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YouTube offers legal support to creators on fair use

By | Published on Friday 20 November 2015

YouTube

Following the recent ruling in the long running dancing baby case – which said that rights owners in the US must consider ‘fair use’ before requesting content be removed from services like YouTube – the Google-owned video site has revealed it is offering legal assistance to creators on its platform that have had copyright issues over posts that they consider to be ‘fair use’.

As previously reported, the so called dancing baby case relates to a video posted to YouTube back in 2007 of a toddler dancing to a Prince track. Prince’s publisher, Universal, demanded the content be taken down, as it is allowed to do under US copyright law when someone uses a song or recording without permission.

However, the woman who uploaded the video successfully argued that the inclusion of the Prince song constituted ‘fair use’ under American copyright law. Debate then ensued over whether Universal had broken the rules around takedown notices by not spotting and acknowledging that the video was fair use, and therefore did not infringe its copyright.

Fair use – or ‘fair dealing’ as we call it here in the UK – provides various scenarios when third parties can legally make use of copyright material without license. The exact list of scenarios varies from country to country, and exceptions can be both very specific and rather vague.

Some creators on YouTube have accused rights owners – across the entertainment industry – of regularly exploiting the vagueness element to force videos that feature clips of their work offline, through the takedown system, even when the inclusion of said clips could be seen as fair use. Though rights owners probably would say that video creators are also exploiting the vagueness element to make use of clips that really do need licensing.

Either way, according to the New York Times, YouTube has offered financial support to a small number of creators on its platform that have been caught up in fair use disagreements, so they can hire legal advice if they need to fight their corner. Four creators have been picked for such assistance, who between them make use of clips without license for the purposes of news reporting, parody and critical analysis, things that are often covered by fair use.

It seems that, although the four creators picked by YouTube for assistance have all been at the receiving end of takedown notices, none of them have actually been threatened with legal action by the owners of the clips they have used. But YouTube has reviewed their content, decided it constitutes fair use, and told the creators that, not only will their videos be reactivated, but if there are any legal ramifications, it will cover the costs.

Given that fact, it seems that this is less about YouTube seeking clarification on fair use rules through the courts, and more about sending out a message that it takes the fair use rights of its creators seriously. That message may well be targeted at both the big content owners who regularly issue takedown requests, and to the YouTube creator community, as other sites start to court video-makers. One of those offered help is quoted by the New York Times as saying, “It was very gratifying to know a company cares about fair use and to single out someone like me”.



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