'Death Of ACTA' Song Taken Down In Copyright Claim

from the irony-much? dept

You may recall last fall we wrote about one of Dan Bull’s excellent tracks commenting on copyright issues, called Death Of ACTA. You can see the video for the song here:

Dan Bull has embraced file sharing — not surprisingly, given the subject matter of many of his songs — and placed the song on various sharing networks and sites, including the cyberlocker Mediafire. Obviously, he did so on purpose, with the desire that more people hear the song. However, he noted with a bit of irony recently that the song on Mediafire was taken down due to a copyright claim. Considering the whole song is about the overreaching efforts of copyright as censorship, this seems pretty ironic.

Dan was kind enough to forward on the takedown message… and it’s a total mess. There’s simply no useful info in it other than that a French company called TF1 wants the file (and a bunch of others) off of Mediafire as quickly as possible. Now, it’s not clear what the issue is here, but it’s not difficult to take a guess. “Death of ACTA” is obviously a play on Jay-Z’s “Death of Autotune” Jay-Z’s song features prominently a sample of the song “In the Space” by French film composers Janko Nilovic and Dave Sarkys. It’s quite likely that Jay-Z licensed the sample. Not surprisingly, Dan Bull did not, but that’s the nature of creating a parody song.

Also, since all of this is happening in Europe, there aren’t fair use laws. Dan would probably have a stronger argument in the US. In Europe, it’s a bit more of a crap shoot. Of course, the whole thing is pretty silly if you think about it. Is there any less demand for “In the Space,” due to Dan’s song? Anyone who suggests that’s the case is not in touch with reality.

In the end, though, how ridiculous is it that a song that’s all about the excessive nature of copyright law ends up being subject to a takedown notice itself? It seems to encapsulate everything that the song is talking about as being ridiculous concerning copyright law. The song is, of course, still available in lots of other places, though it will be interesting to see if TF1 starts going after it elsewhere as well. I’m guessing that each takedown will only draw that much more attention to Dan’s song and the ridiculousness of copyright law today, if it creates a situation where a clear commentary about copyright law gets taken down… by copyright law.

Filed Under: acta, commentary, copyright, dan bull, death of acta, jay-z, parody, takedown
Companies: tf1