Law professor fights back after copyright charge is levied against him

[The Buzz]

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor who has long called for regulation of online gambling, is fighting back after YouTube took down a video he posted online due to charges of copyright infringement. Lessig used a video with music from a band called Phoenix for a lecture and posted it online. He says that constitutes fair use.

Liberation Music eventually backed down. But Lessig decided to invoke another part of the copyright law, "which basically polices bad-faith lawsuits," he says — threats made fraudulently or without proper basis.

Lessig is suing Liberation Music because he wants labels to stop relying on automated systems to send out takedown notices, he says.

Full story here from NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechcons...-the-wrong-guy

[LukeC]

Good luck to him!

[universal4]

Publishing a video using an audio track from a band that obviously copyrighted their tracks is probably not gonna constitute fair use. Certainly not if he used the entire song.

Rick
Universal4

[edgarf76]

I thought youtube's policy is that you can pick the song when you edit the video. That gives the person credit for their song and it is directed to a link to download and buy through youtube

[TheGooner]

In reading the article - it appears his lecture was about the social media trend of people "mashing up" film action with songs.
In particular he examined this specific song and how it had been used in multiple ways.

He probably has good claims to "fair use" - as long as he wasn't using the song in a backing track for his own lecture.

[sweetbet]

It'll be interesting to see how it will play out.