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Judge: 'Dancing baby' lawsuit can proceed

Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:38 PM EDT
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Associated Press
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— A federal judge is allowing a Pennsylvania woman to sue Universal Music Corp. for forcing YouTube to take down a video clip of her baby dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

Universal Music demanded the removal of the 29-second home video by Stephanie Lenz of Gallitzin, Pa., because it allegedly violated copyright laws on the song.

But a San Jose-based judge says Universal needed to first consider whether the clip was "fair use" of the material.

Fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright act allow segments of copyrighted works to be used for purposes of parody or satire or in reviews and other limited circumstances.

It's the first such legal ruling requiring copyright owners to consider fair use of their material before demanding that Internet sites such as YouTube remove material.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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tigerblade

Is your dancing baby really worth that much effort? I mean, someone here is going to argue that this will snowball into something larger, with noble ideals about not letting the man push us around, but...

Seriously? You taped your kid dancing to Prince, and now you're suing the copyright holder? *cough attention whore cough*

    Reply#1 - Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:01 PM EDT
    akj

    I'd say the lawyers are the real attention whores...

    Elsewhere:

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the woman's law firm, asked U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on Friday to award attorneys' fees and other unspecified monetary damages under Section 512 of the DMCA.

    Not quite ambulance chasing, but I think you get the idea.

    • 1 vote
    #1.1 - Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:23 PM EDT
    Reply
    3kyw4law

    What about all the other videos that have music clips? I seriously doubt they had permission to use them.

    Tigerblade your right about the *cough cough*.

      Reply#2 - Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:07 PM EDT
      Melissa Corley

      I say kudos to her for pursuing this -- looking at the bigger picture, this is not about her dancing-baby video. It's about heavy handed corporations bullying the average online user for doing nothing wrong under copyright law. The DMCA needs to be reigned in because it does not allow for fair use of material. Hopefully this case and others will help change that.

        Reply#3 - Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:00 AM EDT
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