I got another mention in the Media Post News regarding my Star Wars On a Banjo video being taken down by YouTube due to a complain filed by the Warner Music Group.
“Larry Lessig is not alone,” said Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is one of many, many, many examples where obvious fair uses get taken down.”
In case you were wondering, I never did file the complaint to get my video back online. I first contacted the EFF because I had seen an article that they were willing to help people whose content had been taken down.
They didn’t take my case, but referred me to a page of information about what the ramifications might be should I choose to make the claim to YouTube. In short, I would be opening myself up to getting sued directly by Warner Music Group. Since they have many more lawyers and much more money than I do, I opted out of that plan.
It’s a shame, really, that something that fell squarely under the “parody” and “fair use” clauses got yanked off the Internet forever, and that there is no recourse for the little guys such as myself. All I ever did was play the Star Wars them on a banjo, which you would think WMG would like because of the millions of views and propogation of the Star Wars legend. It was free publicity in a very postivie way for WMG.
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