I referenced Lawrence Lessig a couple of weeks ago in regards to his book, Free Culture and a video explaining the current status of ‘remix culture’ as it’s come to be known. Today Mr. Lessig made news of his own:
Nearly a year ago, we wrote about how a YouTube presentation done by well known law professor (and strong believer in fair use and fixing copyright law), Larry Lessig, had been taken down, because his video, in explaining copyright and fair use and other such things, used a snippet of a Warner Music song to demonstrate a point. There could be no clearer example of fair use — but the video was still taken down. There was some dispute at the time as to whether or not this was an actual DMCA takedown, or merely YouTube’s audio/video fingerprinting technology (which the entertainment industry insists can understand fair use and not block it). But, in the end, does it really make a difference? A takedown over copyright is a takedown over copyright.
Amazingly enough, it appears that almost the exact same thing has happened again. A video of one of Lessig’s presentations, that he just posted — a “chat” he had done for the OpenVideoAlliance a week or so ago, about open culture and fair use, has received notice that it has been silenced. It hasn’t been taken down entirely — but the entire audio track from the 42 minute video is completely gone. All of it. In the comments, some say there’s a notification somewhere that the audio has been disabled because of “an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG” (Warner Music Group) — which would be the same company whose copyright caused the issue a year ago — but I haven’t seen or heard that particular message anywhere.
