Universal Music was wrong about YouTube dancing baby

Davey Winder
Friday, 22 August 2008 01:22

IT Policy - Regulation

A US federal judge has ruled that fair use rules do apply to YouTube video clips and must be taken into account before issuing takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Which means the dancing baby can keep going crazy to Prince after all...

Last year Stephanie Lenz posted a short, 29 second, video clip to YouTube. It showed her then 18 month old baby dancing to a now 24 year old Prince song.

The video was vaguely amusing, but not everyone was laughing. Universal Music issued YouTube with a takedown notice for copyright violation.

If that was not pushing the spirit of the law a little, then the fact that the song was actually being played in the background, on the television, during the Super Bowl certainly bent it double. What's more, you could hardly hear the garbled soundtrack.

YouTube then compounded this over the top reaction by informing the mother that any further infringements would see her account cancelled.

Understandably, Stephanie Lenz was less than impressed by this snapping dog approach to copyright law, and decided to do something about it.

What she did was bring a lawsuit which asserted that the video was covered by a 'fair use' clause and should be reinstated. In fact, Universal did not challenge that assertion and the video went back up online after six weeks.

However, Universal Music did go on to insist that copyright owners should not need to consider fair use issues before throwing takedown notices for online video content to be removed. Now a federal judge has finally made the ruling which in effect takes down the Universal claim.

What did the judge have to say about it all, and where does this leave Stephanie Lenz? Find out on page 2 as we look at his ruling and the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...

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