Last year, we noted that one of the reasons why Psy's Gangnam Style video and song had become so incredibly popular was Psy's decision not to crack down on copies at all. Instead, he's mostly celebrated the copycats and parodies, talking about how awesome they were. But, of course, once a major record label gets involved... TorrentFreak reports that Universal Music is demanding $42,000 from four mayors in Denmark who teamed up to produced a video of the four of them dancing to the song.
The mayors have said that the use is clearly parody and covered as fair use, but Universal Music argues that because they're elected officials and there's an election coming up, they have to pay. I don't see how that makes a difference at all. Even more bizarre is that Universal's calculation seems to be that they should pay four times the "normal" license of $10,500 because there's four of them. But, as the mayors point out, they just used the song once, as it's all four of them appearing in a single video. And, making matters even more ridiculous, is that Universal gave them until today to pay up... or they claim that it will be "a real action for infringement... so the amount will be completely different."
Sometimes I wonder if Universal Music and the major record labels have just given up, and now are actively trying to make themselves look as ridiculous and out of touch as possible. In the meantime, the mayors have replaced the video with another one using... um... some sort of salsa music, which just comes across as somewhat creepy and weird.
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