Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Sadly, that's absolutely right.
I had a non-profit service and community that I ran online for close to a dozen years and someone came along and replicated the exact same thing (though not as well) and even took the name and domain and everything else and catered to the exact same niche community (well, niche meaning we had about 100k members) . . . only they changed the name of it by one letter. After this, people were constantly getting confused. I'd get complaints about my site and members and service and everything else, that was clearly meant for the other site and I'd often be tagged for their failings, because of the confusion by the name.
Unfortunately, I'm just a dude and this wasn't a for-profit commercial enterprise of any kind. So, while I was clearly in the right to take legal action, there was absolutely no way I could have afforded the extreme costs that would have been involved.
Closer to the truth than you think. The federal government has ignored quite a few laws recently, effectively invoking this "we don't care" clause, with absolutely no reaction from anyone.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Name some of them who have successfully taken Monsanto to court and won.