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The issue of lip dubs has been brought to the fore in recent days with two interesting news stories. Lip dubs are where original (and often copyrighted) music is used on top of new user generated video where the user lip syncs to the song in an often unique manner, possibly to comical effects.
The first is French President Sarkozy's UMP party, which finds itself once again infringing copyright for their own benefit, while being hardliners on online piracy by implementing a three-strikes system. This comes after earlier infringements involving the illegal use of songs in an online video, the second comes after they were found to be mass pirating a documentary DVD. This latest, and third strike (and that's only being generous by assuming the 400 pirated DVDs count as a single strike, this generosity is probably not provided to the typical French citizen accused of piracy), sees UMP using lib dubs to promote their politicians.
The UMP actually obtained license to use an earlier version of the song, but later found it inappropriate for usage, and decided that they wanted a modern version of the song instead. Unfortunately, the copyright holders refused to license the modern version as it did not want the song to be associated with political activities. The UMP simply ignored this and proceeded to use the song anyway, and thus, fall foul of copyright infringement.
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The other lip dub story relates to music label EMI suing video sharing site Vimeo for promoting lip dubs. EMI says that lip dubs often use original songs without licenses (see above), and that Vimeo actively encourages their users to produce lip dubs.
The issues involved are all quite complicated, including safe harbor provisions, which sees sites like Vimeo get a free pass on copyright infringement as long as they remove copyright material as requested. On the other hand, by promoting "illegal" acts, the immunity may not apply at all.
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The first is French President Sarkozy's UMP party, which finds itself once again infringing copyright for their own benefit, while being hardliners on online piracy by implementing a three-strikes system. This comes after earlier infringements involving the illegal use of songs in an online video, the second comes after they were found to be mass pirating a documentary DVD. This latest, and third strike (and that's only being generous by assuming the 400 pirated DVDs count as a single strike, this generosity is probably not provided to the typical French citizen accused of piracy), sees UMP using lib dubs to promote their politicians.
The UMP actually obtained license to use an earlier version of the song, but later found it inappropriate for usage, and decided that they wanted a modern version of the song instead. Unfortunately, the copyright holders refused to license the modern version as it did not want the song to be associated with political activities. The UMP simply ignored this and proceeded to use the song anyway, and thus, fall foul of copyright infringement.
More:
The other lip dub story relates to music label EMI suing video sharing site Vimeo for promoting lip dubs. EMI says that lip dubs often use original songs without licenses (see above), and that Vimeo actively encourages their users to produce lip dubs.
The issues involved are all quite complicated, including safe harbor provisions, which sees sites like Vimeo get a free pass on copyright infringement as long as they remove copyright material as requested. On the other hand, by promoting "illegal" acts, the immunity may not apply at all.
More:
