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EFF showcase most blatant false copyright claims
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 30 October 2009
America’s Electronic Frontier Foundation has published its ‘Takedown Hall Of Fame’, listing what it thinks have been the most blatant abuses of US copyright law by content owners who have demanded allegedly infringing online content be taken down.
Said “infringing” content, the EFF argues (and in some cases courts have concurred), was legitimate use of content under US copyright law, and in particular its ‘fair use’ provisions.
Three music cases are included in the Hall Of Fame…
• Warner’s excessive use of YouTube’s automatic take-down system to cause fair-use user-generated content to be blocked (during the period when Warner and YouTube didn’t have a live licensing deal).
• Universal Music Publishing’s attempts to ban a video showing a baby dancing to a Prince song they owned.
• And music publisher Ludlow Music’s attempts to block a rework of the Woody Guthrie song ‘This Land Is Your Land’, where it transpired that because Guthrie had used an existing melody for the song, Ludlow didn’t even own the copyright to the tune.
You can read about these and the non-music take-down notices of which the EFF does not approve at www.eff.org/takedowns
