Most creators who are sent copyright infringement notices through YouTube’s ContentID ‘fingerprinting’ system take the path of least resistance, removing or altering the offending content and avoiding legal retribution. Not so for Lawrence Lessig. The Harvard professor and Creative Commons found recently received a DMCA takedown notice for one of his video, but rather than complying with it, he is seeking legal action against the record label that sent it, arguing that YouTube’s automated takedown policy misleads creators.

The ordeal began when Australian record label Liberation sent Lessig a takedown notice after its automated content matching system flagging one of his videos for using Phoenix’s ‘Lizstomania’. Of course, had Liberation’s copyright hawks taken the time to actually check out the offending clip, they would have learned that Lessig used the song as an example of fair use, showcasing the ways music can be legally included in YouTube videos.

Suffice to say, Lessig was not happy. He has long been one of the most outspoken proponents of relaxed copyright enforcement, and he believes the current content matching system flags videos that are not infringing copyright. “If I’m using [music] for purposes of critique, then I can use if even if I don’t have permission of the original copyright owner,” Lessig told NPR, citing the doctrine of fair use. In addition, he asserts that the automated threats represent “bad faith lawsuits”, where improper legal action is used to strong arm potential defendants. “What we’ve got is this computerized system threatening people about content that’s on the Web, much of it legally on the Web,” he said.