Prince can't push this mother around.
The pop star wanted YouTube to remove a clip of an infant boy dancing to his 1984 hit song "Let's Go Crazy." When the clip got scrubbed, the baby's mother cried foul and filed suit asking for damages. The woman's lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say the dancing-baby clip is the poster child for fair use.
Corynne McSherry, the EFF attorney representing the baby's mother, Stephanie Lenz, said the music on the clip is barely audible and that Lenz, from rural Pennsylvannia, posted the video for noncommercial uses. Copyright owners are often too quick on the trigger when it comes to sending takedown notices to YouTube and other Web sites, according to McSherry.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act enables owners of intellectual property to demand that unauthorized copies of their work be removed from Web sites. But Congress also built in safeguards to prevent copyright owners from making misrepresentations.
"We've seen a lot of abuse of the takedown procedures," McSherry said. "It's very easy to get material taken down, and unfortunately folks aren't careful enough when issuing notices. This interferes with free-speech rights. The Internet can't continue to grow or be a robust forum if users can't share views or larger political commentary without being worried that every little piece of content is going to be removed."
There is also something unique about this case. Universal Music Group is the defendant because it represents some of Prince's publishing rights (his current music label is Sony BMG). A year ago, Universal signed a licensing deal with YouTube that allows users to include the label's music in videos. Under the terms of the agreement, YouTube agreed to remove material from any Universal artist who declines to participate.
According to sources knowledgeable with the agreement, only one artist represented by Universal has elected to opt out of the YouTube deal: Prince.
A representative of Universal declined to comment.
The iconic musician sometimes calls up Universal when he spots unauthorized uses of his work and asks them to send takedown notices, the sources said. The author of such hits as "Purple Rain" and "Little Red Corvette," Prince has hired a company called Web Sheriff to patrol the Web looking for unauthorized copies of his work and then try to get them taken down. The company said it plans to spearhead a legal challenge to YouTube and other Web sites on behalf of Prince and the 1970s disco band, the Village People.
John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president, said by phone Tuesday that his company had nothing to do with the Lenz baby clip and declined to comment further.
The lawsuit appears to have a ways to go before the issue is decided. Universal has filed a motion of dismiss and EFF is scheduled to issue their reply in the next few weeks.
Up for a do-it-yourself project this weekend? Rarely does Web site swag get as intricate as the Digg button from Adafruit Industries. The $20 kit gives you everything you need (sans soldering tools) to put together a slick, working Digg button that has a three-digit counter on it to keep track of Diggs. Every time you click the tiny, red button, you get a nice "dug" message on the LED display, and the count goes up by one. The real-world possibilities for this are endless.
The kits were first made available at last month's Digg 1 million user party, where partygoers could purchase and put them together on the spot. Many were soldering for the first time--in the dark, with loud music playing, while potentially under the influence of alcohol. You get the benefit of being able to do this in your home. Also, $1 from each purchase goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
While the button doesn't actually link to Digg.com in any way, it makes for great office kitsch and was a lot of fun to make. It took about 20 minutes for CNET's very own soldering guru Donald Bell to melt put it together . We've condensed that down into the three-minute clip below.
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