers to supply evidence to inform these proposed policy changes. Kris Erickson (with CEMP and CIPPM) is leading a cross-disciplinary team to provide evidence to evaluate a newly-proposed exception to copyright for parody.  This research will address the main concern put forward by government and creative industry stakeholders that parody content might produce economic damage for original rights holders in the form of substitution or reputational damage.

To evaluate those arguments, the team, including another CEMP member Marketa Zezulkova, is exploring parody music video creation on YouTube.  YouTube was selected as an ideal site for this research because it hosts both commercial and user-generated content side by side.  A statistical analysis of more than 3000 commercial and amateur videos will ascertain the rate, popularity and nature of parody video creation.  Statistical analysis will provide insight about whether the presence of parody is positively or negatively correlated with the commercial success of commercially licensed music videos on YouTube’s Vevo channel.