On Thursday, a settlement was reached between Creative Commons co-founder Lawerence Lessig and Liberation Media, an Australian music label that owns the rights to French band Phoenix' song “Lisztomania.”

Last summer, Liberation had a video of one of Lessig's lectures (called "Open," which is embedded above) taken down when the company found that he had used video clips with Phoenix's music in it. Lessig, in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, challenged the takedown and sued Liberation, arguing that he was well within his right to use Phoenix's music under fair use policies. (Phoenix, for its part, wrote that it was happy to have its music remixed under fair use principles.)

Lessig teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to extract damages from Liberation under the DMCA's section 512(f), which requires copyright holders to pay damages if they overstep their bounds in issuing a takedown. As Ars noted last summer, hardly any copyright holders have ever had to pay damages under 512(f).

Lessig's and EFF's original complaint against Liberation ran down a long list of reasons why the Phoenix clips in Lessig's lecture should be considered fair use. Ars wrote at the time: “[Lessig] used a small proportion of the song, his lecture doesn't compete with the market for the song in any way, and the lecture is an entirely new creation. Phoenix wanted its song to entertain and make money; Lessig's lecture was educational, and neither he nor Creative Commons, the sponsor, made any profit.”

The amount of the settlement was not disclosed, but under the terms of the settlement Liberation has also had to update its copyright policies to respect fair use. According to EFF, the money from the settlement “will be dedicated to supporting EFF's work on open access, a cause of special importance to Lessig's friend, Aaron Swartz, a technologist and activist who took his own life in early 2013.”

In its settlement agreement, the music label wrote, “Liberation Music is pleased to amicably resolve its dispute with Professor Lessig. Liberation Music agrees that Professor Lessig’s use of the Phoenix song ‘Lisztomania’ was both fair use under US law and fair dealing under Australian law.”

Lessig was also pleased with the outcome. In the EFF's post he wrote, "I've been fighting against that kind of abuse for many years, and I knew I had to stand up for fair use here as well. Hopefully this lawsuit and this settlement will send a message to copyright owners to adopt fair takedown practices—or face the consequences."