Kendrick Copyright Claimed Me, So I Beat Him

Welcome back to LegalEagle. The most avian legal analysis on the internets.

GOT A VIDEO IDEA? TELL ME!
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

MY COURSES
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

SOCIAL MEDIA & DISCUSSIONS
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

BUSINESS INQUIRIES
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

LEGAL-ISH DISCLAIMER
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

Special thanks:
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images and AP Archives
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
Maps provided by MapTiler/Geolayers

[UltimaKeyMaster]

UMG was the definition of friendly fire, Devon DEFENDED their boy and they STILL falsely DMCA'd.
UMG is such a cancer on the music industry.

[joeymosteller]

In Kendrick’s defense, he probably knew nothing about it. Remember Luke Combs suing a lady for making cups? Kudos to Luke, he put the cups up on his website and gave her the profits from it.

[JustSomeRando]

Record labels and overreaching copyright claims, a tale as old as time. Guess UMG's lawyers need to justify their salaries lol.

[willku]

Yeah if you’re gonna copyright claim a YouTuber for something regardless of it being fair use, it’s probably not smart if that YouTuber is also a Lawyer.

[Lady_Vengeance]

Super happy for this outcome but I genuinely doubt Kendrick had anything to do with this nor has any knowledge of it whatsoever.

[NordicRest]

The irony here is that Kendrick said that Not Like Us was free to use for anyone without license, because he wanted as many people as possible to share it.

[jmr]

This is one of the reasons why YouTube sucks. Troll copyright claims. Don't fight it and they can get free money because they can get your ad revenue.

[kingace]

It's not Kendrick. It's UMG. Kendrick even went as far as to remove copyright restriction during the beef. In fact, Kendrick has had beef with "Luci" (Lucian Grainge) since 2014. But UMG has and always will be a greedy and corrupt industry titan. That's why K also said F the industry.

[jacobd]

I’d be very surprised if Kendrick Lamar actually had anything to do with this lawsuit personally.

[DrockSavage]

Guaranteed he had no idea. He would told em to drop it immediately

[DanTopTier]

from what I learned from Rick Beato, it's (usually) the rights holder and not the artist that does YT takedowns over music. Even beyond that, most of it is done automatically by bots.

[petergerdes]

This isn't just stupidity. It's big music labels using the fact that our copyright system was designed for giant media companies and by striking everything even sorta like their music they can grab all the ad revenue even for fair use songs.

[Hi_Im_Akward]

The sad part is that most content creators who legally use media under fair use do not have the ability to fight these legal battles. They lose everything because they get demonetized. And their content is often promoting the work, meaning more revenue comes their way. Free advertising. Like a snake eating itself. Sad.

[EmceeJoseph]

There needs to be deterrent consequence against abusive mass automated/indiscrimimate copyright claims. These labels claim everything with a Shazam hit on reflex instinct.

[rimothytimothy]

I hope the actual video addresses the fact that these claims are just made by bots the company has.

[BrendanMcKeown-qmgb]

The fact he said "Just Like Us" 😂 I hope not 💀

[Arthur_Zerograviti]

The balls in trying to sue one of YouTube's biggest and greatest Lawyer and Law Commentator. 😂😂😂😂

[drt]

Suing or copyright claiming a top lawyer is definition of insanity😂

[oasntet]

It's also worth noting that YouTube is not a court. They don't enforce copyright law, they enforce their own rules that differ from the actual law.

If LegalEagel didn't have 3.64M subscribers, this almost certainly would have gone the other way, because Fair Use is irrelevant to YouTube.

[Jeff_Lichtman]

Universal Music Group is notorious for copyright claims against everyone and anyone who uses anything they have the rights to, regardless of whether they qualify for fair use and whether UMG or their artists would incur any harm.

Copyright law is out of sync with how the world works today, particularly YouTube and other services. IMO, it would be better for everyone for the internet to work like radio, where music can be licensed with an organization like ASCAP or BMI, which collects fees for performance that get distributed to the copyright holders. That would allow music reactors (for instance) to make money while still paying for the music they use. Everyone would make out better. This shouldn't affect fair use (which applies in this case), but would overall make things more fair and predictable.