Copyright Law Struggles to Keep Up in the Age of YouTube
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Holden Lenz had just learned to walk when—on Feb. 7, 2007—he stepped into the front lines of the copyright wars. Thirteen-month-old Holden was tottering around his family’s home in rural Pennsylvania, clutching his walker and looking cute.
The toddler heard the Prince song Let’s Go Crazy coming from a CD player in the kitchen, so he stopped walking and began bouncing up and down to the music. Then he made a face and resumed pushing his walker across the kitchen floor.
His mother, Stephanie Lenz, recorded these events in a 30-second home movie, which she posted on YouTube the following day under the title Let’s Go Crazy #1. She had put similar clips online before so faraway family and friends could see her kids.
This clip, however, drew the ire of the world’s largest music company—Universal Music Group—whose international operations garnered more than $6.9 billion in 2007. On June 4, 2007, Universal sent YouTube a takedown notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asserting that the home movie of Holden infringed the multinational’s copyrights in Prince’s song. YouTube removed the video from its website.
When Lenz learned what had happened, she did something unusual. Unlike the vast majority of people whose postings are the subject of DMCA takedown notices, Lenz consulted an attorney. She then sent a counternotice, asserting that her video, which contained only 20 seconds of a dimly audible song, was a protected fair use of Let’s Go Crazy and did not infringe Universal’s copyrights.
Continue reading, “Copyright in the Age of YouTube” in the February issue of the ABA Journal.
