Liberation music, an independent Australian record label, bit off more than they could chew when they picked a battle with Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a world renowned copyright attorney gives lectures around the world on how the law governing intellectual property has yet to adapt to the digital age. Lessig uploads many of these lectures onto Youtube, which uses an automated function which scans uploaded videos for copyright infringement.
One of the lectures included a remix of the song Lisztomania the rights of which belonged to Liberation music. As expected, Youtube’s scanning technology found a positive reading and removed the song, this was followed with threats of a lawsuit by Liberation music.
Lessig, knew he was entitled to use parts of the song under the fair use doctrine, and refused to take it down.The doctrine states that if a person may use a part of a song for the purposes of critique, as Lessig did, without needing to ask permission. Liberation music eventually backed off from the claim, but Lessig was not finished. He has counter sued Liberation music under the basis of issuing a lawsuit in bad faith (which is an offense in Australia).
It’s nice to see somebody being able to stand up to a record label. Grant it, the record label in this situation relatively small, but it is still a significant victory. Moreover, this whole debacle shows the problem with having automated takedown systems. If a layperson were to receive a notice from Youtube, even if they were using material legitimately, they probably just blindly do as their told. I strongly recommend reading the entire blogpost, which can be found here.
