Last semester I came up with a short YouTube video project for my students as a form of digital solidarity with the court case ruling you may have heard of regarding a 29 second clip of a (yet another) dancing baby where Prince’s song, “Let’s Go Crazy” was playing in the background. The EFF represented Stephanie Lenz against Universal. The ruling made last fall was in favor of Lenz. Her video, after being taken down due to a cease and desist sent by Prince, I mean, Universal, is available on YouTube again after being down for the better portion of a year. For a class assignment, my students are leaving video responses to Lenz’s original video in the form of mashups or parodies set to…guess…the same 29 seconds of the Prince song.
Once we started posting our responses (which Stephanie had to approve before they are made viewable on YouTube), Stephanie and the EFF became aware of our class project. I have been in communication with Stephanie, made a website for the project, and interviewed her about the case and our project. She was able to answer most of the questions we asked after consulting with her lawyers.
If you’re looking for a project or you want to offer extra credit to your students, I think it would be super to see as many videos responding to the case, the 29 seconds of the Prince song, or whatever else the students want to illustrate – just make sure that the work is in the realm of fair use.
Here’s our project web site with more information about the case & class assignment.
This is Lenz’s original video:
I gave this to my students as an extra credit assignment!
Awesome! The more the merrier!