“Räuber Hotzenplotz”
摘要
The 2021 Copyright Amendment Act laid down in Sec. 42f(2) Copyright Act that a published work may be broadcast or made available to the public for use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche via a large online platform (Sec. 18c Copyright Act) and reproduced for these purposes. There is a high threshold for the justification of an infringement of copyright in the case of a mere instrumentalisation of a work for a parodistic dispute between third parties. An appropriate balance must be struck between the interests and rights of the authors and the freedom of expression of the user, for which all circumstances of the individual case must be taken into account (here: the author of the work has been unintentionally drawn into a political dispute without being able to take up a position of its own, and since not only the content-based criticism, but even the robber motif could have been conveyed without infringing copyright, the balance of interests weigh in favour of the author). Therefore, freedom of parody does not end only when the content is discriminatory or there is a demonstrable violation of material interests. Rather a comprehensive balance of interests must be struck.