But not always--Stephanie Lenz posted a home video to YouTube of her toddler taking his first dance steps so her inlaws could see. Twenty second of Prince's Let's Go Crazy plays in the background. --Maybe-- I didn't hear any Prince. Universal Music Publishing Group did detect Prince on Lenz' video and automatically sent YouTube the customary DMCA take-down notice. YouTube sent Lenz' the notice and removed her video. Lenz' claims her video is fair use, and with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a court for a ruling that Lenz had not infringed any UMPG copyright.
So far the Court has only said maybe that she might be right. The question is did UMPG have a reasonable belief that it's copyright was infringed? If UMPG recognized the Lenz video for what it is clearly is--a family video. And where UMPG's music's is clearly incidental to parental pride of toddler cuteness--did it have a reasonable belief?
Media so dominates human experience today that room must be reserved to freely permit documentation of personal experiences even if copyright protected media is incidentally captured.
*Digital Millennium Copyright Act (yes, it's way more complicated than this--but this is the "cliff notes" version.)
