Ultra vs Michelle Phan: the story so far...
In the past few days we’ve seen the start of a legal battle with potentially important ramifications for YouTube between the label and publisher Ultra (part of the Sony Music group) and YouTube star Michelle Phan.
Ultra filed a complaint with a California court stating that Phan used a number of tracks owned by Ultra as a musical background for her make-up tutorials without gaining the proper licenses and continued to do so even after she had been notified by Ultra of the situation. When the label issued a DMCA take-down notice for the videos, Phan responded with a counter-notification, this led to the legal claim stating that Phan has illegally copied, altered, publicly performed and distributed the label’s music.
The label asks for $150,000 per infringement and said it has only just started its analysis of Phan’s videos but has already found dozens of instances of copyright infringement. The majority of the contested material is actually the output of a single artist, Kaskade, although the artist has already expressed that he is against the lawsuit launched by tweeting to Michelle Phan: “You’re awesome. You’ve turned millions of people on to my music. Which, ironically, I cannot say for my label.”
A spokesperson for Phan stated to the BBC that: "Ultra agreed to allow Michelle to use the music and Michelle intends to fight this lawsuit and bring her own claims against Ultra.”…"Michelle's intention has always been to promote other artists, creating a platform for their work to be showcased to an international audience.”
Ultimately the case revolves around the way in which YouTube itself is set up and the outcome of this lawsuit could have a broader effect on how the service is managed. Since Michelle Phan’s channel is monetised via an MCN network and since her channel is categorised as a “managed” one - meaning that it is responsible for clearing the rights of any content published - her videos could have bypassed the ContentID system put in place by YouTube. In turn, this would prevent the label Ultra from getting a slice of the advertising action from the videos. If this scenario was true, then Ultra would certainly have a valid claim unless Michelle Phan was able to produce documents or emails stating the Ultra agreed to the use of the music without further compensation.
Obviously Kaskade has made his position clear on the matter, but since the rights to his catalogue belong to Ultra the artist doesn’t have much of a say on the way the lawsuit is being handled. Given Michelle Phan’s love for the label’s output, her clout with a large legion of fans and the positive relationship between her and Kaskade though it would make sense for the two parties to eventually find a way to work together and settle out of court. With that being said, Ultra’s claim is potentially worth millions of dollars so the label may be determined to see a judge rule on the matter.
(Andrea Leonelli)