The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has won another fair use case, this time against Hip Hop Artist “Akon”. Michelle Malkin had made a mashup video of Akon in which he was portrayed as not a nice person and abusive.

Akon’s label UMG filled out a DMCA take down notice on the video at YouTube and YouTube complied, the only problem is that under current fair use laws, Malkin was well within her rights to do what she did, and the take down notice was invalid.

Earlier this month, UMG filed a baseless copyright notice regarding a recent episode of “Vent with Michelle Malkin” — an irreverent daily video podcast produced by Malkin’s conservative Internet broadcast network “Hot Air.” In the video posted on YouTube, Malkin called Universal hip hop artist Akon a “misogynist,” supporting her criticism with excerpts from Akon’s music videos as well as onstage video footage showing Akon with a teenage girl at a nightclub in Trinidad. Source: EFF

On Malkin’s site, Hot Air, she states that the efforts of UMG were really about stifling criticism about the artist, using video footage that fell under fair use protections. Malkin by winning her lawsuit helps define additional support for fair use of copyrighted works, and is important given the way that take down notices have been used in the past.

What we would like to see is that these kinds of things don’t happen in the future, but we also are realistic to know that they will. The EFF has done phenomenal work in this area, and anyone who is wondering what their rights are should check out this EFF guide line on fair use, and how fair use works, along with some supporting ideas on what you can and can not get away with on your web site.