DANCING TODDLERS ARE KILLING MUSIC
Mar. 15th, 2009 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Universal Warner Music orders YouTube to take down videos of cute babies singing or playing to music. Why? Because Universal owns the copyright and says the videos are infringement.
To be fair, Universal isn’t actively targeting little kids – much of the takedown notices it orders are automated via YouTube’s Content I.D. tool, However, Universal’s been on a rampage lately policing the YouTubes, with more videos removed in January 2009 than all of last year, according to YouTomb. And while one may say they have the right to say who gets to upload their videos, the problem with automated takedowns is that they don’t distinguish between full-on infringement and Fair Use.
Which is just how the RIAA and the MPAA like it.
Why do I carry on so about this?
Because Fair Use is an essential component of copyright law. It’s what allows you to quote from a book or a song lyric, photocopy magazine articles or make a mixtape for a friend without risking prosecution for copyright theft. But the RIAA and MPAA have been laboring overtime to blur that distinction for digital media so that there is NO Fair Use. They’ve repeatedly invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to back their point, and have lobbied against any attempts by Congress to better define what constitutes Fair Use under the DMCA.
Despite overwhelming evidence that YouTube is more likely to help them generate revenue rather than lose it, they cling to the position that copyright means you can’t use their content for anything, at all, ever, unless you pay them an extra fee. Even copying a CD you paid for to yr iPod is not Fair Use, according to the RIAA. And if you want to show other people yr precious video of yr toddler dancing to a Prince song playing in the background? You might as well sell pirated CD-ROMs of Prince albums out of the trunk of yr car, because it’s the same thing.
And major music labels wonder where people get the idea that they’re Big Evil Greedy Companies.
On the bright side, Lars Ulrich recently downloaded an illegal copy of a Metallica album. So that’s progress. I guess.
Okay, I’m done now. Carry on.
READ MORE ABOUT IT: I recommend the YouTomb site. It’s an MIT research project to track YouTube videos that have been subject to takedown notices for copyright infringement allegations, and to see how many of them could fall under the category of fair use. One reason for the project is because the process is now automated and YouTube has been rather secretive about how it works.
Honor among thieves,
This is dF
One showed a 4 year old lip-syncing to the old Foreigner hit, “Juke Box Hero.” The other apparently showed a baby smacking its lips to the tune of “I Love My Lips”—a song originally sung by a cucumber in an episode of “Veggie Tales.”
To be fair, Universal isn’t actively targeting little kids – much of the takedown notices it orders are automated via YouTube’s Content I.D. tool, However, Universal’s been on a rampage lately policing the YouTubes, with more videos removed in January 2009 than all of last year, according to YouTomb. And while one may say they have the right to say who gets to upload their videos, the problem with automated takedowns is that they don’t distinguish between full-on infringement and Fair Use.
Which is just how the RIAA and the MPAA like it.
Why do I carry on so about this?
Because Fair Use is an essential component of copyright law. It’s what allows you to quote from a book or a song lyric, photocopy magazine articles or make a mixtape for a friend without risking prosecution for copyright theft. But the RIAA and MPAA have been laboring overtime to blur that distinction for digital media so that there is NO Fair Use. They’ve repeatedly invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to back their point, and have lobbied against any attempts by Congress to better define what constitutes Fair Use under the DMCA.
Despite overwhelming evidence that YouTube is more likely to help them generate revenue rather than lose it, they cling to the position that copyright means you can’t use their content for anything, at all, ever, unless you pay them an extra fee. Even copying a CD you paid for to yr iPod is not Fair Use, according to the RIAA. And if you want to show other people yr precious video of yr toddler dancing to a Prince song playing in the background? You might as well sell pirated CD-ROMs of Prince albums out of the trunk of yr car, because it’s the same thing.
And major music labels wonder where people get the idea that they’re Big Evil Greedy Companies.
On the bright side, Lars Ulrich recently downloaded an illegal copy of a Metallica album. So that’s progress. I guess.
Okay, I’m done now. Carry on.
READ MORE ABOUT IT: I recommend the YouTomb site. It’s an MIT research project to track YouTube videos that have been subject to takedown notices for copyright infringement allegations, and to see how many of them could fall under the category of fair use. One reason for the project is because the process is now automated and YouTube has been rather secretive about how it works.
Honor among thieves,
This is dF
