Chilling effect: the slow death of copyright fair use?

16-09-2016

Chilling effect: the slow death of copyright fair use?

Algirdas Gelazius / Shutterstock.com

The US Supreme Court has been asked to review the so-called dancing baby lawsuit on fair use of copyright online. As the latest ruling is seemingly bad for internet users, WIPR assesses the implications and whether the dispute will reach the highest court.

The internet offers an abundance of opportunities for users to express themselves online, but a famous case may be bad news for people using social media in the US.

Anyone who has ever worked in an office will have been sent an email containing a cat video set to music by a colleague. Sometimes, months can go by and by the time you decide to watch the funny video again it’s been removed because of copyright infringement.

This is similar to what Stephanie Lenz experienced in the ‘dancing baby’ lawsuit, a now long-running saga with the potential to reach the US Supreme Court. Lenz had uploaded a 29-second video of her young son dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”.


US Supreme Court, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Electronic Frontier Foundation, US District Court for the Northern District of California, copyright,

WIPR