For anyone wondering, Lawrence Lessig is not only one of the most known names when it comes to fighting copyright infringement but he also famously co-founded Creative Commons and founded the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a guy you seriously do not want to ever send a copyright infringement notice to unless you want one hell of a fight.

For those wondering who Liberation Music is, it's a spin-off label of the Mushroom Music Group which was co-founded by one of the biggest and one of the most powerful names in Australian music, Michael Gudinski. Essentially it's a smaller label with the backing of a larger one.

Get the popcorn ready, this is going to be one interesting fight if anything comes of it.

Lessig also took up the fight in Elrded v Ashcroft, a internet copyright case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Lessig eventually lost. Here is his postmortem. You can feel his passion for the fight for what he believes to be the correct interpretation of the Constitution.

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story_le...

Here's an important excerpt from his wikipedia page:

tl;dr: He has been a professor of law at both Stanford and Harvard. He's not just "some guy who thinks he's going to stick it to the man".

He is director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Previously, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons and the founder of Rootstrikers, and is on the board of MapLight.[2] He is on the advisory boards of the Democracy Café,[3] Sunlight Foundation[4] and Americans Elect.[5] He is a former board member of the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[6]

"Liberation Music", ha!

It's not clear to me, however, just how big an award can come from one instance of improper takedown? I mean, I don't expect the label to have to sign fewer artists or anything.

It sounded like the goal was to make copyright holding companies nervous about sending automated notices. If damages for infringement are $180k per song, surely damages for wrongful DMCA notices are the same order of magnitude?

Unfortunately, a quick Google search brought me to http://www.casesofinterest.com/tiki/Lenz+v.+Universal+Music+.... (EDIT: that link seems to be broken, it's /Lenz+v.+Universal+Music+Corp. with the trailing period):

> A plaintiff suing over a wrongful Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice can only recover for damages that were proximately caused by the notice... The Court determined that attorney fees are collectable but explicitly forbid the attorney fees if the work was done on a pro bono basis.

So it seems like Lessig would be pushing for a change in precedent, because as current case law seems to stand (IANAL), even if he won legal costs and damages it would be a drop in the bucket to the record industry, and no reason to change their practices of sending automated notices. I hope he succeeds though!

I think there's something called "punitive damages" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages).

That's why that lady got a couple million dollars from McDonald's for a too hot coffee a couple years back - not because it caused her so much harm. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran... )

And just to cut in with a quick response to all those who automatically use this as a call to tort reform:

1) The lady didn't ask for that much; the judge awarded it, after much shenanigans by McDonalds';

2) In the end, it wasn't a couple million, it was reduced by the judge to under $500k.

The case is more complex than most people want to believe.

IANAL, but one possibility is that Lessig might try to find others auto-threatened by "Liberation Music" (as another poster put it: ha!), and make the case that they are abusing the law and should have an injunction against filing DMCA notices. A bit of a stretch, I know, but one can dream :)

The Phoenix “Lisztomania” Brat Pack mashup discussed (on YouTube):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtE-xnPKj28

To see some of the global creativity this video sparked, this video has a pretty comprehensive list of 'brat pack mashups':

http://vimeo.com/4934345

And finally, Lawrence Lessig at TEDxNYED in 2010 discussing this case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTUzNKpfio

Fair use doctrine is great and it was fascinating to learn about when I was a grad student at Berkeley. We need to educate people about fair use so that everyone knows how some of these lawsuits are ridiculous.

Anyone interested in how copyright vs. fair use works should watch documentary called RiP: A Remix Manifesto (http://ripremix.com/). It covers all the major issues related to copyrights, fair use etc. I highly recommend it. In fact, Lawrence Lessig is part of that documentary.

This is a great series about how innovation and creativity happens, too (hint: through remixes):

http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

Is it fair to assume that this must be something YouTube set up? I guess I'm wondering if YouTube says to the record labels "Hey, don't worry about us anymore. We scan everything and if one of your songs is found we'll send out the notice. Just sign this doc saying you wont' sue us if/and we'll monitor this all automatically for you" Perhaps that's why they dropped it pretty quickly (or maybe it was fear of this guy) It would kind of suck if they're just trying to protect their artists from being ripped off and now are going to be the poster child for this crusade to destroy the bots. Seems like YouTube might be the significantly more guilt party. (Not sure so posting this as a question)

YouTube does have an automated monitoring system called ContenpID, but it doesn't send C&D notices like Lessig claims he received, so that's on the label. As far as I know, YouTube itself just blocks the video.

I find the inclusion of the quote from Bob Cronin the remix maker smells of false hope.

Suppose Lessig wins the case. The greatest impact to record labels I could foresee is they would have to be more careful about their takedown requests.

It sounds like a favorable outcome for Lessig isn't going to turn the world of youtube copyright upside down and automatically grant an umbrella to legitimize works in a legal grey area. They're still going to receive takedown requests, and they're still going to have no recourse.

> ... says Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group, who is representing Lessig

Wow, not even the top legal scholars in a field, pursuing a case in their own field, are willing to represent themselves. Why is that? I'd think that Lessig would feel safe representing himself in this case.

I'm coining a new word:

Lawrenfreude n. Schadenfreude when the underdog moonwalks over The Man.

Obligatory Blue Jeans Cable v. Monster Cable legalese catfight: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/ (The final response pdf in particular)

According to the article, YouTube detects copyrighted songs and pays labels a cut of ad money. Every song ever recorded exists as at least one YouTube video. It doesn't seem like YouTube is playing whack-a-mole with all these songs anymore, the way it used to a few years ago. Does this mean YouTube is now a normalized source of income for all record companies?

If you read the article again you'll note that companies can opt to get paid part of the ad revenue. If a company hasn't opted to, it's whackamole

so before any song all you have to do is insert slide "we are critiquing X song..."

No, because the law isn't applied by robots.

That's actually the point of Lessig's lawsuit - that there neds to be a human in the loop when these notices are issued, because deciding if something is likely fair use or not isn't something you can do mechanically (at least with current technology).

... and then also actually critique it? Fair use involves more than just a declaration.

I could be wrong, but I believe you can only play sections of it at a time. I don't think you'd be allowed to play a whole song and just display words critiquing it.