SHORT TAKES : ‘Pretty Woman’: Ugly but Legal

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--A federal judge ruled that the rap group 2 Live Crew’s satire of Roy Orbison’s hit “Pretty Woman” did not infringe on the 1964 song’s copyright.

U.S. District Thomas A. Wiseman rejected a lawsuit brought by Nashville’s Acuff-Rose Music Inc.

“2 Live Crew is an anti-establishment rap group,” Wiseman said. “This song derisively demonstrates how bland and banal the Orbison song seems to them.”

The Orbison classic depicts a pretty woman, “the kind I’d like to meet,” while the rap version of the same name is about a “big, hairy, bald-headed, two-timin’ woman” who “becomes akin to Cousin Itt, the ugly bit character featured on the TV series ‘The Addams Family,’ ” Wiseman ruled Monday.

Acuff-Rose had charged that 2 Live Crew’s “Pretty Woman” hurts the value of the original. The lawsuit sought unspecified damages and forfeiture of all copies of “As Nasty as They Wanna Be,” the album on which the song appeared.

Orbison died in 1989.