Australian record label sues copyright expert and lawyer for infringement, lawyer countersues

A record label down under picked the wrong person to file a court case against, accusing an expert in copyright law of infringement.

Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard School of Law, was deemed by Melbourne’s Liberation Music as sharing music illegally when he posted a video of one of his lectures online. The lecture included remixes -like that of ‘Lisztomania’ by Phoenix - to demonstrate how people ”share their culture and remix other people’s creations”.

As NPR report, Youtube removed the video at the label’s request before the imprint “fired off threats of a lawsuit” to Lessig. How did Lessig respond? By countersuing.

“If I’m using it for purposes of critique, then I can use if even if I don’t have permission of the original copyright owner,” Lessig said. Now he attempts to hit back under a law that “polices bad-faith lawsuits”.

The professor says his reasoning is to stop labels from using automated technology to send legal threats to members of the public.

Photo via Flickr, used with a Creative Commons licence