Stefan Mileschin

Copyright cops at Sony Music bit off more than they could chew when they attempted to take down a Harvard professor’s YouTube lecture about fair use.

Harvard Law professor William Fisher put up his lecture to illustrate exactly how the law on fair use works and he included snippets of well-known covers.

However Sony did not like that and when its automated bots detect and reported that their rights were being infringed Fisher’s lecture was taken down.

Google recognises the problems and recently offered to pay the legal bills of several people who argued that their removed videos are protected by ‘fair use’ legislation. But its Content-ID system still flags a lot of legal content.

Fisher’s videos had the title: “The Subject Matter of Copyright: Music.” None of the tracks, which include covers by Joe Cocker, Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan, are played in full. Instead, Fisher highlights small segments ranging from 15 to roughly 40 seconds.

http://www.techeye.net/business/sony...outube-lecture