YouTube User Puts Legal Lash to Universal

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), asking a federal court to protect the fair use and free speech rights of a mother who posted a short video of her toddler son on the Internet.

"In February, Stephanie Lenz uploaded to YouTube a 29-second video of her son dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy." She said she made it public for her friends and family.

But last month, YouTube told her UMPG threatened legal action if the video was not removed from the site immediately. The video came down.

EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry told internetnews.com Lenz has reason to be upset. McSherry said the video is obviously a fair use of copyrighted material.

"According to the content owners, what they're worried about is long verbatim copies of their music, their movies, their news. Here, we're talking about a tiny snippet of music played in the background of a home video. That's clearly fair use. Unfortunately the folks at Universal didn't spot that like they should have," McSherry said.

Universal Music did not respond to requests for comment. "

emily | 7:39 AM | Copypright Issues |
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