YouTube has become quite the battleground for copyright claims and our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have found some great opportunities to defend fair use and put our licenses to work. Just yesterday they settled a deal between Brian Sapient and Explorologist Ltd. over the fair use of clips critiquing performer Uri Geller’s claims to mental powers. What’s really fantastic (and what motivated us to post) is that the EFF has leveraged the power of our licenses in the settlement itself:

The agreement should allow the healthy debate about the existence of ‘supernatural powers’ to continue without interference. As part of the legal settlement, Explorologist has agreed to license the disputed footage under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, preempting future legal battles over the fair use of the material.

This case follows in a tradition the EFF established when they settled another case in May 2007 with Rick Silver, the creator of the “Electric Slide” dance where Silver was ordered to put the dance itself under our Attribution-NonCommercial license so that derivatives could be made for non-commercial purposes.