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The Music Industry Is Begging the US Government To Change Its Copyright Laws (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on The Verge: Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, deadmau5, and dozens of other musicians are asking the U.S. government to revamp the Digital Millennium Copyright act (DMCA), the piece of law that governs access to copyrighted work on the internet. Musicians, managers, and "creators" from across the industry co-signed petitions sent to the U.S. Copyright Office arguing that tech companies -- think YouTube and Tumblr, sites with vast reserves of content that infringes on some copyright -- have "grown and generated huge profits" on the backs of material that's illegally hosted. "The growth and support of technology companies should not be at the expense of artists and songwriters," reads the letter signed by Aguilera, Perry, and their peers. "The tech companies who benefit from the DMCA today were not the intended protectorate when it was signed into law two decades ago."
Some details to keep in mind as this unfolds.
Yes, a hundred or two "creators" such as those in the list above have asked the copyright office to expand the DMCA to remove more of our rights and to take more from the public than they already are.
But *hundreds of thousands* of "creators" that produce content on youtube using nothing but content they create themselves and is copyright to themselves have asked the copyright office to fix the DMCA by providing evidence how it is illegally used to harass, steal money from people with no audio what so ever in their videos, restrict opinions of those using nothing but their voice, and otherwise game the system to cause harm to them.
Hundreds of thousands of people vs a couple hundred.
It will be very telling to see how this latest DMCA petition plays out.
Some videos on the subject for those interested:
Doug Walker
MundaneMatt regarding Jim Sterlink vs Digital Homicide
The game studio started an attack against Jim for his unflattering* review, threatened a DMCA take down as revenge, and proceeded to do so.
Jim is now one of only 12 youtube channels "protected" so any copyright claim is handled by a human being.
Brad Jones video that is long and you don't need to watch more than a few seconds of - that got a copyright strike that stole his ad revenue.
Note that it is three people sitting in a car in a parking lot talking. Nothing else.
And these are only the big subscriber base channels that can complain and be heard.
Uncountable small channels are taken offline with zero recourse for not using copyright material they didn't make themselves all the time, and nearly no one hears about it due to their small size.
These couple hundred artists claim "The growth and support of technology companies should not be at the expense of artists and songwriters" ?
How about the artists and songwritters, harassers, trolls, and people who don't like what you say shouldn't be protected at the expense of the rights of everyone else.
the pirated content doesn't last 5 minutes unless it's so heavily modified as to be junk. And the most popular videos on youtube are all legit ones. Still, I suppose it doesn't hurt for them to ask for more and more. If you keep giving it to them why would they stop taking it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There are certainly huge problems with copyright infringement on the internet. Though not the way this shameless plug is suggesting.
First, some background on music: The artists are usually paid in the single percentages of the revenue. The label gets a huge cut, some goes to retail and some covers expenses. Artists get around 3-5% of a sale from a CD at a store. I think it is less (half?) for downloads. The overwhelming majority of people that produce music can't live off record sales. If people earn money, then they do it through playing live, commissioned work or sales of merchandise. Which is why most artists happily give a way their recorded music in the hopes that people will listen to it. Those 0,000001% of artists you see that earn a good living (or are even rich) through sales of their music are a tiny exception. Why should laws be crafted for them anyways? Because it isn't even about them. The whole thing is about the record industry itself, of which those 'artists' are just the front. Behind each sold recording are countless technicians, pencil pushers, lawyers, office workers, managers and marketing people that earn money. And those companies are the ones behind the lobbying. They set up this campaign and probably told their 'talent' to simply sign on the dotted line.
So this letter isn't from or about artists. This is about a couple large companies that are fighting for a greater control of their product. It's not even that they lose so much money on Youtube. Someone who plays a song on Youtube is actually more likely to buy something from the record company than someone who doesn't. It is mostly marketing. And the companies make use of that. But they would like even greater control and the option of sending out more bills to people.
But we have a huge problem with copyright on the internet. Just not with music or movies. Small time artists get ripped of all the time. Especially photographers. How much stuff is shared on Facebook and Imgur every day? A lot of that is done by artists, whose copyright is trampled on very frequently. But those photographers are just small people and not companies. Hence no one gives a damn about them and their rights. In fact companies like Google, Facebook and other new media companies largely built their empires on these infringements. The latest blatant example would be Facebook video, where some scumbags rip videos off Youtube and upload them to Facebook to make a little money. The original Youtube uploader gets nothing. Even if they produce content and live off that.
In Germany we have a startup (heftig.co), which is producing clickbait in the purest form. They are a heralded startup that have grown exponentially over the last year. They simply take content from places like Reddit, make up a clickbait title and deliver it via Facebook.
There are tons of examples like that.
The whole copyright debate is taking place in the entirely wrong field, because it is about large companies and their fight for more control of distribution channels (and some fights over money, they would surely like Google to cough up more) and money, instead of creators.
I own and operate a movie theatre and I pay a yearly per-seat fee for the music that's in the movies, believe it or not.
I questioned this once since I have difficulty believing that the film companies don't own the rights to the music that's in their own product (and most of the film companies are music publishing houses), and this is what I was told:
QUOTE:
The movie company does not own the public performance rights. Generally speaking they will have negotiated the âoereproductionâ right â" or the separate right to reproduce the musical work in their films. Once a film is shown in theatres, this engages the âoeperformingâ right, or the right to perform the work in public.
END OF QUOTE
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
"I have absolutely no sympathy for people profiting off of other's work."
If we were to take that statement seriously, we could clean up the copyright mess by making IP a personal right of the creator of work, and for no longer than that person's lifetime. This right would be inalienable, like free speech - no more 'rights holders' who created nothing holding other people's copyrights for generations. Any studio or other business that wanted to profit from an artist's work would have to maintain a contract with that person.