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YouTube Fair Use

To an extent, the internet is an unregulated environment where everyone can be a publisher, so a good portion of users can easily get the impression that no one owns anything and everything is fair use, when it really is not. I've noticed many of the YouTuber content creators I subscribe to complained about YouTube's Fair Use issues and how they're too ambiguous. They've had videos been removed for inserting a tiny portions of content (i.e. audio from a song, video from a movie, a page from a comic strip, etc.) and they feel like they're being bullied unfairly, when actually, they definitely are infringing on original content and are properly being struck down. I think there's an important distinction to be made here between reasonable and unreasonable takedown notices.
Looking back Prince, he wasn't the most tolerant when it came to people sharing his content over the internet. His attempt to reclaim his art led to an attempt by Universal and him to remove all user-generated content involving Prince from the Internet, and we see that come into full effect in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (2015). Here, a mother, Lenz, just wanted to post a silly thirty-second video of her infant kid dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," but YouTube sent a takedown notice for that, which is nuts when you consider how that would play out in today's media environment. The proliferation of non-original content has only gotten worse, and I can't imagine how many takedown notices get reported daily. Luckily, the court held here that copyright holders must consider fair use in good faith before issuing a takedown notice for content posted on the Internet. One of the problems the textbook brings up I agree with is that it's risky to leave too much room for subjectivity in assessing fair use, but in this case, I agree with Lenz.

Here's the original video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ

Sources:
Collett-White, Mike. "Prince to sue YouTube, eBay over music use," Reuters, 13 Sept. 2007. Web. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-prince-youtube/prince-to-sue-youtube-ebay-over-music-use-idUSL1364328420070914?feedtype=RSS&feedName_InternetNews&rpc=22&sp=true.

Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. 801 F.3d 1126 (2015). Web.https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12567649168680108221&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 30, 2017 at 1:53 AM

    This is a really interesting post. YouTube is a jungle of videos that can be an endless loop of pretty much anything you can think of, including some pretty creepy stuff. This is why I agree with you, when you bring up the argument about the ambiguousness of the YouTube fair use policy. If someone is going to use a tiny tidbit of a song, video, cartoon strip or whatever it may be, I personally don't think that should be viewed as such a detrimental thing. In this age, it is honestly good publicity. I mean, what ever happened to "all publicity is good publicity"? It's interesting that you bring up the incidents with Prince. I'm from Chanhassen, where Prince lived and died, so I have a soft side for the guy. I will say that it brings up a good point though. These artist produce art, that is supposed to be paid for. At this point it is so easy to get any song from the internet and download it for no cost. I think that Prince was a bit ahead of his time in doing what he did, so props to him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 30, 2017 at 7:42 AM

    I think it is difficult for youtube to police these issues when there are an abundance of videos on their websites and videos are always being added. I think it is unlikely for youtube to have enough employees to comb through all of their content and decided if the user is upholding the policies on youtube. My assumption is that there is an algorithms put in place to determine if a video is abiding by the fair use rules. I only use youtube if i'm sent a link or watching a tutorial but there is usually music in the background and in the description there is a citation for the music or saying that it is copyright.

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