American bass/trap producer Baauer recently took action against FCC chairman Ajit Pai for using ‘Harlem Shake’ in his YouTube video on net neutrality.

The move came after Diplo tweeted at Baauer, alerting him of the copyright violation, to which Baauer later pledged “I’m taking action. Whatever I can do to stop this loser.”

yo @baauer did the FCC license your song for this? this is your moment to become a hero. call the lawyers https://t.co/xfaW1Wxobn

— Diplo (@_diplo_) December 14, 2017

Baauer’s Mad Decent label did successfully remove the video from Daily Caller’s YouTube channel with a copyright notice for 7 hours but it has since been re-uploaded (it’s currently on 21k dislikes and counting).

Baauer insists “I want to be clear that it was used completely without my consent or council. My team and I are currently exploring every single avenue available to get it taken down. I support Net Neutrality like the vast majority of this country and am appalled to be associated with it’s repeal in anyway”. However Pai’s use of ‘Harlem Shake’ could be seen as “fair use”, which means that part of a work can be used without permission from a copyright holder. The FCC’s video contains less than 20 seconds worth of audio from ‘Harlem Shake’, what’s more is that the video could be protected by parody laws – meaning there’s a chance that FCC chairman and former Verizon lawyer Aji Pai has legally done no wrong. 

What are your thoughts?