YouTube Muting, Removing Videos Involving Warner Music

notseamus writes "In the past few days, YouTube has started muting videos uploaded by users that use 'unauthorized copyrighted music' in response to Warner Music's threat over royalties, and so far appears to target only Warner Music related videos. Ars Technica also reports that after three DMCA notices YouTube will remove a user account, even when it appears to be fair use. Kevin Lee has had video essays — which he believes are fair use — removed from YouTube, and his account disabled before he could file a counter notice."

Comments

Re:Whatever happened to

[gilgongo]

It's evil to comply by the DMCA? It's evil to follow the law? Get a clue.

You don't seem to grasp the seriousness of what's going on. The DMCA needs to be opposed, broken and made ineffective in order to defend something far more important than the right to make a buck. If they close YouTube down, so be it. YouTube, Slashdot, or any other site on its own is NOT more important than culture itself.

To quote Lawrence Lessig:

"Within every culture, there is a public domain - a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.

There is no doubt that piracy is an important problem - it's just not the only problem. Our leaders have lost this sense of balance. They have been seduced by a vision of culture that measures beauty in ticket sales. They are apparently untroubled by a world where cultivating the past requires the permission of the past. They can't imagine that freedom could produce anything worthwhile at all.

The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognize it is gone."