Well, we celebrated the passing of Parkade in style, with party that lasted over 8 HOURS!!! Massive thanks to Andy Asylum, DJNoNo Ulysses, Topher Delcon and me for the music…
Readers of Radio Clash will know what Warner Media Group did to my Neon Sex People video mashup on YouTube (NSFW – audio and text contains a ‘message’ for WMG and uses music from a great unsigned artist Playgyrl Slim). Annoying, especially as Depeche Mode USED to be on EMI and somehow have transmogrified over to the dark side of WMG – and it’s definitely a transformative and non-commercial use but mashups are still in a grey area.
You might have wondered why all the silent videos on YouTube – they are the victims of this ‘fair use massacre’.
The staple of YouTube amateur musical media, covers – they should be alright, right?
Wrong:
Warners as well as other ‘content owners’ have been using the ContentID system to identify tracks that use their content – fingerprinting technology – but it doesn’t count for fair-use, remixed usage, comment or background use – other owners just share the ad revenue and leave the content in place – but not Warners – but it seems not even covers or remixes or mashups avoid the chop.
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.
This lack of separation is worrying; various IP and video bodies have said how derivative amateur works, covers etc. are not the problem and for such use as background music should be allowed as otherwise it has a freezing effect on culture, with landgrabs and fences put up everywhere around even the simplest folk song or melody (see the infamous Happy Birthday case which is…you guessed it, Warners! Interestingly this might actually be also public domain as it was published before 1935 by others without copyright notice).
So EFF are asking for examples of your Warners-pulled videos on YouTube – not full music video rips but works that have original content in them (whether that applies to mashups I don’t know – remixes maybe).
In other news, in a case of Pop (Industry) Will Eat Itself, even if you’re signed to Warners you are not safe – Warners is also taking down videos posted by their own artists – such as Moby (who was quoted as saying ‘If it was up to me they’d all be up there and they’d all be free. But, at present, it’s not up to me, it’s up to THE MAN. In the future that will hopefully be different.’) Freezepop, Death Cab for Cutie. Amanda Palmer, Dresden Dolls, and Emiliana Torrini. Nice.
The weird thing the eagle eyed might have spotted though – unless there’s some backscene dealing or selling of back catalogue I don’t know about, there isn’t any WMG content in the video?
Break it down:
Depeche Mode ‘People are People’ – MUTE (EMI)
Latour’s People are Still Having Sex – Polydor (Universal UMG)
Neon Neon – Lex Records which is supposed to be independent.
I’m scratching my head about this…Stupid YouTube, wondering whether mentioning it might get my other videos pulled or whether it’s worth fighting. Probably not if you read their dispute procedure:
Under certain circumstances, you may dispute the copyright claim from WMG. These may be any of the following:
* the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
* you believe that your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
* you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.
Hmm can’t fulfill the first one totally (although I’ve not been told it’s a problem either) but it’s weird YouTube are wrongly tagging videos as having Warners music when they don’t.
Has anyone successfully disputed these? I know YouTube has a deal with Universal, Sony and EMI that videos with their content get licensed, so it shouldn’t be an instant ‘no’ – but I think they’ve got it wrong in this case. Having them poke around my YouTube account might cause more aggro though.
Thankfully I uploaded it to Facebook and Myspace – so it’s still available here:
EDIT: Managed to find out more info – it’s People are People which it’s claiming is Warners – news to me, Depeche Mode are signed to Mute it looks like it was issued in Japan on Warners (nowhere else), which is spurious at best as the rest of the world was EMI or other record companies – just block it in Japan then – that doesn’t mean they own the rights to it for the rest of the world, esp. when EMI who controls the other areas including here in the UK DOES have a deal with YouTube. It’s a minefield.
Or did WMG buy the Depeche Mode back catalogue? If so a lot of DM bootlegs are going to get pulled? I doubt that since DM are signed to EMI still…who knows….
Ooh this is good – not only did I get to meet DJ Morgoth & friends at the excellent Mash Up Yr Bootz in Berlin, where not only was he mixing mashup videos and audio live (as well as some Radio Clash graphics amongst the ‘mix’ of mashup flyers, covers etc). he also played my Neon Sex People mashup which he also just posted to Mashuptown.
Thanks Morgoth Really enjoyed the club, and heartily recommend it if yr in Berlin.
