This is what happened: A young mother placed a 29-second video of her two little children in the kitchen dancing to Let’s Go Crazy by Prince on YouTube. She titled the video “Let’s Go Crazy #1.” During the video, the mother asks her 13-month old “what do you think of the music,” and he bobs his head up and down while holding a push toy. The artist’s publishing company claimed infringement of Prince’s work and ordered the video taken down, which it was. The purpose of copyright laws is to protect the economic interests of authors and artists. Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) [Digital Millennium Copyright Act; DMCA], the law provides a way for artists to take down offending uses of their work without going to court. Apparently the mother thought the whole takedown process was ridiculous and sued the artist’s publishing company, alleging the company misrepresented in its takedown notification, and that the video was a fair use of the artist’s music. Both the federal trial and appeals court found there was a question of fact whether or not the video represented a fair use, and the Ninth Circuit further stated: “We hold that the statute requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, and that failure to do so raises a triable issue as to whether the copyright holder formed a subjective good faith belief that the use was not authorized by law.” (Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (Ninth Cir.; September 14, 2015) [115 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1965, Copy. L. Rep. (CCH) P30, 818, 43 Media L. Rep. 2305].)
