Some: This baby dancing to ‘Prince’ for 30 seconds just changed United States copyright law forever

And on Youtube takedown notices...This video had a long-lasting legal importance in terms of copyright. ‪#‎FairUse‬ Article by Johnny McNolty for Some In 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded a video to YouTube of her young children dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." It's about 30 seconds long, and let's be honest: it's cute, but the only reason it's appearing on this blog is because it now has long-lasting legal importance. 

And on Youtube takedown notices...This video had a long-lasting legal importance in terms of copyright. ‪#‎FairUse‬

Article by Johnny McNolty for Some

In 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded a video to YouTube of her young children dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." It's about 30 seconds long, and let's be honest: it's cute, but the only reason it's appearing on this blog is because it now has long-lasting legal importance. 

Unbeknownst to her, Universal Music Group had assigned a staffer the full-time job of protecting the online copyright claims of the artist currently known as the music industry's most inexplicable homophobe, Prince. This staffer would send YouTube takedown notices invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for any clip using more than 1 second of a copyrighted song that wasn't drowned out by background noise. Standard practice.

Because of the way copyright law worked up until this week (heavily in favor of the copyright holder, due to scare campaigns about how hacker kidz were going to ruin nice honest businesses like the record industry), all Universal ever had to do was send YouTube an email saying "this video is in violation," and it would get taken down. Lenz did get her video re-uploaded six weeks later, following an appeal to YouTube, but she felt the burden of proof should have been on Universal to say why her home video of her kids should be taken down, rather than on her to prove to YouTube that she wasn't stealing from Prince.

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