Using examples from YouTube, Stanford law professor and copyright activist Lawrence Lessig discusses the influence of "remixes" and "mashups" of existing art on culture as a whole, and ponders the fate of participatory media in the face of out-of-date copyright laws.
Dave, also known in the internets as PDXguitarlegend got his account suspended on May 8 because of Van Halen and ZZ Top claims by the ever-friendly Warner Brothers. Music Group. That's 1,700 subscribers, and the removal of videos that DID NOT broke any law what so ever, and acted under the "Fair Use" guidelines of the Copyright Act. It's just a matter of time before all our accounts get suspended. Slowly, these measures by the record labels and Google, which are not only wrong, but kinda illegal, are destroying the musician community in YouTube.
Ask yourself: Who makes music popular? Who mantains these record companies, and who are they abusing? With who's money has Edgar Bronfsman Jr. bought his latest golden comb, and Lars Ulrich his latest pair of flashy sunglasses? Who's got the power to make these companies change their ways?
Don't let these companies try to monetize with your freedom as a consumer and your freedom to decide what to play and who to show your skills on a particular instrument.
Tribute is not theft. Stand up against the abuse of Copyright Laws.
Protest video by Dave, best known as PDXguitarlegend in which he states his problem, and in his opinion what we as users should do against the greedy companies taking away our freedom of playing music... then he loses the clothes.
Lars said in a recent interview with the L.A. Times that Metallica might follow the footsteps of other bands who have dropped their corporate record labels, such as NIN and Radiohead, and become completely independent, because record labels such as Warner Music Group act like a bank and Metallica doesn't need them anymore because they're so damn successful. I'm damn skippy he knows going independent includes ditributing their music online.
This next comment I found interesting... at first. Then I remembered Lars Ulrich and Metallica have made a career of saying something and then doing the complete opposite. Referring to the Ticketmaster-Live nation merger, he said:
"...monopolizing business practices of some of these companies I do find despicable, but I'm happy to say we sort of circumvent as much as we can." -- From the L.A. Times video interview.
Really, Lars? How about your YouTube video, and your fans' renditions being taken off YouTube by your monopolizing label, WMG, not to mention your own music videos?
Death Magnetic was the last album Metallica did under contract with Warner Music Group, and according to him, Metallica will go a different way for future efforts. We'll see what kind of way that is. My money's on whatever that way it is, it'll work fantastic for making the Metallica wallets even fatter.
Radiohead, David Gilmour, Jools Holland and Iron Maiden, among other heavy names in the United Kingdom's musician community, have joined something called The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which campaigns for the performers' and musicians' rights. We've heard this before from the big record labels; it usually means they're protecting their material against the evil fans who use their material for something other than listening. However, in this case it means something completely different: the artists and performers having the last word concerning their work, which would mean a big record deal couldn't remove our videos without the prior approval from the bands and artists. Sounds a bit like heaven, no?
But wait, it gets better. The artists in the FAC don't oppose the "illegal" download of their music. In fact, it embraces it:
"Digital technology has transformed how we buy and listen to music. In doing so it has radically altered the economic relationship between artists and consumers, and the business world that operates between the two."
The FAC recently had their first meeting, in which Blur's drummer Dave Rowntree, who sits at the board of directors commented, according to the FAC press release:
"The digital revolution has swept away the old music business of the 1960s, and changed forever the relationship between artists and fans. For companies who made their living sitting between the two, these are increasingly hard times, but for music makers and music fans this should be a fantastic opportunity.
"YouTube’s row with the PRS is the most recent example of just how fast the music industry is changing. There has never been a greater need for the collective voice of featured artists, whose music generates 95% of revenue in the industry, to be properly heard."
Hopefully, this campaign continues to grow and the big record labels finally embrace the new technologies and realize the fans are no criminals, but merely don't feel like paying for being a Living Room Rock God or building a relationship with their favorite artists.
Warner has caught two other criminal masterminds who, until now, had cunningly avoided justice and posted copyright infringing material, spreading fear and unfairness on the poor millionaires who control the music industry's lives. Their reign of terror is over, however, thanks to the ever-watchful eye of Warner and their justice tool: the YouTube's automated blocking device.
Yup, Warner is removing videos of your kids singing now, much like UMG's removal of the Lenz kid dancing to a Prince song, and why wouldn't they? they already removed thousands of videos of people playing cover tunes in their rooms, including teenagers singing without a backing track, without any kind of legal backlash or regard for fair use. Granted, in some cases it's difficult to determine weather it's fair use or not. Lets try it with these two examples, shall we?
This one features a kid lip-syncing to "Jukebox Hero" by Foreigner (who, ironically, found their new singer in YouTube singing covers). The second one is an even younger kid smacking lips to "I Love My Lips,"song originally by a cucumber in an episode of "Veggie Tales."It's unclear weather the copyright claim was for the song or the cucumber up some of these Warner executives' ass.
Thanks to the ever-alert fellows at YouTomb and the Electronic Frontier Foundation we can find about this stuff, otherwise it would go unnoticed, and the record labels would be able to get away with anything. Keep supporting them in any way, and lets put a stop to this complete abuse of copyright laws.
Again, another musician account has mysteriously disappear from YouTube. This time it's MarloweDK's. And again, it was a clear case of fair use material.
Thomas Risell, who goes by the monicker MarloweDK, is a well-educated bass player who hosts his own website, playbassnow.com, for teaching and has created quite a big fan-base which can also be considered his students. Today, they were all horrified when they discovered the infamous YouTube's pink rectangle along with the so feared sentence: "this account has been suspended." After hoping for a mistake in the playbassnow forums this was confirmed by Thomas himself:
"Well, maybe its a little less dramatic but still very bad, read on… ARGGGRRRR!! MY YOUTUBE ACCOUNT IS CLOSED!! ON COPYRIGHT ISSUES (my play-alongs), most of my videos were hosted there and are not available rigth now"
"And im not able to open a new YT account, im a “persona non grata” as far as they are concerned"
A couple of days back I wrote about other two accounts being suspended: joch84's and Munkybarz's. If YouTube's actions in the past serve as any indication, we can only predict that more and more user accounts who "violate copyright" will start to suddenly disappear. The problem with this is, how many people are "infringing" in YouTube? Is this the beginning of the end for YouTube?
For those of you who haven't run into the arms of the Electronic Frontier Foundation after getting your videos removed from YouTube, you should know Fred von Lohmann is the Senior Staff Attourney at EFF who's actually fighting to protect us, and the user-generated content against the abuse of copyright holders such as Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.
This is a recent appearance he made at NYU Law titled "Public Interest Cyber-Lawyering on the Electronic Fronteer."If you have an hour of down-time, please watch it, as he goes deeply into the blocking and removal of videos in YouTube by the big record labels and companies, specially WMG, and what to expect if you're considering taking legal action. He explains what's going on n a very user-friendly way, as in, you don't have to be an NYU lawyer to uderstand what he's talking about.
Finally, an artist had something to say about the Warner-YouTube spat. Sadly for us, it's not what we would've hoped for. In an article written by Neil Young in his own website, he addresses the issue from the point of view of a WMG employee.
In his article, Young basically says YouTube offers different deals to each record deal, which includes different revenue money; as opposed to the old days when radio offered the same deal to every record label and artist to play their songs. Warner was the first to negotiate a deal with YouTube back in 2006. The other labels followed, but negotiated a better contract. According to Young, Warner merely tried to get the same deal the other labels got, and YouTube wouldn't hear of it. This, at least in my own personal opinion, still does not justify the removal of hundreds of user-generated content and LRRG videos.
Reading a bit more, I came across this small paragraph, which I found quite interesting:
"Today's web world has created a new way. Artists today can go directly to the people. There is nothing standing between the artists and their audience. Freedom of expression reigns."
Really? artists can go directly to the people? nothing standing between them? I guess that would be except for the big-ass multi-million dollar corporation which is removing the fan-made videos, and the artists' own videos! Judging from that small paragraph, I can conclude Warner is really good at one of two things: brain-washing their artists, or keeping them from knowing their modus operandi of video removal.
Granted, his opinion could've been worse. At least he took the time to comment on it, unlike that Danish tennis player whose name won't be mentioned.
I've never heard of "Literal Videos" until about half an hour ago, and became an instant fan. Sadly, the reason I heard of DustFilms and this wonderful work of media genius was because of this piece of news from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Literal Videos is the creating of Dustin McLean, now hosted on the comedy web site Funny Or Die, and thank god, because they're too great to lose over a WMG tantrum. The videos are pretty much the same you've seen on MTV (when it used to actually show music videos), but with a new set of lyrics: the specific description of what's happening on screen.
The idea it's so simple, yet so creative; WMG doesn't like creative people, as one look at their list of signed artists would tell us; they claimed copyright on two videos: Under The Bridge and Take On Me.
The problem is, these videos are clear parodies. Again the long corporate arm completely ignores the Fair Use clause while bitching and whining at the same time about the users' complete disreagard for copyright laws. They're huffin' and puffin' trying to eliminate any evidence of their music from YouTube, which will have devastating results for both the record label and the video website. And as for the users? They'll just pick up their stuff and move on to a different site.
Worried about how YouTube's automated video-signature flags videos and gives complete freedom to the copyright holders to block pretty much whatever they want, completely ignoring and bypassing the "fair use" clause in the U.S. Copyright Law, a student organization -MIT Free Culture- started this project hoping to reform it.
Basically, YouTomb monitors those videos on YouTube which are the most popular, often featured in other web sites, and serve as a source as to who has removed what and why. Browsing through some of the removed material, it becomes aparent some companies will claim copyright on anything. If you make a video of yourself, you better not have a mole which resembles the Mickey Mouse logo -- it would probably get removed. "Please use Mole-Swap and try again."
But I digress...
The fellows at YouTomb also keep a count on how many videos have the companies removed by themselves, WMG not surprisingly ranking at number one with over 4,600 videos taken down; counting only the claims by "WMG,"not those by "Warner Music Group" and other variations of that name which has become a euphemism for "copyright fascists."Of course, in a site of this nature, they could not lack a blog to express their thoughts and feelings about this wonderful world of corporate monopoly we're facing. Contributor Kevin Driscoll was kind enough to take some time out of his life and browse through this blog and the Living Room Rock God community and dedicating an article on YouTomb to our cause. (Thank you, Kevin!).
So, are you still wondering what happened to your favorite video in which some kitties were headbanging at the rythm of Metallica? I suggest you browse through YouTomb's content. WMG might have claimed copyright over the music... or the kitties (they might've looked like Sylvester the cat).
Just when we thought things were looking up, they deliver a blow like this. Two important musician YouTube accounts were suspended: jloch84 and Munkybarz. Both bassists, and both damn good at it. Munkybarz specially was the object of a huge following by players from all ages, since his videos served as a huge inspiration for young rookie players, and his huge library of rock bass lines got other older musicians and music fans to re-discover some classic rock songs and records.
We in the music community are affraid this might be a new way to deal with the evil copyright infringers that we apparently are in the eyes of the big record labels. As of late, many of us have stopped being afraid and contested the videos we got removed. Some even got a notification with the magic words "dispute successful."Maybe it's a bit of a conspiracy theory, but one cannot help but to think their new strategy might be: "no accounts, no counter notifications."
This theory can seem like a stretch, but ask yourself: "why else would they close these two accounts?" and while you're at it, "is my account next?"
More and more YouTube musicians and Living Room Rock Gods are joining the protest against the evil record labels and companies. This one is a first: a collaboration! Shoved into a "Tribute IS NOT theft" T shirt, RKnickerbocker joins PlayingGuitarRules to pay tribute to a band whos lucky to have fans this faithful: Metallica.
Mr.Kafka might be on to something. Not Franz, but Peter, from All Things Digital. In his point of view, the most viable solution for the record companies-YouTube conflict is a simple one: just rip off MySpace. Creating a YouTube Music would not solve everything, but from our perspective, as YouTube users/musicians, would be a really nice option. This would create a new style of MTV, going back to basics for what MTV used to be: Music. Only, this way, we, the users, would have compelte control over what videos to watch and when, without stumple upon them by mere chance, having to sit through another episode of "The Real World."
But the promise land doesn't end up there. If they were to make a deal similar to Warner's back in 2006, this would mean pretty much carte blanche for any covers we might want to play: from Red Hot Chili Peppers, to Barney the Dinosaur. That is, as long as no executive looks at another in the industry that is YouTube and yells out: "why is he making more revenue than me?!"
Go ahead and read both articles by Peter Kafka for the entire story and his own theory of why YouTube Music should be created, and how it should work, as opposed as just reading my rambles and rants.
This is happening more and more. You make a video of yourself playing a song you like; take your time editing, making sure the final product has a good quality of both video and audio; upload it on YouTube, to see what others have to say about it; and then... you run into the corporate copyright brick wall.
As you can see from this metallicat511 video, it does not happen just to you. It happens to everybody; and now it's happening more often. Don't keep quiet! Tribute is not theft!
Living Room Rock God jouxplan also let us in on some good news: Sony Music Entertainment re-signed with YouTube instead of following WMG in their tantrum for more dough. We can only hope UMG and EMI follow their lead, and see the mistake Warner is living in (hint: see the WMG share chart). According to the articles posted by jouxplan in the forums, the details of the new deal are unclear; might have something to do with YouTube's testing of the new "download" feature in some select videos.
Today LRRG jouxplan posted this information in the Living Room Rock Gods forums earning the right to pick anything he wants from the nearest pastry shop. This is Warner Music Group's share price chart, according to Yahoo! Finance, UK. We're not economists or expert chart readers, but this doesn't leave much to speculation, that blue line really starts dropping around October from last year, and by January it's crawling like a snake. I wonder what kind of executive decisions could have been the reason for this debacle. Oh, right...
I like to think we, the fans and WMG-product-users, played an important part to cause such drop in share prices for Warner. Lashing out at the people who buy your products doesn't seem like a good idea, even for an all-powerful multi-million corporation. And now that Sony Music Entertainment successfuly renegotiated their deal with YouTube, it's looking even worse for them. We can only hope they realize their mistake and chose to negotiate, instead of taking the next step in their bullieness, as big-shot corporations are known to do from time to time.
In this video, we see a young child who's just learning to walk while being filmed by his mother who then uploaded the video to YouTube to show her family and friends. That's it. No editing. No music added in post-production. However, that did not stop the ever-watching eye of the Universal Music Group music police and actually claimed copyright infringement on it for the Prince song playing in the background. Fortuatelly, Stephanie Lenz, the owner of the video sued UMG with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the video went back up on YouTube. While her case is still ongoing, the judge did say that UMG and other copyright holders should consider fair use before sending a takedown notice.
I'm posting it now to make a point: this is how far these companies, such as UMG or WMG (Warner Music Group) are willing to go. Right now, they're claiming copyright infringement over the videos we make of ourselves playing covers from our living rooms or bedrooms. But, if we let them get away with that, and without shame, they'll claim copyright over your home movies and even videos of your kids learning how to walk.
Users continue protesting against the YouTube video hostile take-over by the record companies such as Warner Music Group. This time, it's the turn of lasteffect to share his thoughts about this.
These people have no shame. This image of Barack Obama was seen everywhere during the last months of 2008, and became one of the most important images of, at least, the 21st century when he was elected as President of the United States. The famous "HOPE" image was done by a Calfornia street artist named Chris Fairey, but it was not done from scratch. Inspired by Obama's campaign, Chris found a photograph by Manny Garcia, from AP, and transformed it into the image we all recognize today.
Now the campaign is over and Chris Fairy is getting a law suit threat by AP for copyright infringement!:
"The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission," said Paul Colford, AP's director of media relations taken from an article by Lewis Wallace for wired.com.
Fairy's lawyer is using our new two favorite words in the English Dictionary: Fair Use. It really does not take a lot of brain cells to figure out Fairy's work is completely transformative and it follows the Fair Use guidelines; he has not made a cent from the famous poster.
Now Fairy has counter-attacked AP. According to this article by David Kravets for wired.com, on Monday, Fairy "filed a preemptive lawsuit claiming he did not violate The Associated Press's intellectual property rights."
The lengths some people are willing to go for money or recognition is unbelievable. We can only hope the Fair Use clause gets more specific over time, so that no one with a little bit of power abuses copyright laws and demands "compensation" just because somebody else's work was better than their original efforts.
YouTube is not the only target of Warner Music Group's bottomless stomach for money. Recently, Last.fm -the on-demand music website- has had music taken down by WMG. However, as opposed as what happened in YouTube, the artist's official radio stations are still online, since they work under a dfferet contract, but music from albums by Neil Young, Nickelback, Death Cab for Cutie are right out.
This begs the question: what the hell is Warner doing? They were the first company to sign a deal with YouTube so it's users could use their music freely, and the first to make a deal with an on-demand music site (Last.fm). My guess -and that's only a guess- is they realized how may users these two websites had and their mind went "CHA-CHING!" Now, they're only thinking on how to get their dirty little paws on more dough, making a whole lot of consumers angry. Not a smart move, I'd say.
Holy crap! I did not expect the EFF article I posted here yesterday to cause so much stir, but many sites are commenting on it, including Billboard. Here are some articles commenting about both, the EFF article, and the current WMG hostile video take-over.
I don't think that we can find clearer evidence that what we're doing is working. If you've had one, or more, videos removed, or even if you didn't but one of your favorite videos was, and you feel it was unfair, please take a moment of your time and write to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Our freedom of playing music in our own homes is at stake.
BlkSabbass... er, I mean, stoptherobot, created this clever -and symbolic- video using classic Godzilla footage and added a new kick-ass soundtrack played by himself in protest against the 'Big Five' and the removal of user-generated videos in YouTube.
This is what it's come to. Teenagers singing "Winter Wonderland" being censored off YouTube.
Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners (sometimes carelessly, sometimes not). But in the past several weeks, two things have made things much worse for those who want to sing a song, post an a capella tribute, or set machinima to music.
First, it appears that more and more copyright owners are using YouTube's automated copyright filtering system (known as the Content ID system), which tests all videos looking for a "match" with "fingerprints" provided by copyright owners.
Second, thanks to a recent spat between YouTube and Warner Music Group, YouTube's Content ID tool is now being used to censor lots and lots of videos (previously, Warner just silently shared in the advertising revenue for the videos that included a "match" to its music).
EFF, along with many other public interest groups, have repeatedly expressed our concerns to both copyright owners and YouTube about the dangers of automated filtering systems like the Content ID system. These systems are still primitive and unable to distinguish a tranformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses.
And that's exactly what has happened these past few weeks. And while today it's Warner Music, as more copyright owners start using the Content ID tool, it'll only get worse. Soon it may be off limits to remix anything with snippets of our shared mass media culture -- music, TV, movies, jingles, commercials. That would be a sad irony -- copyright being used to stifle an exciting new wellspring of creativity, rather than encourage it.
It's clear from the Warner Music experience that YouTube's Content ID tool fails to separate the infringements from the arguable fair uses. And while YouTube offers users the option to dispute a removal (if it's an automated Content ID removal) or send a formal DMCA counter-notice (if it's an official DMCA takedown), many YouTube users, lacking legal help, are afraid to wave a red flag in front of Warner Music's lawyers. That's a toxic combination for amateur video creators on YouTube.
So what can we do?
First, YouTube should fix the Content ID system. Now. The system should not remove videos unless there is a match between the video and audio tracks of a submitted fingerprint. When we made this suggestion in October 2007, YouTube assured us that they were working on improving the tool. Well, it's been more than a year. If YouTube is serious about protecting its users, the time has come to implement this fix. (Some will point out that this implies that record labels and music publishers can never use the Content ID tool to remove videos solely based on what's in the audio track. That's right. I think that adding a soundtrack to your home skateboarding movie is a fair use. If copyright owners feel differently, they can send a formal DMCA takedown notice, and with any luck, we'll see each other in court.)
Second, YouTubers, EFF wants to help. If Warner Music Group took down your video, ask yourself if your video is (1) noncommercial (i.e., no commercial advertisements or YouTube Partner videos) and (2) includes substantial original material contributed by you (i.e., no verbatim copies of Warner music videos). If so, and you'd like to counternotice but are afraid of getting sued, we'd like to hear from you. We can't promise to take every case, but neither will we stand by and watch semi-automated takedowns trample fair use.
Second video by TygerWDR. Here he discusses MetallicaTV, YouTube double-standards and solutions and how each and every one of these runs into a corporate brick-wall. He also provides some useful telephone and fax numbers and addresses of WMG, Google and YouTube. Use them!
Here's the first of two videos made by YouTube user TygerWDR, just in case you don't know what's going on between the Warner Music Group, YouTube and us, the users; or in case you are looking for more information on the subject. Please watch it and take action!
Recently, Greg Sandoval, from CNET News wrote an article regarding the feud between Warner Music Group and YouTube and how this affects it's users. It focuses on a video (see here) you might have seen by Corey Vidal, known as ApprenticeA in YouTube in which he payed an a capella tribute to John Williams. His video was even nominated for a People's Choice Award, but Warner did not care, they removed the video anyway citing copyright over Williams' material.
The video did not have any music other than Corey's voice.
Coiner of the term "Living-Room Rock Gods," zodiakironfist, gives his opinion about the removal of user-generated Living Room Rock God videos by WMG and UMG, and why these are included in the umbrella of "Fair Use."
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