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Copyright Axe To Fall On YouTube?
theoddball writes "In what should come as no great surprise, Universal Music Group is preparing to file suit against YouTube for copyright infringement, the AP
reports. Discussions with the site's owners have broken down (although talks are apparently still progressing with Myspace / News Corp over similar issues). From the article: 'We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,' Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors Wednesday at a conference in Pasadena. This development follows last month's announcement that YouTube is negotiating with labels to legally host videos. While the primary complaint is against music videos, one cannot help but wonder if this will also impact the many, many homemade videos using copyrighted UMG songs as a soundtrack (or — *shudder* — a lipsync.)"
did you know that UMG just pulled their videos off of the music video station Fuse because they couldn't come to an agreement for compensation? http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=17040 3
am i alone when i say i am blown away that record labels ask stations for a penny to show their videos? i don't know how they did things in the stone age, but MY generation will NOT pay major labels to promote THEIR albums.
-- lol pwned
Of course it had to be a music company. A music company that is part of a much bigger media conglomerate, but it is the subdivision that is suing. And they are suing because someone creates a new music video for an old song. This at least involves some work by the person posting it. Yet there is so much content on youtube that is blatantly ripped from TV, but nobody sued about that yet.
Youtube is going to become Napster 2.0: once wildly popular, then sued into oblivion.
What I don't understand is why the hell youtube is talking to a record company in the first place. Why aren't they dealing with a Copyright collection society? (I don't know the name of the US one). They are an orginisation attempting to make money with content including copyrighted material, which the copyright holders are legally entitled to recompense. But their business model is more like the modern day equivalent of a tv station, so they should be paying in a similar way to how tv stations pay for their use of copyrighted material.
This post patent pending.
I'd say this is less clear cut than the original Napster. Despite what people claim about 'only some people used it to violate copyright', a good 90-odd% of file transfers on Napster was unauthorised copyright copying (statistic purely based on anecdotal evidence, bite me). Youtube is a lot less clear - granted a lot of stuff on there is clips from TV shows and films, music videos and stuff, but there is a LOT of original content on there (mostly unwatchable garbage, people thinking they're good on a skateboard and whatnot). Of course, it becomes hazy when people use copyrighted sound tracks to their original creation but still - I think we can all agree that a significant % of YouTube users are using it for none-copyright-violating purposes.