Mashable: YouTube Now Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music. "Perhaps this has been going on for a while, but I’ve never noticed it before. YouTube
users often create an original video using their favorite popular song
as the audio. I’m afraid that they won’t be able to do that much
longer, since YouTube has started muting videos that use unauthorized
copyrighted music (and that pretty much means all user-created videos.) You can see some examples here, here and here. The official notice from YouTube under the video says the following: “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”
Ouch. This will really hurt. Everyone. The amateur film makers, the artists, Youtube, us - the users. Yes, sure, I know: synchronization [the use of music in a public audio-visual production] is subject to a license by the writer, publisher, label, artist (and another dozen of parties), no matter how small the use. That's the law.
BUT: where will this by-the-book implementation of these laws lead us? The answer is: criminalization.
Youtube (i.e. Google) will be virtually destroying 10s of millions of videos that millions of users have created and uploaded. I understand why Youtube would comply with demands for this, but this is really a bummer - would it not make sense for the music (publishing) industry to instead provide a non-commercial LICENSE for UGC content, and in return get traffic, referrals and shares of ad revenues? Would it not make sense for such a license to be created NOW rather then in 3 years?
Another instance of music industry control obsession that just makes you want to scream if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 5 years. When is Compensation FINALLY going to be more important then Control?
PS: Mashable rocks. Read their blog!
UPDATE
Norwegian Dagbladet comments Techcrunch rips into this topic ReadWriteWeb
Inexorably, your only conclusion must be that copyright is an unethical commercial privilege.
To Communicate is To Copy (http://digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=168 ). To share and build upon public culture is to commit copyright infringement.
Cultural liberty is essential. A monopoly on the reproduction of published works is not essential.
Posted by: Crosbie Fitch | January 14, 2009 at 04:01 PM
I don't think this applies to musician channels, or does it?
Posted by: Ty Showers | January 14, 2009 at 06:56 PM
I am not sure they can distinguish it in this way...
Posted by: Gerd Leonhard | January 14, 2009 at 07:03 PM
Great post and it is indeed sad news for those millions of videos affects; however, it is great news for artists at AudioMicro. We have been building a marketplace for synch licenses with iTunes styles prices (just $1 per minute) so that everyone can get quality music for their videos at affordable prices, free and clear of additional licensing fees. Grammy nominated and Emmy winning composers have contributed to the library and this ruling helps validate the for our library to help video producers obtain pre-cleared music for their creative audio visual projects. You can check us out at http://www.AudioMicro.com if you are looking for quality music for your videos.
Posted by: Ryan Born | January 14, 2009 at 08:25 PM
Its very funny cos' I really don't see this as a step back from Web 2.0...
One of the biggest problems for many artists, is that there are many versions of the same video all over Youtube, and this makes it very hard for the artist to use Youtube actively for promotion and sales. When there are only one channel a lot of people will be gathering at one place, givin' the artists the possibility to link to more content and to stores where ri-res versions can be bought. Also it will be easier for the artist to enter discussions on the video, which can be very hard if the same video appears 100 times. It's just like having 100 myspace band pages, which in my book are quite bad.
This also make it easier for artists to make their own communities using Ning (or any other socialnetwork services) and interact more with the fans (giving them more exclusive content). I know this can be done without the Youtube-restrictions, but it will be a hell of a lot easier now.
The biggest problems with this are for users using music in pictures and movies, which I think could be a problem... But thats why we got people who make such services as Audiomicro.com... ;-)
and just the last one.... It will make bonus content more easy to "control" (and in this situation it's NOT bad) for the artist, which make sellable-services for "VIP Fans" a lot easier...
My 2 cent...
Posted by: Morten | January 15, 2009 at 02:26 PM
what process are they using for confirming copyright and permissions? What if the music is held under a Creative Commons license?
Posted by: Bev Barnett | January 15, 2009 at 11:03 PM
Good questions. I think they use Audible for doing this - checking against 'not allowed' lists I guess
Posted by: Gerd Leonhard | January 15, 2009 at 11:58 PM