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Lessig Sues and Wins against Bogus DMCA Takedown

posted by janrinok on Friday February 28 2014, @09:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the perhaps-we-shouldn't-have-done-that dept.

Fluffeh writes:

"Lawrence Lessig is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School but is probably best known to readers for his work with Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Without considering fair use, Liberation Music wrongly had some of Lessig's work removed from YouTube and threatened to sue. It didn't go well. Liberation will pay Lessig an undisclosed sum for the damages it caused with the wrongful takedown. The money will go towards supporting the EFF's work on open access and the label will also 'adopt new policies' that respect fair use."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by epyx on Friday February 28 2014, @09:08PM

    by epyx (2817) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:08PM (#8777)

    This is all well and good, but was Liberation charged with perjury as is the supposed punishment for filing a false takedown?

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by compro01 on Friday February 28 2014, @09:23PM

    by compro01 (2515) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:23PM (#8794)

    No. This doesn't fit the DMCA's stupid definition of a false takedown.

    • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday February 28 2014, @09:25PM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:25PM (#8797) Journal

      Isn't this something that was done in good faith, since this was a legitimate legal question? It's not like they didn't own the copyrights, as has happened in other cases.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by epyx on Friday February 28 2014, @09:38PM

        by epyx (2817) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:38PM (#8807)

        While Lessig did retract his counter-notice, in August 2013 and with support from the EFF he sued Liberation Music, asserting his right to use the music clip under the fair use doctrine. Liberation acted in bad faith when it sent the takedown notice, Lessig’s lawsuit said, and “knowingly and materially†misrepresented Lessig’s video as infringing copyright.

        That paragraph makes me think that Lessig had a valid legal argument about Liberation knowingly filing a false DMCA.. I wondered if they settled to avoid a precedent.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hatta on Saturday March 01 2014, @05:06AM

          by hatta (879) on Saturday March 01 2014, @05:06AM (#8969)

          I wonder why Lessig accepted the settlement. I'd expect him to prefer the precedent to the settlement.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by glyph on Saturday March 01 2014, @02:11AM

      by glyph (245) on Saturday March 01 2014, @02:11AM (#8932)

      Furthermore, Youtube is not bound by the DMCA. They have a one-sided arrangement negotiated with the content industry so that they don't need it's protections as a safe harbour, and you are bound to this agreement via the Youtube TOS. There is no false takedown provision at all. Also unlike under the DMCA, if the claimant wants to refuse your counter notice, *you* must sue *them* to get the alert removed an the video/account restored.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by mrider on Friday February 28 2014, @09:42PM

    by mrider (3252) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:42PM (#8809)

    Came here to say exactly the same thing and found this post. It's nice that this went this way, but it sure would have been nice if Liberation Music had of gotten such a severe slap-down that others would think twice before pulling out the DMCA hammer.

    --

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