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Universal Uses DMCA To Get Bad Lip Reading Parody Taken Down
Joren writes "Bad Lip Reading is an independent producer known for anonymously parodying music and political videos by redubbing them with his humorous attempts at lip-reading, such as Everybody Poops (Black Eyed Peas) and Gang Fight (Rebecca Black). According to an interview in Rolling Stone, he creates entirely new music from scratch consisting of his bad lip readings, and then sets them to the original video, often altering the video for humorous effect and always posting a link to the original off which it is based. Although his efforts have won the respect of parody targets Michael Bublé and Michelle Bachman, not everyone has been pleased. Two days ago, Universal Music Group succeeded in getting his parody Dirty Spaceman taken down from YouTube, and despite BLR's efforts to appeal, in his words, 'UMG essentially said "We don't care if you think it's fair use, we want it down."' And YouTube killed it. So does this meet the definition of parody as a form of fair use? And if so, what recourse if any is available for artists who are caught in this situation?"
"We... settled out of court. The way the system appeared to work to me was... Lady Justice had the scales, and you piled cash on the scales. And the one that piled the most cash on the scales and hired the most experts and the ones most willing to tell the biggest lies... that was the winner. That's... that seems to be how our justice system functions now. It's terrible. It's terrible. How can a farmer defend himself against a multinational corporation like Monsanto?" -Troy Roush, Vice President of the American Corn Growers Association, commenting on how Monsanto uses legal action to bully farmers into settling when they are accused of "stealing" Monsanto's IP (genetically modified seeds). From "Food Inc."
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It seems another youtube user who had downloaded a copy reposted it, and the original author added it to his playlist. See: http://www.facebook.com/badlipreading/posts/296640680348638