In February 2007, Stephanie Lenz made a 29-second video of her 13-month old son frolicking to the Prince song Let’s Go Crazy.
She posted it on YouTube. Four months later, Universal Music Group (owner’s of the rights to the song) ordered YouTube to take the video down for copyright infringement.
Stephanie Lenz then sued Univerisal Music Group, claiming the video clearly fell under fair use (see my previous blog post about fair use here) and had no commercial value.
Universal Music Group agreed that her video fell under fair use (they never actually viewed the video until Stephanie sued them)…however…they also argued that they shouldn’t be held accountable for demanding the video be removed from YouTube. They claimed that under fair use law, a copyright holder doesn’t have to determine if a video falls under fair use before requesting it be taken down.
In other words, they claimed a copyright holder can cry foul…without first determining if a foul actually took place.
A judge disagreed with their claim (a victory for common sense)…and told Stephanie Lenz she could proceed with her lawsuit (to read the full story, go here).
On the surface, it appears that big companies are over-zealous in purusing claims against copyright infringement…that they’re always picking on the “little guy”. And maybe they are.
But then again, maybe they’re just trying to plug the leaks in a system that is flooding the Internet with “illegal” content.
For example, ever heard of the web site SurfTheChannel? Go there and you can watch just about any TV show or movie…commercial-free. Why aren’t they being sued (so far)? It’s because they are not actually hosting any of the videos…but rather…they are simply acting as a database that points to where the videos can be found.
If you owned the copyright to music or video…and you found it playing on YouTube or a site like SurfTheChannel…what would you do? Determine if it’s being used under fair use, and if it is, swallow hard and go away? Or would you puruse it?
What are your thoughts on this?
Dave, as you know, I am planning to release some “pay per view” training videos in the near future and I do worry a lot about this. So, to answer your question, I think I would definitely go after the person stealing my content.
I saw the posted video at http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3777651 and let me tell you, the background music is so bad that I wouldn’t really call this copyright infringement.