Universal Music Defends Takedown Of Dancing Toddler Video

Following on from yesterday's story that the 8-year battle between Universal Music Group and Stephanie Lenz, the mother of the toddler dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy on YouTube, was heard in a US appeals court yesterday, Universal Music's lawyers have defended the takedown of the YouTube video.

With Universal Music Group acting on behalf of Prince and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acting on behalf of their client Lenz, Lenz is claiming she should be entitled to damages from Universal, as they should never have sent the takedown notice as she believes the video was uploaded in "fair use". 

As MediaPost writes, Universal have hit back and said that they shouldn't have to pay damages, especially because the video was restored to YouTube fairly quickly. Their lawyer Kelly Klaus argued that the company don't need to conduct lengthy discussions on a video's fair use before sending a takedown notice — knowledge about the uploaders' motives is needed to determine this, yet he argued fair use was not obvious in this case. 

"If this was litigated, this would be a challenging case, I believe, for both sides," he said. He also argued that spending time determining fair use would delay the entire takedown process and that there was no reason to do as as uploaders could request the restoration of the clip online anyway, as Lenz had done.

EFF's lawyer Corynne McSherry countered the point by saying restoring a clip can be complicated for the ordinary person — "For the layperson, the counter-notice procedure can be quite intimidating."

If you're interested in how the court proceedings were actually conducted, you can watch the hour-long clip below.