Run for your lives, the copyright police are here!
CNET News.com – February 3, 2007:
The inventor of the “Electric Slide,” an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing.
Kyle Machulis, an engineer at San Francisco’s Linden Lab, said he received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice about a video he had shot at a recent convention showing three people doing the Electric Slide.
“The creator of the Electric Slide claims to hold a copyright on the dance and is DMCAing every single video on YouTube” that references the dance, Machulis said. He’s also sent licensing demands to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Machulis added.
But on the YouTube page Silver himself posted showing the Electric Slide, he wrote, “Any video that shows my choreography being done incorrectly is being removed. I don’t want future generations having to learn it wrong and then relearn it as I am being faced with now because of certain sites and (people) that have been teaching it incorrectly and without my permission. That’s the reason I (copyrighted) it in the first place.”
This DMCA crap is getting totally out of hand.
I didn’t even know that you could copyright a dance. But if these people were doing the dance wrong, wouldn’t that mean they were doing a different dance (which isn’t under copyright)?
2. “But if these people were doing the dance wrong, wouldn’t that mean they were doing a different dance (which isn’t under copyright)?”
That was my first thought too.
Let’s all make a video of us dancing the Electric Slide wrong, then place the title “Parody of Electric Slide.” Parody is fair use.
Vive la resitance!
#4 Sounds like a great Call-To-Arms to me.
I’ve no idea how that dance is done though. 🙂
Yes you can copyright a dance (WTF! the notation yes but a dance!) but it would seem that people “doing it wrong” are performing a “derivative work” (and generating their own copyright) and are therefore in the clear. This guy would thus seem to be sending out false DMCA notices which is in itself against provisions in the DMCA. Rather like Viacom sending 100,000 notices to YouTube. Did they really review all 100,000 to check the material was their copyright, rather than just having a similar (non-copyright) name/tag.
I had no idea what it was so I looked it up on wikipedia. They’re claiming it was based on “The Madison” from the 50’s.
I still don’t know what it looks like though.
7 – A derivative work doesn’t “generate it’s own copyright” – it’s a derivative work and will infringe on the original copyright. Derivative work is only not infringing if it is fair use or parody. These weren’t…
but it’s still dumb that you can copyright a dance.
If I do the dance while drunk…that seems like a parody to me. Then again, any dancing from me is a parody of something.
Obviously Richard Silver doesn’t want his grand contribution to culture tarnished. Just imagine if future generations ended up doing the Electric Slide ™ incorrectly!
They’re claiming it was based on “The Madison” from the 50’s
and
A derivative work doesn’t “generate it’s own copyright” – it’s a derivative work and will infringe on the original copyright
So the Electric Slideis a derivative work, in which case, how come it’s copyrighted?
but it would seem that people “doing it wrong” are performing a “derivative work” (and generating their own copyright) and are therefore in the clear.
Would this also apply to singing or playing a Beatles song off key? Serious question!!
The Electric side is a dance for the hive-minded and unoriginal. It’s like a neo-facsist Denny Terio conga line. If you are in a club where they do the electric slide, its because you weren’t cool enough to get into the real club.
Disco for mousekateers.
‘Would this also apply to singing or playing a Beatles song off key? Serious question!!’
No. Music copyright is a bit different. Lyrics & melody are key (no pun intended) so singing off key won’t keep you safe from the RIAA. Karoke bars\night clubs that feature cover bands all pay the RIAA the ‘right’ to butcher ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Of course parody is still considered fair use though.
#15, I don’t think so. While music and writing are easier to be concrete on copying, even a performance art such as a dance is capable of copy write. It is only a little more difficult to prove infringement with performance art.
#14, Close. I was so proud of that shirt I used to wear back around 1976 advising “Disco Sucks” on the front and on the back was “A Big One”.
I think that the “derivative work” would have been considered an original dance, IF they hadn’t claimed that the video showed the Electric Slide.
At any rate, the Electric Slide sucked and so does that choreographer for pulling this bull!