Universal Music Publishing Group has finally settled its copyright lawsuit filed against Stephanie Lenz, the woman who posted a short video of her son dancing to a Prince song in 2007.
The two sides came to a formal agreement on Tuesday, agreeing that, as a result of the litigation that lasted over a decade, Universal Music (UMPG), which owns the copyright to Prince’s recordings, now has a more “fair” process for takedown orders.
Lenz and her attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation had argued that when her 29-second video was initially taken down under a Digital Millennium Copyright Act order, Universal Music had ignored the fair-use exception to copyright law.
In June 2017, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, upholding a 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that at trial would have examined whether Universal had gone too far.
“UMPG takes great pride in protecting the rights of our songwriters,” David Kokakis, UMPG’s Chief Counsel, said in a statement issued Wednesday.
“Inherent in that objective is our desire to take a thoughtful approach to enforcement matters. The case helped us to develop a fair and tempered process for evaluation of potential takedowns.”
For her part, Lenz said in her own statement that she applauded UMPG’s takedown review process.
“If UMPG’s current processes had been in place 11 years ago when I posted my video of my young son dancing, I probably wouldn’t have had to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation,” she said.
Her son, Holden Lenz, depicted in the video below, is now 12 years old and is in middle school.
