Now, BrokeDownVan is all for musicians getting compensated for their work — when appropriate. But in this age of bits and bytes the old way of looking at intellectual property is no longer relevant.

Check out this ridiculousness: Universal Music tried to have a video on YouTube taken down because it shows a, “toddler learning to walk with the Prince song ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ blaring in the background.” Aparently the Big Labels send thousands of these requests a year and most of the time the target just removes the offending video and slinks away.

Well, this time the mom refused to pull it, and decided to smack the label with a lawsuit: Mom fights music giant

Now, I don’t think Prince is going to go bankrupt from this sort of thing. But even if this wasn’t coming from a big label on behalf of a well established successful musician, it is still a baseless and gross use of obnoxious copyright laws. This reminds me of the owners that try to get paid when their buildings are in the background of movies.

We need a new way of thinking about intellectual property and cases like this are forcing us to confront the boundaries of art and commerce.

If you something like this happens to you just add a comment to the video saying you were happy to hear your music playing during such a momentous event… and then add a link to your website.