Phoenix Back Harvard Professor In Aus Label Dispute

French Future Music Festival headliners Phoenix have thrown their support behind the Harvard Professor who recently resolved a dispute with the band's Australian label Liberation Music.

Last week Liberation settled with Harvard faculty member Lawrence Lessig and admitted they were wrong to have a lecture video – which included snippets of the band's Lisztomania – removed from YouTube.

In a statement today the band said that they were “upset” to discover the action the label had taken.

“Not only do we welcome the illustrative use of our music for educational purposes,” they said, “but, more broadly, we encourage people getting inspired and making their own versions of our songs and videos and posting the result online.

“One of the great beauties of the digital era is to liberate spontaneous creativity – it might be a chaotic space of free association sometimes but the contemporary experience of digital re-mediation is enormously liberating.”

They added, “We were upset to find out that a lecture by Professor Lawrence Lessig titled Open was removed from YouTube without review, under the mistaken belief that it infringed our copyright interests… We don't feel the least alienated by this; appropriation and re-contextualization is a long-standing behaviour that has just been made easier and more visible by the ubiquity of internet.”

When admitting they were in the wrong Liberation said they will review their copyright polices and called for updated legislation that clarifies the copyright and fair use boundaries. Phoenix backed that call.

“We absolutely support Fair Use of our music,” the band said, “and we can only encourage a new copyright policy that protects Fair Use as much as every creators' legitimate interests.”