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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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