{"id":59,"date":"2008-08-25T09:44:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T13:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/?p=59"},"modified":"2008-08-25T09:44:13","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T13:44:13","slug":"judge-says-woman-can-sue-over-youtube-flap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/25\/judge-says-woman-can-sue-over-youtube-flap\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Says Woman Can Sue Over YouTube Flap"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She posted it on YouTube.\u00a0 Four months later, Universal Music Group (owner’s of the rights to the song) ordered YouTube to take the video down for copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Lenz then sued Univerisal Music Group, claiming the video clearly fell under fair use<\/strong> (see my previous blog post about fair use here<\/a>) and had no commercial value.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, they claimed a copyright holder can cry foul…without first determining if a foul actually took place.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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”.\u00a0 And maybe they are.<\/p>\n

But then again, maybe they’re just trying to plug the leaks in a system that is flooding the Internet with “illegal” content.<\/p>\n

For example, ever heard of the web site SurfTheChannel<\/a>?\u00a0 Go there and you can watch just about any TV show or movie…commercial-free.\u00a0 Why aren’t they being sued (so far)?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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?\u00a0 Determine if it’s being used under fair use, and if it is, swallow hard and go away?\u00a0 Or would you puruse it?<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[31,48,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}