Mom Sues Music Company Over Baby Video Removal 391
penguin_dance writes "A Pennsylvania mom is fighting back, suing Universal Music Publishing Group for having a home movie taken down off of YouTube. The movie, featuring her 18-month old bouncing to Prince's song, 'Let's Go Crazy,' was cited for removal by the Group for copyright infringement. Mom Stephanie Lenz was first afraid they'd come after her — then she got angry. She got YouTube to put the video back up, she's enlisted the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and she's filed a civil lawsuit (pdf). 'I thought even though I didn't do anything wrong that they might want to file some kind of suit against me, take my house, come after me. And I didn't like feeling afraid ... I didn't like feeling that I could get in trouble for something as simple as posting a home video for my friends and family to see.'"
Re:Offense is the best defence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, as a matter of fact, it does. Else the EFF wouldn't have taken the case. The EFF may not be perfect, but they damn sure aren't going around wasting cash.
P.S.: Seriously, RTFA.
Re:Two words... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I know Prince is a scary guy, but this .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet the ABC story this morning seemed to indicate that BMI was responsible for the takedown notice. Is that because BMI still controls some of his older stuff?
And they interviewed some paid lackey, who was "scouring the internet". It wasn't clear that Prince was directly involved.
Re:Offense is the best defence? (Score:4, Interesting)
With their pretty long list of cases listed here [eff.org] perhaps you could go through and point out out the hundreds listed, which ones they lost. If they have a track record of losing, I'm sure it won't take long to point out a few dozen cases the lost out of the hundred+ listed. I'd love to be more informed, but I suspect you probably have a couple headlines stuck in your head and are overgeneralizing.
bumper music and royalties (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How to get permission (Score:5, Interesting)
Brilliant. One thing you should add, however, is a willingness to pay a small fee for the permission. Surely that's reasonable.
Of course, if they decide they don't want to take your money because you're small potatoes, it's obviously ironic if they decide to pay a ton of money to lawyers, to sue people over equally small potatoes. But it'd be nice if there were a way to codify that irony into law. That is... unless there's a reasonable means for people to request and receive permission to use copyrighted works, then the RIAA can't sue those small potatoes either. Of course, current copyright law says that it's well within a copyright holder's right to withhold their work for any reason. However, copyright is hopefully shifting towards somewhat more permissive rules these days. And if it does shift that way, hopefully one of the first things to shift would be that if a copyright holder distributes tens of millions of copies of a work, that they can hardly expect the teeming masses to not want to at least minimally interact with that work, and that such a proposal might be reasonable for widely-distributed works.
Singing / Humming Songs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Listen, lady (Score:1, Interesting)
If all you wanted was for friends and family to see it, email it JUST TO THEM.
Multi MB attachments through email? Sorry, not everyone uses gmail. The next best alternative to a site like youtube would be file sharing. Given your initial reaction, I'm sure you'd get your pants in a twist about that too. Do you really think anyone is not going to buy a Prince album or even a Prince track because they'd prefer to listen to only 30 seconds of a track with a baby gurgling and spurting in the audio because it was "free"?
Re:I know Prince is a scary guy, but this .... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the same one that gave away his last album in the UK as a freebie inside a Sunday paper? Hmm.. What curious values he must have although I guess it may just be that they are artistic rather than financial which is fair enough.
Re:How to get permission (Score:1, Interesting)
Because everybody knows that no one succeeds, and permission is never given. These corporations do not believe it's worth their time to bother processing requests like this, so why would they bother to give permission for such things to be posted on youtube?
Reasonably simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The moral of the story here is that if you're selecting artists to listen to, it might actually be a good idea to try and find out what their individual stance on enforcement is. Some are going to be like Prince, or Metallica. Others are going to be like Trent Reznor. Most, I suspect, will fall somewhere in between, in the sense that while they won't mind fair use to a degree similar to what has traditionally existed with radio, they will still, in the end, quite rightfully expect people to buy CDs of their music. However, I also believe that enforcement needs to be the responsibility of the artist themselves, and not middlemen organisations like the RIAA...because very often the middlemen organisations hold views which are not representative of everyone that they claim to represent.
One other thing I'd actually like to see some acts offering is the possibility of legal indemnity to individuals who can be proven to have bought copies of their music. In other words, if you buy a copy of a given artist's music, for a contract to exist between you and said artist specifying exactly what it is that you are or are not legally allowed to do with the music you've bought, and as long as you operate within those guidelines, you won't get sued. Different artists are going to have different perspectives on that, so said contracts would actually need to be extremely individual in nature. I'm also not talking about something exactly the same as a software license here, either. I would want to see something where people actually had to provide individual signatures that were recorded along with the date of purchase; not something clickthrough that is untraceable, unenforceable, and can thus be brushed off.
Someone like Prince would obviously be fairly strict; private, individual listening/viewing only, with no reproduction or secondary performance allowed of any kind whatsoever. At the other end of the spectrum you'd likely get people who'd be willing, once you've paid them, to let you do whatever you wanted, up to and including the creation of derivative works.
By the numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
"File-sharing and illegally downloading of music has devastated a once-booming music industry. Some observers say the industry is just trying to protect itself."
Last time I checked, the industry's profits were still pretty comfortably in the gaziliions range. If by "devastated" they mean "somewhat less outrageous than before," and "our poor execs are having to get by on salaries and bonuses only 30 times as big as the average workingman's salary instead of 50 times as much" then perhaps it's an accurate statement. It's all a matter of proportion -- the more you make, the more you expect. It's like a baseball player making $20 mil a year, then getting insulted because his team wants to pay him "only" $15 mil this year. Corporations and their royalty seem to think that they have a "right" to consistently make as much or more than they did the previous year. I think Average Joe has little sympathy for them (as do I).
Re:Offense is the best defence? (Score:2, Interesting)
Must you turn the television and radio OFF to film yourself commenting upon the content being heard and seen ala Beevis and Butthead, ala Mystery Science Theater? Her video is original content. Those corporate shills have no right to dare demand a take down notice, even if she used the whole "Let's Go Crazy" song. The focus is her baby's reaction to the song "Let's Go Crazy". This is not *just* FAIR USE, but FREEDOM OF THE PRESS TRUTH. Nobody can see or hear the real FACTUAL reaction of the baby to "Let's Go Crazy"? To prohibit this is censorship. To prohibit this is to prohibit free expression. To prohibit this is to violate the First Amendment.
The song is not used to "supplement a video work". The video work is a reaction to a specific song. Use of the song is ESSENTIAL to the video work reaction. To deny the use of the song is to deny the meaning of the video. And that is nothing less than an attempt to bury FACT, an attempt to bury HISTORY. Prince and his copyright holder minions had their chance, had their right to remain silent. Just because somebody utters something does not give them the right to cut off or prohibit the use of another's ears. Copyright be damned! No news station is prohibited from filming fact. And they dare claim copyright on those broadcasts of fact? They don't own peoples' reactions. They don't own peoples' creative responses to prior art. And this woman has a RIGHT to share her crazy dancing baby reacting to any song ever played. If some artist doesn't like it, too bloody bad. Enough of artists freely "stealing" public domain ideas like words and inserting them to abuse and falsely claim copyright on derivative works.
Sound the horns.
"Chhhhaaaaarrrrggggeee!!!!!!" [Insert Hollywood frontal assault here.]
Re:Two words... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would it also be fair use if Universal used her baby video for the music video to a new song?
If not, why not?
(I have no opinion here, I'm just interested)
Re:Tag goodforher ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Normally... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are likely to be many precedents where unfounded fear and intimidation had resulted in damages being awarded by the courts. Her fears are not unwarranted and I believe the will be victorious in this case.
Re:I know Prince is a scary guy, but this .... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is yet another reason to mod UMG to oblivion. (Score:2, Interesting)