Prince ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ Viral Video Starring 13-Month-Old Boy Leads to Copyright Precedent

Appeals court finds that rights holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown orders

Prince Purple Rain Image

Prince has unwittingly contributed to a new precedent in copyright law.

A half-minute YouTube video featuring young children dancing to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” led to a decision by an appeals court on Monday that copyright holders must take fair use into consideration before issuing takedown orders.

The decision, handed down in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, stems from a YouTube video posted by Stephanie Lenz in 2007 of her children dancing to the Prince song. In the video, Lenz asks her 13-month-old son what he thinks of the music, prompting him to bob up and down.

Universal, which at the time was responsible for enforcing Prince’s copyrights, didn’t find the video very “Awww!”-inspiring, and issued a takedown notification to YouTube.

In its decision on Monday, the court found that copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notifications, and that Universal, for one, could be in trouble if it “misrepresented” that it didn’t do so in Lenz’s case.

“Universal faces liability if it knowingly misrepresented in the takedown notification that it had formed a good faith belief the video was not authorized by the law, i.e., did not constitute fair use,” Judge Richard C. Tallman’s opinion reads. “Here, Lenz presented evidence that Universal did not form any subjective belief about the video’s fair use — one way or another — because it failed to consider fair use at all, and knew that it failed to do so.”

Tallman determined that a copyright holder is liable for damages if it doesn’t consider fair use prior to firing off a takedown notification, or if it’s determined that a copyright owner pays mere “lip service” to considering fair use when it didn’t do so.

The decision also asserted that Lenz doesn’t have to prove actual monetary loss in order to seek damages.

Let’s get nuts by watching Lenz’s video below.

Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.

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