by Pribek.net
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Tags: copyright, Google, Music Business, music industry, YouTube
OK, this is the big buzz running through my Reader today; YouTube is pulling audio from user generated videos. From ReadWriteWeb.
A growing number of videos now appear without sound and with a notice that these videos contained “an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders.” It looks like YouTube is starting to implement audio fingerprinting software that automatically removes licensed audio tracks…
….YouTube always contacted its users when it was notified of copyright infringements, but now, it seems like this is an automated process. Predictably, the commenters on YouTube are outraged about this new policy….
In most every article I’ve seen about this, there is an assumption that the “music industry” somehow unified to force YouTube in to yanking the tracks. I haven’t seen anybody entertaining the idea that YT (Google) is doing this of their own accord.
…Most importantly, this move by YouTube, even though it makes perfect legal sense, might quickly put an end to the culture of remixes, mashups, and parodies on YouTube….
…In the end, this new policy will only alienate YouTube’s users, while doing nothing to help the struggling music industry. It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue.
The backlash against the music industry is so firmly embedded in the collective brain that everybody automatically thinks; “those evil, rotten bastards, they’ve done it again”.
I’ve found, on the whole, that people have a misconception about the music industry. People think it’s a lot bigger business than it is.
When you talk about YouTube, you are really talking about Google. Google is a big business. Google is a bigger business than the music business. Google is the only player that has made big time money from the web. They have done this by performance based ad revenue and controlling the flow of traffic.
Now, if you do a search for any musical act that is anywhere near legit, multiple YouTube links show up on page one. Go give it a try if you have any doubt. Google is directing huge traffic to YouTube and YT was getting huge traffic before Google bought it. But, YouTube isn’t making the dough. The ads in the side bar of the search page are the bread and butter. When it comes down to seeing the whites of their eyes, Google isn’t going to risk that bread and butter for a division that isn’t profitable. Culture of remixes, mashups, and parodies be damned.
And, that’s the problem with the blanket license theory. Google isn’t going to want to pay a blanket fee out of revenue that isn’t enough as it is. They would like it to be performance based like the side bar, search ads. That hasn’t proven to be efficient.
The C Word-Criminalization
It’s the buzz word du jour among digital pundits. We have criminalized generations of young people. No doubt they will be emotionally scarred and guilt ridden for cramming their iPods full of free music.
Gerd on YouTube’s recent play…
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.
Who is criminalizing who here?
If you make a video of your three-year-old opening birthday presents and you sync it to Velvet Underground’s “The Gift”, you aren’t trying to profit from it, it’s all in good fun, right? See, you could do that as much as you want. The problem is when you publish it on YouTube, Google is trying to make a buck off of it. Even if there isn’t an add next to your “creative work”, your second cousin Marie might take a look, chuckle and, while she’s at YouTube, she might decide to check out a clip by Crosby Stills and Nash. And, if someone is looking for The Velvet Underground on Google, your innocent clip is going to show up in the search, even though it’s only had 149 views.
Who is making you a criminal, the music industry or YouTube/Google?
It seems like the same people that have no problem spouting that the music industry needs to quit clinging to dinosaur business models and embrace free range, on demand, digital consumerism, that they need to forgo the money as the the new business models “develop”; those same people get weak in the knees at the prospect of not letting YouTube/Google and the users have the Ho Hos and eat ‘em too.
Here’s the news; in this era dinosaurs become dinosaurs at light speed and YouTube is showing the symptoms. YT peeling the audio isn’t going to end the culture of remixes, mashups, and parodies. It will just morph; go elsewhere. The new media whizzes are fond of YouTube because all the traffic is there, tied together in a neat little package. And, I can understand that because it’s convenient. But, it can’t sustain if it’s not turning the bucks.
