Universal Sends DMCA Takedown On 1980 Report

An anonymous reader writes "For many, many years, every time some new technology has come along, the music industry has insisted that it's going to "kill" the industry. The player piano was supposed to kill live music. So was the radio. And, of course, every time this happens the press is willing to take the industry's word at face value. In 1980, the news program 20/20 posted a report all about how "home taping is killing music," with various recording industry execs insisting the industry was on its last legs unless something was done. Someone posted that 20/20 episode to YouTube a few years back, where it sat in obscurity until people noticed it a couple weeks ago. And suddenly, Universal Music issued a takedown notice for the show. Universal Music does not own 20/20, and there were only brief clips of music in the show. It appears the only reason for Universal to issue the takedown is that it doesn't want you seeing how badly it overreacted in the past."

Comments

People send takedown notices almost randomly

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed a bunch of home-filmed performances of amateur pianists playing various Mozart stuff had been taken down, because some random publishing company claimed ownership, just to plaster them with ads -- and the company gets the ad revenue.

Anybody with a brain would realize that the work is hundreds of years old, and the performance in question is owned by the poster (the guy sitting at the piano), but apparently forcing your ads onto other peoples youtube vids in this manner has become a trendy revenue stream for cocksuckers. Almost as trendy as the sucking of the cock in the first place.

Re:People send takedown notices almost randomly

[HermMunster]

Those Mozart pieces of music are in the public domain. If someone performs a musical piece from that era that works then automatically becomes copyrighted--only that performance and not the actual work that it was based on.

There are penalties for false DMCA claims but no one goes after the abusers. This should have been established up front and tremendous penalties should be levied against those making false claims. The impact of a false claim has a much larger impact than some individual violating copyrighted materials, IMHO.

The purpose of the monopoly ownership of these types of works of art was to encourage creativity. They were granted monopoly over these works for a limited time knowing it would be put into the public domain afterwards.

Back then the content creator's claim were that if they didn't have monopoly rights and all things went to the public domain there'd be no reason to create. So, the government, in an effort to ensure everything went to the public domain to help ensure culture survived, granted them this right, not the other way round.

More damning than that

[rudy_wayne]

I recently came across an old copy of Modern Recording magazine from early 1981. There is an article about how cassette decks are evil and home taping is hurting the record industry and the RIAA commissioned a study that that they hoped to take to congress as proof that new laws were need.

But a funny thing happened. The report was shelved when it revealed that people who owned home recording equipment spent 75% more money buying music than people who didn't own an evil cassette deck.