Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year, you should be familiar with the hit South Korean pop song “Gangnam Style” by Park Jae-sang (better known by his stage name Psy). Gangnam Style reached international success late last year, when it became the first South Korean pop song to top the UK singles charts. Its music video eventually became the most watched youtube video in history with over 1.6 billion views.
Arguably, one of the major reasons for Gangnam Style’s success is because of all the parody videos which were uploaded onto the internet of people doing its iconic dance (made famous in its music video).
Back in the early day of Youtube, when the idea of watching videos online was becoming more and more achievable, the music industry was in hysterics. People were uploading videos of themselves singing, and dancing to popular music which could potentially affect their bottom line. They tried banning these videos by threatening the hosting websites with legal proceedings if they did not take them down.
Eventually, the music industry smartened up, and realised that having people sharing videos with their music was actually in their best interest. Thus, they loosened up their policies, which eventually allowed songs like Gangnam style to go viral.
However, this does not mean that the music industry has completely abandoned threatening legal action on seemingly harmless use of their music. In fact, just this past week Universal Music Group, the label that owns Gangnam Style, threatened four Danish mayors with legal action for using the song in a youtube video without their permission.
Universal argues that it steps beyond the fair use doctrine provided under parody laws, and was actually used to raise the profile of the politicians. Universal insisted on a payment equivalent to 42,000 USD (roughly 27700 GBP) for a license to use the song, threatening to take legal action if they don’t. What is even more shocking, is that they gave them only twenty four hours to make the payment.
Whatever you may think about Universal’s actions, this issue does raise some interesting questions. Namely, at what point does making a video with another person’s music go from parody to raising their profile. Surely in a digital age such as this, where every teenager with internet access and a smartphone dreams of going viral to show off to their friends, will use a song like Gangnam Style to raise their profile. It could be said that a politician has a lot more to gain by raising their profile, but an internet celebrity can gain an upwards of a couple of thousand GBP from ad revenue if enough people watch their videos.
It remains to be seen how the courts will react, however it is an interesting area of IP law which I would keep an eye on.
Sources:
Danish “Gangnam Style” mayors threatened with copyright lawsuit by Universal
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130531/02442223269/universal-music-demands-42000-danish-mayors-gangnam-style-parody.shtml
