It's not about them doing a "popular" dance, it's about them not being able to dance AT ALL because the record companies will eat up a ton of the "basic moves" and then anyone who dances will runt he risks of accidentally using a random move without knowing it's copyrighted.
Fair use is a defense, it works if your work is transformative, IE a parody, commentary, or educational, you are also limited in how much you can use, you can't for example, throw up an entire movie on youtube and then give a quick review at the end and say "it's great."
You can not take someone elses copyrighted work, use it fully, and claim "fair use" if it doesn't meet one of the criteria above, also music videos? Those are made to make money, they get money on youtube (ad revenue).
As has been covered countless times in this thread, you can
not copyright a dance move, social dances, simple routines, etc.
https://www.businessinsider.com/can-you-copyright-a-dance-move-2018-9?r=UK&IR=T
4:51 in the video, straight from a copyright lawyer.
You can only copyright choreographic works which consist of multiple steps, not just a simple step or two or something that an average general person can easily do.
The kind of dance moves that Milly and others are trying to copyright are too simple,t hey are literally building blocks from which you make a choreographic work upon, you can not copyright these. It's the same as allowing and author to copyright words/phrases/sentences. Can you imagine someone owning "Happily ever after" or "It was a dark and stormy night" and suing anyone else that used those in a book? Do you see how absurd that'd be?
If you allow simple dance moves you are going to open the floodgates where huge record companies will then contract to own all the dances which any artist signed with them does. Then they will in-turn enforce those copyrighted dances in full force EXACTLY like they do with their music/music videos. Go ahead and upload a current mainstream song or video to youtube, see what happens.
Now do you honestly think these record companies will sit idly by while people use copyrighted dance moves? Heck no, they will go after any and everyone that uses them.
These small time/up and coming artist will choose not to dance in their music videos for fear of being sued, because after so long the record companies will basically have a monopoly over so many basic dance moves (which are the building blocks of dancing in general) that the risk of accidentally using a random move could potentially open you up to being sued.
You'll end up having to license the rights to dance moves to dance in a music video or having to hire a lawyer to ensure your "new" dance move isn't already copyrighted. This is something that the "little" person will not be able to afford, so their choice will be:
1. Dance and hope you don't pull off a copyrighted dance move and then get sued for it.
2. Don't dance, ensure you don't risk getting sued.
Now I don't know about you, but music videos without dancing? That would suck.
I'm not sure how anyone can make this more clearer on WHY this is a bad thing for the "little" people. It's not about sticking up for Epic/a game (I think they should give credit for where they get those dances from), it's about not allowing things like this to be copyrighted because of what it would entail after that is allowed.
