A woman who posted a 48-second clip of a 10-month-old baby dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s go Crazy” is suing Universal Music Corp. for issuing a take-down order to YouTube.
The woman contends her video was obviously “fair use” of the clip: i.e. it was non-commercial and, being only a low-quality reproduction of a small part of the song, it was not likely to affect song sales.
Universal contends that the 1998 law that allows take-down orders does not force copyright owners to consider fair use. What’s more, Universal apparently says there’s no such thing as obvious fair use.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a short story about the case, which just came before a judge Friday, but it doesn’t really say all that much more.
I’ll readily admit I haven’t read the 1998 law that governs this issue, but I sure hope U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel finds some fairly wide provision for fair use in there somewhere.
Otherwise, it will be essentially illegal to post a video on YouTube of anything that happens at a party, a bar, a mall or any of the other places that generally play copyrighted music. Can the record companies really make a huge chunk of life unfilmable because there’s music in the background?
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