Warner Music’s war on fair use has sunk to new lows, with the company sending takedown notices to YouTube over videos in which babies and toddlers interact with music in adorable ways:
Of course we can’t show you the videos since they’re, well, censored, but the YouTomb snapshots tell most of the story. One showed a 4 year old lip-syncing to the old Foreigner hit, “Juke Box Hero.” The other apparently showed a baby smacking its lips to the tune of “I Love My Lips”–a song originally sung by a cucumber in an episode of “Veggie Tales.” Both videos are obvious fair uses (these are transformative, noncommercial videos that are not substitutes for the original songs, and there is no plausible market for “licensing” parents before they video their own children singing) and perfectly legal–just like the video of a baby dancing to a Prince song that Universal Music Group took down in 2007.
The Fair Use Massacre Continues: Now Warner’s Going After the Babies