A Pennsylvania woman who posted a video of her baby boy dancing on Youtube has wound up tangled in a legal dispute with pop star Prince and one of the world's biggest record companies.
Stephanie Lenz shot a video of her toddler bobbing to Prince's 1980s hit "Let's go crazy." In the video, the little boy is running around the kitchen while the song plays in the background. After shooting the video, Lenz uploaded it on to YouTube so that friends and family could see it (view the video ).
But the video caught the attention of more people than just her relatives. Lenz was stunned when she got an email saying that Universal Music had accused her of copyright infringement.
Lenz says the email is just ridiculous and that she's done nothing wrong.
"The focus is on your child and just having fun with him and showing the cute little things that he does," said Lenz.
But in recent months, Prince has been vigorously taking on the issue of the illegal use of his music. He even hired Web Sheriff, a company based in Britain, to scan the internet looking for posts of his material.
"What he's got going is a blanket enforcement of his rights. In other words, he's just trying to shut down any infringing activity whatsoever," said entertainment lawyer David Steinberg.
Lenz says the warning email scared her. So, she's taking a stand and is suing Universal Music.
"The more afraid I got, the angrier I got," said Lenz.
"I didn't like being accused of something I didn't do."
An advocate for public rights on the Internet said he doesn't see why Prince and the record company are making such a big deal out of the video.
"This is no harm, no foul. Prince should be delighted that in 2007 people are still listening to his music," said David Fewer of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
But others say that the music industry is just trying to protect its interests. The industry is afraid if it doesn't get tough on piracy, the problem will just continue to grow.
The whole affair is striking a sour note with YouTube users. But some point out that Universal was hardly heavy handed.
"To my knowledge the mom of the baby dancing around isn't being sued. They just don't want her showing the video anymore," said Steinberg.
The controversy, however, hasn't hurt the video's popularity. When it was first put up on YouTube the video didn't get more than a few dozen hits. But since Lenz launched her lawsuit, it has been viewed more than 200,000 times.
With a report by CTV's John Vennavalley-Rao
