Prince Sends A Takedown Over Six Second Vine Clips

Ah, Prince. The purple-loving musician has built up an irrational hatred for all things internet over the years, mostly focused on his belief that he should have 100% control over everything he has ever done. He's gone after companies and fans for posting pretty much anything. His music is also at the heart of the (still ongoing) Stephanie Lenz case, in which Universal Music Group issued a copyright takedown on a 29-second video with some Prince music in the background. In that case, the court said that UMG needed to take fair use into account before sending the takedown. Given that, it seems rather surprising to find out that Prince is targeting even shorter clips -- including six second clips on Vine, the Twitter offshoot/acquisition, that allows people to post short video clips no longer than 6 seconds. Vine has built up a decent following pretty quickly, and it's difficult to see how anyone could argue that music appearing in such a Vine video wouldn't be either fair use or de minimis use (or both). But don't tell Prince that. The DMCA takedown comes from NPG Records, which is Prince's personal record label, and names eight Vine clips, which apparently have all been removed. The notice was just sent on March 26, meaning we're still within the time frame in which someone could have filed a counternotice. One hopes that counternotices are being filed, and (perhaps) that someone is willing to challenge Prince on claiming that such videos are not fair use. Would he honestly claim that such a video harms the market for his music? Permalink | Comments | Email This Story