U.S. Supreme Court Could Hear 'Dancing Baby' Case

The U.S. Supreme Court may hear a case involving an adorable dancing baby, the baby's mom and a No. 1 hit by Prince that could determine how much leeway corporations have in ordering content to be taken down from the internet.

Stephanie Lenz, with the help of a non-profit digital free speech group, is asking the nation's highest court to hear what's been called the "dancing baby" case in hopes that the court will limit how much power companies have when it comes to deciding what can be posted online.

Here's what the case is about.

In February 2007, Lenz posted a 29-second video of her 13-month old son dancing in the kitchen to Prince's 1984 hit "Let's Go Crazy," which is only barely recognizable because of the poor quality of the recording. It was one of the first "viral" hits on YouTube.

Watch it for yourself:

Someone at Universal Music Group, which owns the copyrights to the song, saw the video and ordered YouTube remove it under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Under that law, if hosting websites such as YouTube respond to claims of copyright infringement in a timely manner, they won't be held liable for the infringement, even if the person who posted the video is.

The dancing baby video stayed down for a few weeks, until Lenz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation convinced YouTube that her video constituted "fair use" and therefore didn't violate copyright law (background music is a standard fair use defense). The video was re-posted about six weeks after she originally uploaded it.

Lenz and EFF sued Universal, saying she was wrongfully targeted for what should have been a basic fair use case.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the mom, saying that Universal should have considered fair use before sending YouTube the takedown notice. But it didn't punish Universal at all for issuing a takedown notice that the court said was issued "unreasonably."

The federal appeals court said copyright holders can't be held liable for mistakenly issuing takedown notices, "even if the copyright owner acted unreasonably in making the mistake.”

The foundation wants the Supreme Court to change that.

In a petition last week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, the foundation said if the 9th Circuit's opinion is allowed to stand, anybody could demand that their copyrighted content be taken down, even if it was being used lawfully, and just plead ignorance after the fact.

In its petition, the foundation cited two sobering examples:

An author could cause a hosting service to take a critical review offline, without fear of consequence, if she held the mistaken view that the reviewer’s use of a quote was unlawful. A political candidate who thought using an excerpt of her speech in a series of videos was necessarily infringing could flood her opponent’s YouTube channel with takedown notices and cause it to be taken offline altogether in the middle of an election season, again without consequence.

Universal Music Group did not immediately return a Patch request for comment.

You can read EFF's full petition below:

Image via YouTube