Tech Shout!

Universal Music is being dragged to court by an American mom, who claims that the record label insisted that a video of her toddler dancing to music by pop star Prince be pulled off from YouTube on copyright violation grounds.

Now the latest in the story is that Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorneys have filed a lawsuit seeking a San Francisco federal court to guard the woman’s fair use and free speech rights.

Speaking about this, EFF lawyer Corynne McSherry said, “Universal’s takedown notice doesn’t even pass the laugh test.” Adding, “Copyright holders should be held accountable when they undermine non-infringing, fair uses like this video.”

The video titled ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ which was uploaded on YouTube shows Stephanie Lenz’s cute little son wearing a red jumper and holding a toy stroller for balance as he bounces in place to Prince’s song, Let’s Go Crazy. The video is 29-seconds long.

Though this video has been uploaded by mum Stephanie in Februrary, which is around five months back, it was as early as last month that she was informed about the removal of the video from the website thanks to Universal’s complaint that stated that use of the music (in the video) breached the company’s copyright law.

“I was really surprised and angry when I learned my video was removed,” said a little angry Ms Lenz.

According to her, the Vivendi Universal-owned music label should not make use of legal threats to avert people from sharing home videos of the children with family and friends.

Taking her stance further, EFF lawyers argue Universal is abusing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act provision that asks websites to remove copyright material at the request of owners.

“Copyright abuse can shut down online artists, political analysts, or - as in this case - ordinary families who simply want to share snippets of their day-to-day lives,” maintained EFF lawyer Marcia Hofmann.

The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that Lenz’s home video does not break any Universal copyright, as well as damages and injunctive relief restraining Universal from bringing further copyright claims in connection with the video.

This lawsuit is part of EFF’s continuing effort to safeguard online free speech in the face of bogus copyright claims. At present EFF is working with Stanford’s Fair Use Project to develop a set of “best practices” for proper takedowns under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However the Let’s Go Crazy video has been re-posted on YouTube. You can check it out here.