• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 19, 2024

Siding with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, a federal judge has dismissed former lawmaker George Santos's copyright infringement suit over a series of prank videos that were broadcast on TV and posted to YouTube.

In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote in the Southern District of New York said it was evident from the allegations in Santos's complaint that the YouTube posts were protected by fair use principles.

“It is clear ... that the defendants copied the videos for the transformative purposes of criticism and commentary,” Cote wrote.

The ruling comes in a dispute dating to February, when Santos sued Kimmel, ABC and Disney over Cameo videos that featured Santos reading absurd messages that had been suggested by Kimmel.

The Cameo videos ran on Jimmy Kimmel Live as part of the segment, “Will Santos Say It,” and were also posted to YouTube.

One clip showed Santos congratulating the fictional “Gary Fortuna,” who supposedly had eaten almost six pounds of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes to win the contest.

“I know you're feeling a little under the weather, but I hear from a great source that the doctor said that you'll be released from the hospital soon and recover well,” Santos says on the clip.

Santos, who on Monday pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, joined Cameo late last year, just days after he was expelled from Congress. He charged $200 a video to deliver personalized messages through the platform.

Santos's complaint centered on allegations that Kimmel and the TV network infringed copyright by displaying the Cameo videos.

Kimmel and the TV network urged Cote to dismiss the case at an early stage, arguing that the clips were a “quintessential example of a fair use," and therefore didn't infringe copyright.

The videos were shown “to mock and criticize Santos’ decision to immediately pivot from being expelled from Congress for financial misconduct to a 'new gig' selling Cameo videos, in a manner that suggested he still had no shame about doing anything for money,” attorneys for Kimmel and ABC wrote.

“The thrust of the first segment was to see whether Santos would be willing to say patently ridiculous things in exchange for several hundred dollars,” they added, referring to a segment that aired on December 7, 2023.

Cote agreed with Kimmel and ABC, and dismissed the case at an early stage. She said that even though judges don't typically decide fair use questions until later in the proceedings, in this case it was obvious from Santos's allegations that Kimmel and the network would prevail.

That ruling likely is a one-off, driven by Santos's notoriety, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.

“It's impossible to ignore the backdrop -- that Santos is such a disgraced figure,” Goldman says. “The entire opinion revolves around the fact that because he's so mockable, the court's going to let him be mocked.”