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Artist Not Allowed To Stream His Own Music
the_arrow writes "Scottish artist Edwyn Collins wanted to stream one of his own songs on MySpace, but it seems that copyright misunderstandings make him unable to do so. According to the article, 'Management for the former Orange Juice frontman have been unable to convince the website that they own the rights to A Girl Like You, despite the fact that they, er, do.' Collins said, 'I found a nice lawyer guy at Warners, very apologetic, promised to get it sorted, but all these months later it isn't.' His wife added, 'MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright.'"
If people had been able to stream this over the internet, he could easily have lined up dozens of concerts paying tens of thousands of dollars each, all because Warner Brothers fradulently claimed copyright to his work.
Throw in some pointless punitive damages, and that ought to net him a good 6 million dollars, right? I mean if it works for the RIAA...
That said, if MySpace decides to remove content every time a party comes and claim copyright to the content, it's a MySpace problem, nothing more.
We all know the Majors care about their artists, not THE artists, and only because it makes money. They don't give a rat's *ss about art, music or any concept like this. They care about their wallet, art and artists be damned.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Well, one would think the DMCA gave the site owner the right to get proof thet the plaintiff is the actual copyright holder before doing anything. I don't think the DMCA is the problem here.
That said, you get a point in that any other website would do the same. And it's a problem between these sites and the contents publishers.
I remember a story in europe where a magazine did get free blog hosting from ~40 providers. They published a novel by Victor Hugo - ie: In the public domain for centuries. There was a note at the bottom of the page stating this.
Then they contacted formally all of the hosting companies demanding that the BLOG be shut off because it infringed their copyright. The results: 1 hosting company did its job, read the copyright notice, double checked the fact and sent an email back saying it was bullsh*t. 7 did ask for more proof, the rest did just shut the blog down, no questions asked.
Customer service is a thing of the past....
Write boring code, not shiny code!
And the corollary is:
"Sufficiently advanced forms of incompetence are indistinguishable from malice."