Copyright curiosities: copyright video lecture on copyright infringement removed from YouTube

Professor William Fisher is known as a copyright specialist. He has been involved in legal issues with copyright for many years, and regularly lectures on copyright in Garvada. The video recording of Fisher’s lecture was recently posted on YouTube, but the video hosting service had to block it according to the Sony Music claim.

The professor’s lecture was part of his online course, CopyrightX , distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License . The copyright specialist also has autonomous videos that can be downloaded from his website, so blocking one lecture didn’t do much harm. Nevertheless, the precedent itself is interesting.

The deleted material is a presentation of the current music copyright structure, the duration of the lecture is 24 minutes. Basic information is available in the form of graphics:
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The materials used sound files and musical compositions, one of which is Little Wing Jimi Hendrix. The lecture involved 45 seconds of audio recording, from 17:44 to 18:31 video. After that, the professor reproduces 15 seconds from the composition of Santana and Joe Cocker. Plus a few more similar fragments, with a total duration of 2 minutes.

Apparently, this is quite a legitimate use of audio, and it is not clear now why the video was blocked - whether it was YouTube ContentID compliance, or a direct complaint of the copyright holder. At the same time, audio is used for educational purposes, which further enhances the legality of the use of such materials. Moreover, miniature pieces of works are used, so it is unlikely that anyone will use the lectures of the professor to listen to the music of a favorite artist.

Something similar has happened before. For example, Warner Music demanded the removal of the presentation of another famous lawyer, a Harvard professor Larry Lessing. Lessing then was able to prove the illegitimacy of the actions of the label, and filed a counterclaim. The case was settled amicably, and the label had to pay. What Professor Fisher will do is still unclear, but the story is likely to continue.

In the meantime, you can remember other interesting cases from YouTube. For example, the removal of sound from a 7-hour recording of a scientific conference because of the music that sounded in between the sections. Or the case when, with 4 mayors of Danish cities, Gangnam Style music in the parody video demanded 42 thousand US dollars (plaintiff - Universal Music). Well, another office, Warner Bros., demanded 60 thousand US dollars from a provincial bar for a record sounding in the room, which has long been 80 years old .