A messy legal dispute involving current Future Music Festival headliners Phoenix, their Aussie label Liberation Music, and an expert on Internet copyright law, has reached its conclusion.
In essence, the French indie pop foursome have declared “we absolutely support fair use of our music” in response to a case that saw Liberation inadvertently picking a court battle with Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and Creative Commons co-founder, over the use of Phoenix hit ‘Lizstomania’ in a public lecture that was then posted to YouTube.
Last August, Liberation – the Mushroom subsidy that represents the French band in Australia and New Zealand – issued a takedown notice to YouTube over the Lessig lecture, entitled ‘Open’ and delivered at a Creative Commons conference, that used footage containing clips of fans dancing to ‘Lizstomania’ as key examples of ‘fair use’.
Seeing it as a violation of licensing rights, Liberation issued a takedown notice and threatened to sue the Professor, only for Lessig to counter-sue, noting the irony of the situation by accusing the label of abusing copyright to suppress free speech and ‘fair use’ over a lecture that was a “classic example of fair use.”
According to a press statement issued last week however, Liberation Music announced “that it has amicably resolved its dispute with Professor Lessig,” paying an “undisclosed amount in damages,” confirming that the label “agrees that Professor Lessig’s use of the Phoenix song ‘Lisztomania’ was both fair use under US law and fair dealing under Australian law.” “We encourage people getting inspired and making their own versions of our songs and videos and posting the result online.”
As Liberation Managing Director Warren Costello explains, the offending YouTube video of the lecture ‘was removed by a member of our staff without being reviewed and under a misunderstanding of the relevant [fair use] law.”
Liberation will now amend its copyright and YouTube policy to “ensure that mistakes like this will not happen again,” while the clip has been re-uploaded to the popular video site.
In a statement on their own blog, Phoenix posted their own support for the decision and for Lawrence Lessig, noting they were “upset” with Liberation Music for serving the takedown notice while openly ‘welcoming’ people in “makin their own versions of our songs and videos;” crediting the “contemporary experience of digital re-mediation” with fuelling the “appropriation” and ‘recontexualization” of their music, and creativity in general. (Read the full statement at bottom.)
Phoenix are currently in Australia as part of the Future Music Festival 2014 lineup, playing to corwds in Brisbane and Perth over the weekend before playing sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne, then concluding their headline slot with the Future tour this weekend.
“To be in the headlining position, it’s a strange feeling because you know you cannot disappoint,” said frontman Thomas Mars in a recent interview with Tone Deaf of their Australian Tour. “In Australia [however], I don’t think we will [disappoint] because the crowd is so good that it’s impossible to do a bad show,” Mars declares.
View Phoenix’s full statement and Australian tour dates below.
We support fair use of our music!
We were upset to find out that a lecture by Professor Lawrence Lessig titled ‘Open’ was removed from YouTube without review, under the mistaken belief that it infringed our copyright interests.
This lecture about fair-use included—as examples—bits of spontaneous fan videos using our song “Lisztomania”.
Not only do we welcome the illustrative use of our music for educational purposes, but, more broadly, we encourage people getting inspired and making their own versions of our songs and videos and posting the result online.
One of the great beauties of the digital era is to liberate spontaneous creativity—it might be a chaotic space of free association sometimes but the contemporary experience of digital re-meditation is enormously liberating.
We don’t feel the least alienated by this; appropriation and recontextualization is a long-standing behavior that has just been made easier and more visible by the ubiquity of the internet.
In a few words:
We absolutely support fair use of our music.
And we can only encourage a new copyright policy that protects fair use as much as every creators’ legitimate interests.
Phoenix
Phoenix Australian Tour 2014
with special guests World’s End Press
Wednesday 5th March 2014 – Sydney | Horden Pavilion (All Ages)
Ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849
Thursday 6th March 2014 – Melbourne | Festival Hall (All Ages)
Ticketek.com.au | Ph: 136 100
Also performing at:
Future Music Festival 2014 Dates & Tickets
Saturday 1 March Brisbane, RNA Showgrounds **NEW VENUE**
Sunday 2 March Perth, Arena Joondalup
Saturday 8 March Sydney, Royal Randwick Racecourse **MAJOR RENOVATIONS**
Sunday 9 March Melbourne, Flemington Racecourse
Monday 10 March Adelaide, Adelaide Showgrounds **NEW VENUE**
FOR TICKETS AND INFO HEAD TO: www.futuremusicfestival.com.au
$160 + bf and service charge; Adelaide only – $155 + bf and service charge
