via the EFF:

“Warner Music’s automated takedown net has now caught two videos of little kids being little kids.

“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.”

Not cool. Honestly, it depresses me that it’s 2009 and we as a society are still arguing about this bullshit. All the answers to these problems are there. There is so much money not being earned by artists and labels and studios and networks because a handful of people are still making bad decisions and cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s time for one of the large players to do something really different and show everyone else it can be done.