When the moon hits your eye
For some people, “when the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore”, as per the lyrics of Dean Martin.
However, for some unfortunate youtubers it’s not amore, it’s a copyright infringement claim.
Such was the case of Philip Bloom, a youtube content creator, who got flagged for uploading a video of the moon shot by himself, which had no audio.
The copyright infringement claim came from Universal Music Group, who alleged that 30 seconds of the audioless video belonged to the corporate music giant.
Copyright claims to the moon and back
This comes as quite a shock, since the video had generic shots of the moon belonging the creator and had no sound, which would only lead to a somewhat logical conclusion that Universal Music Group believe they own intellectual property rights of the celestial body or, maybe, a slice of the big pizza pie.
It would seem that Philip Bloom was not the only one who was targeted by the seemingly unfounded claims, since many others creators noticed that their videos of the moon had been flagged by UMG.
In the meantime, without offering any explanation, Universal Music Group has retracted many such copyright infringement claims, including those regarding Mr. Bloom’s video, as mentioned in the article by PetaPixel.
One might argue that UMG could be liable for knowingly making false claims. Unfortunately, the burden of proof lies upon the content creator to prove that they had incurred monetary losses.
Seems like some trolls like to live under bridges, while others bask in the moonlight of legal abuse.
If you want to make sure that you have full protection of your intellectual property rights or want to avoid false claims by lunar trolls, contact us.
We smile and litigate.
Find out more about copyright here.
*image by Philip Bloom and PetaPixel*
