Comment on How does South Park get away with trashing identifiable people? Are they sued often?

• CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Keep in mind that a celebrity can send you and me, regular joes, a C&D and we’d likely comply simply because we lack the resources to sustain a challenge in court.

  What stops celebrities and organizations from suing South Park creators is likely the opposite: they have money and a legal team.

  The same thing happened with John Oliver when he talked shit about some coal mine owner that was notorious for suing people. The mine owner served them from a court that had friendly laws but they were ready. And they had insurance to pay for it.

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  • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Eat shit, Bob.

    Full story, the guy really is an awful piece of shit.

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    • towerful@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That is fantastic

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    • CuttingBoard@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Was a piece of shit. He’s taking a dirt nap now.

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• NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pretty much, satire is protected

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  • lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Tom Cruise’s sexuality and religion are objective satire

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    • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is Kanye West a gay fish?

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      • Agrivar@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That whole joke doesn’t quite hit the same way, now that we know he’s actually a mentally unwell self-hating man.

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• johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is really only to prevent them from suing and claiming that the show is representing the actions of celebrities on the show as true fact. If I publish a newspaper article saying “Donald Trump strangled a baby” without evidence then that could be actionable, as it’s a factual claim. But if I showed Donald Trump strangling babies as part of an obvious parody, then that would be protected speech. So their disclaimer is basically just to make it obvious that it’s a parody. It’s not a requirement, but they want to cover their asses.

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• FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If it’s all stuff he really does in real life, how could he sue over it? If it’s factual, you can’t sue. Well you could but you’d lose because South Parks lawyers would say “show me what we said that wasn’t true”

  If it’s its fictional and they clearly state at the beginning of the episode that it’s fictional and you should not assume it’s true, it’s going to be really hard to convince a judge that they were trying to trick people into thinking something was true.

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• Honytawk@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It is counted as a parody, which has different laws

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• neptune@dmv.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Celebrities don’t really win anything by suing. First, they look like a cry baby. Second, the bar for slander/libel against a public figure is enormous.

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• Wanderer@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Apparently they actually had to have him packing fudge to call him a fudge packer and to have him in the closet.

  They couldn’t just call him a fag or they would get sued.

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