Yes, rightsholders are entitled to protect their content from being pirated, but it's a sad fact that many of them are quite trigger-happy when it comes to wiping their content off the face of the Internet. This time it happened to
Larry Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and co-founder of
Creative Commons, who has allegedly violated copyright because he used a song by the French band Phoenix in one of his lectures that was subsequently posted on YouTube. Rather than removing the lecture clip, Prof. Lessig is now fighting back by suing Liberation Music. He enlisted EFF to
help him take the record company to court:
Quote:
Earlier this year, Liberation Music, which claims to own the license to the Phoenix song, began the process to block the video through YouTube's copyright infringement system. After the company submitted a DMCA takedown notice, Lessig filed a counter-notice that asserted the clips were fair use. After Liberation Music threatened to sue Lessig, he retracted the notice. But Lessig did not concede this issue. Instead, he enlisted EFF's help to take Liberation Music to court.
"There's a long and sorry history of content owners abusing copyright to take down fair uses, but this one is particularly shocking," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "Based on nothing more than a few clips illustrating Internet creativity, Liberation Music took down an entire lecture by one of the leading experts in the world on copyright and fair use. This kind of abuse has to stop."
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Below are two YouTube clips where Lessig talks about copyright.
Q&A with Lawrence Lessig on copyright in the digital age
Larry Lessig: Laws that choke creativity
Related: US Gov seeks to strike a copyright balance, wants your input,
Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers
[via
Boing Boing]
Image: Kristina Alexanderson/Flickr