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Music Rights Holders Sue YouTube Again
bennyboy64 writes "NewTeeVee reports on a criminal investigation that has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany over allegations of copyright infringement. The case started after a complaint was filed by German music rights holders. Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."
They have no business in knowing who viewed the videos. After all, since YouTube explicitly disables videos which are infringing, I have to assume that if I see a video on YouTube, I have the right to do so. If a video happens to be uploaded illegally, that's not my fault as viewer, and I cannot be made responsible for the fact that I was shown that video.
Just for the record: I don't have any idea whether I've seen any of those videos. Since those are just 500 videos, and YouTube has so many more, I suspect I haven't. But even if I have, I have done nothing wrong, and therefore they clearly have no moral right (and I really hope also no legal right, although in these times you never can be sure) to demand to find out whether I've seen any of those videos.
I hope I'll not have to start using anonymous proxies to protect myself when just doing normal, legal activities!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Because Copyright is Sacred.
Copyright now essentially resembles a religious institution. Modern proscriptions on the copying and redistribution of data in the digital age resemble, if anything, proscriptions on the distribution of translations of the Bible in the 1500's at the advent of the printing press. In both cases the technology exists that enables people to transmit information freely and cheaply. In both cases, this new ability threatens the monopoly of an established order. In both cases, that order goes to extreme and unreasonable lengths to defend a status quo that has become farcical.
So, like the bishops of old, the copyright industry is forced to extreme measures. Attack anyone, at any time, anywhere who seeks to defend or aid or in any way comfort those who break their canon, and do so with the utmost ferocity possible. Our modern legal system enables them to be as vindictive as they like with all the power of the courts behind the. Youtube is and always will be a prime target of their ire, being as it is, the bazaar of modern user content generation and distribution. If they can, they will send the state to smash and tear down the stalls seen here, and send all the meddlers packing. But, they are forgetting the forces that created the bazaar in the first place.
As the supply becomes infinite, what happens to the price? As people have the ability to copy and now distribute data, text, music and movies at virtually zero cost, why is this data worth anything anymore? Trying to argue about creators rights or fairness or legalities is to sidestep the main issue; the data is fundamentally worth zero. Attempt as you like to construct sophistic or legal or moral arguments around this. But you have sidesteped this main issue, and its fundamental and central issue is aptly demonstrated by the stampede of ordinary people from all walks of life crashing through it and filesharing as they see fit. The public has made its decision.
You can protest. You can condemn. You can litigate. But ultimately your position is like that of church leaders who protested against the popular printed Bible. People aren't listening. No argument or law or sermon is going to dissuade them from breaking laws they think are silly or unjust. The concept of copyright is too abstract a thing for most people to see breaking it as criminal. The cost of digital distribution too low for most to see its content as being worth anything. The internet has fundamentally changed the nature of content and copyright in a way just as profound as the printing press and the general public has very quickly woken up to this fact. It's time for our legal system to do the same.
May the Maths Be with you!
This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6558540/walmart_wants_10_cds
When the label _profits_ are greater than the artist royalties, and when online retailers want to charge me almost the same as if they were selling me a CD, the moral urge to buy music is weak.
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