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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.)"
With the various lawsuits going on, and settlements seeming to arise regularly... I wonder whether they're actually making more profit for these various companies than some of their CD/movie sales. Certainly the lawyers are munching on a fair chunk... but how much are the studios taking in as profit?
Truely a sad business model... especially when they're going after companies that are actually trying to negotiate legitimate mutually-beneficial deals.
In a horse race, you don't want the rider to come in before your horse. YouTube seemed like they were desperately hoping that their horse would get bought up by a big media conglomerate before the litigation rider came calling.
If they don't get acquired right quick, it will be a sad day for all of us YouTube lovers.
Yarr! There be no safe harbor fer ye pirates!
Um, okay. Then what's the problem — They'll pull their "promotions" and you'll have no problem with it, right?
Way back in the stone age when one business existed to profit largely via the work of another (see Napster, YouTube, etc. Though YouTube has far more legitimacy given the vast number of user contributed, non-pirated content), the copyright system is geared to demand compensation. Sort of like how the GPL, via the same copyright, is geared to demand its own sort of payment.
So as soon as someone posts copyrighted material on a website, the owner of the website owes money to the copyright owner. I guess it's under the impression that for a brief period of time the website owner made money off ads and the copyright owner should get that ad money. It seems a little like the patent trolls waiting until a company has a successful product. If people want to use a song they will have to wait until the copyright expires .. oh, wait...
I don't get the tens of millions of dollars part though. I've heard of $150 million to $400 million a year in potential revenue for YouTube. I understand it from the greedy record company standpoint, but I can't see it from the actual damages perspective. I guess every single person who saw a video that had a copyrighted song copied the song and E-mailed it to their friends in the Hong Kong Triads who later distributed pirate versions of it throughout Asia.
There is incentive for major content providers to completely destroy user content websites. After all, the content oligarchy would not want competition, even poorly made funny cat video competition.
No, First they went after sheet music: "If they wish to hear my music, come see my show" -very early John Philip Sousa quote, then they went after 78RPM "Buy the sheet music!", then Radio "Buy the 78s, Radio is music for Free!" then.....you get the picture. Technology never waits for the weasels in suits to figure it out, it just goes along its merry way inovating and waiting for humans, Yeah thats us, to figure out how to use it. Meanwhile the Curia argues over whether the church should ban printing presses since they will put all the clerics in abbeys out of work...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I was going to buy the latest Metallica album, then I realised that I could get all their film clips to be viewed in a blurry little window, with near-radio quality sound! Not to mention that a series of YouTube links doesn't take up valuable space on my CD rack! Chalk that up as one lost sale *cha-ching*
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
For the RIAA, this is about far more than money. This is about control. Consider the high-profile members who are so much more than music companies. Sony. Warner Brothers.
This is about control over entertainment. You Tube is a form of entertainment that they simply don't control. They don't produce it. They don't write it. And they don't make money off it. Theoretically, a band could make a hit song that never passed through any of their doors. A person could make a You Tube video so famous that he could achieve status as a director without ever setting foot in one of their offices.
You Tube has the ability to deliver content to every person with an internet connection. Statistically, it is inevitable that eventually a breakout new band or director will arrive through You Tube without any member of the big corporations having their claws in them. For the RIAA this is about the fact that they want to retain control over every note of music you hear. It assures them they will never be caught by surprise. It allows them to stay in the forfront of new trends. It lets them juggle bands, hits, and artists with impunity. It lets them create restrictive contracts that give the vast majority of money from CD sales to them, instead of the artist. It lets them artificially inflate prices and manipulate the market.
That's worth infinitely more than $1 million in proprietary content that they might be losing, if we take the highest number imaginable. That's why they care.
The problem that the studios are having is that they don't want a repeat of MTV.
... for virtually nothing. We learned a hard lesson."
But what's that, you say? "MTV was a boon to the music industry, wasn't it?"
And yes, indeed it was. MTV not only promoted popular hits, but it allowed lots of artists that couldn't get airtime on the radio to find an audience via MTV. But, as we all know by now, the industry can't see the forest for the trees.
Here's a quote from this article:
Record companies are keen to avoid repeating the mistake they believe they made when Viacom Inc.'s MTV was set up 25 years ago -- allowing their artists' music to be aired for free.
Morris in his remarks to investors on Tuesday said MTV "built a multibillion-dollar company on our (music)
Yes folks, this is Hollywood's way of saying thank you to MTV. That channel grew a new outlet for music, brought even MORE interest to said music, and helped the music industry make billions, and in spite of all this, the industry is pissed that they gave MTV the tools to do it for free.
And with that in mind, they fear YouTube will be the next MTV, and they want a piece of it. Like usual, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Again. It boggles my mind how utterly near sighted the industry is. It can't see the forest for the trees.