Vimeo Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Encouraging Lip Dubs

The record label EMI has sued video site Vimeo for copyright infringement, alleging that the company goads users to post video clips of themselves lip-synching songs by musicians like Billy Idol and KT Tunstall.

"Vimeo has extensive knowledge of the use of copyrighted recordings on its Web site, and Vimeo encourages and induces its users to copy, adapt, and upload copyrighted recordings," EMI alleges in the lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in New York.

The complaint alleges that Vimeo not only displays "lip dubs," but also advises users to create the clips by combining videos of themselves with high-quality copies of songs. "This ensures that the music that accompanies the 'lip dub' video, which virtually always is copied directly from a commercial recording, is high-quality, of substantial volume, and is the focal point of the audiovisual work," the lawsuit alleges.

Vimeo declined to comment, except to say that it "respects the intellectual-property rights of others." EMI likewise declined to comment.

The legal issues appear unsettled. On one hand, the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor provisions say that sites are immune from liability, provided they remove copyrighted material upon request. That law recently led a federal judge in California to dismiss Universal Music Group's copyright lawsuit against video-sharing site Veoh.

But the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that the peer-to-peer service Grokster could be liable for infringement for inducing users to upload and download pirated material.

In addition, it's not clear whether lip dubs infringe copyright or are a fair use of song. Attorney Martin Schwimmer says that one factor that could weigh against fair use is that the lip dubs generally include the entire song.

But Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Corynne McSherry says that a use can be transformative even when it incorporates the entire work. "If you can argue persuasively that your purpose requires the whole thing, that's okay," she says. "I've seen plenty of lip dubs that struck me as extremely creative and transformative and that put things in an entirely new perspective."

3 comments about "Vimeo Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Encouraging Lip Dubs".
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  1. Jonathan Mirow from BroadbandVideo, Inc., December 17, 2009 at 12:51 p.m.

    Maybe I'm missing something here - but I'd call this digital karaoke. This would be like Barry Manlow getting upset over all the yahoos who sang "Feelings" along with the jukebox. I'm no lawyer (clearly) but isn't the core of copyright infringement to prevent financial losses on the part of the rights owner / performer? The video at the bottom of the article was VERY creative and I actually thought about trying to find the original of the song after watching the "dk". How does this hurt anybody? It's not like I'm downloading the MP3 so I don't have to buy the album - this stuff sort of fits under "folksy promotion". About 20 years ago when I hosted a cable access show I lip-synced to David Lindley's version of Mercury Blues - ahead of my time again.

  2. John Grono from GAP Research, December 17, 2009 at 5:44 p.m.

    Yeah, way to go EMI. We can't have a bunch of kids enjoying rock music and filming themselves can we now?

    And EMI, when you get the royalty from my download of Flagpole Sitta (how could I not have already had it), can you make sure that you send half to Harvey Danger and the other half to Dave Flishel for making the lip-dub, because without either the band or Dave you'd have got zilch.

  3. James Wood from HD Productions, December 26, 2009 at 2:34 p.m.

    It would interesting how on copyright infringement is decided on mashups, whereby audio from a Youtube source is combined with a video source from another site, to create content whereby the user and site is protected by DCMA.

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