A 30 second You Tube video of a toddler dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy was pulled because it supposedly violated copyright law.
After several weeks the video reappeared on You Tube as the publisher (Universal Music Publishing Group) realized that there was no copyright violation since the video only contained 20+ seconds of the song, the creator (the parent of the child dancing) wasn't trying to make any money, and the video would never be misconstrued as a video for the actual song. Her son's dancing was the focal point of the video - not the song itself. Furthermore, the sound quality was extremely poor as the music was recorded playing through a speaker that sounded as if it was in another room. As a result, the creator had the right to incorporate the song into the video through Fair Use law.
Here's a blog post detailing the situation in greater detail. As you can see, the creator is suing because she believes the video should never have been taken down in the first place. Although she was not authorized to use the song, she should have been able to incorporate it into the video due to fair use. She claims that Universal and Prince abused the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DCMA was created to deal with illegal downloading. Universal claims that it shouldn't have to decide if Fair Use is warranted if a video clip incorporates copyrighted material. They should just be able to demand that the clip be removed. If the plaintiff wins the case, it would seem that music publishers will have to decide if Fair Use is warranted before ordering clips to be removed.
More info on her lawsuit can be found here.
Questions:
1)Why do you think the publishing company demanded the video be removed?
2) Do you think copyright laws were violated? Why or why not?
3) Why do you think the video's creator is countersuing?
4) Why do the music companies view thousands of videos looking for copyright violation?
Here's the video:
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14 comments:
All I have to say is.......Party Like It's 1999! lol
Maybe people with go by the single because of the Youtube video. Free advertising, whats wrong with that? These companies get to uptight. I guess they do have to protect their clients best interest though.....I dont know?
See the publishing company demanded to song to be taken off of youtube because its a free site, and since they are not profiting off of its content then they decide it MUST BE TAKEN OFF!!! Not fair? I think so....Like you said, its all part of the fair use law. So many little laws though to have to worry about.
Who has this kind of time? The family made an error out of ingorance of copyright law.With all of the pirating issues in the news you might think thay would at least question the public use of the music. Let it go. The video was poor as was the music. No one was going to pirate that and make a fortune. I feel tha family is wasting time and resources fighting this. The baby was not going to make it to Dancing With the Stars anyway.
So this is another way to test the boundriess of the law as it relates to the world of "entertainment." The IPO or intellectual properties (I forgot what the O stands for) where does ownership begin and end is beign tested here. This is all gray area not black and white as teh battling companies attempt to make you believe. There are no defiinite boundries to written in law books as precendents to trial. Therefore it is all attempts to make boundries.
Because they had nothing better to do, I bet anyone who watches the video could care less about the song.
If a 2 year old in dancing to Prince, then his people should be glad that he's still got it. People should keep their focus on what the video is really about (the dancing baby) and stop being so full of themselves crying about how Prince's song is being copywritten. Focus on the real pirate crimes.
I think people are just too sue-happy nowadays. They should just let it go. I think that out of all the videos that are on YouTube it is silly that they decided to freak out about this one. You can barely tell that the song is Prince and it was only a tiny clip. They probably only noticed it because the mother titled the video, “Let’s Go Crazy #1”, so I can understand just making them change the title.
Why does corporate America have to be so uptight? They aren't losing any money. I highly doubt people are downloading this song with the background noise. Just let the kid dance. Parents saw their kid doing something cute and recorded it for memories. People do it everyday. Leave it alone.
if the mother of the child was trying to make money off the video then MAYBE I can understand the company getting upset. Clearly however, that mother was just trying to post up a cute video of an adorable baby dancing to a song. Why should it matter that Prince's song is in the backround for twenty seconds. These people who file complaints and lawsuits about little things like this obviously have no life and nothing better to do.
I think that the music industry has too many restrictions on what people can use. The fact that the person was not trying to make any money on the video posted on YouTube should be enough for the company to leave the person alone. I think that if this family starts to make money off the video posted, then maybe the music company should start asking for money.
i think that if the mother of the child intention was to make money off the video then I can understand the company getting upset. but, the mother was only trying to post up a video of her baby doing something she found cute and entertaining. i dont think that it should matter that Prince's song is in the backround for such a short amount of time. it's just a clip of the song. it isnt even the main purpose of the videa. i think it's ridiculous how people file complaints about such little pointless things, they should find something better to do with themselevs then try and cause trouble about something so dumb.
The publishing company probably wanted it removed because they did not like the purpose of the song in the video.Copyright laws may or may not have been violated, depending on an individual perspective.They are countersuing because it is the government's tendency to try to make money in any way they can.Companies look for copyright violation because they do not want music being used for whatever purpose people can think of.
I think it is very fair use. It could have been any other song that was playing. The parents and the 2 year old did not care what was playing just if the little kid was dancing. I could barely hear the song and make out the words when it was playing for 30 seconds. It is sad when people care about things like this that are nothing when they have bigger problems to be dealing with.
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