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180 Artists, Labels Including Taylor Swift Take On YouTube, Join Copyright Plea (cnn.com)
Chloe Melas, reporting for CNN: Taylor Swift, U2, Kings of Leon and Paul McCartney are some of the 180 recording artists and labels petitioning Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.) In an open letter to Congress, they write that the current online copyright law has allowed YouTube and other sites to "generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters' and artists' earnings continue to diminish." The letter, which is being published in The Hill and Politico this week, goes on to call for "sensible reform." "We ask you to enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment. It's only then that consumers will truly benefit." YouTube's parent company, Google, declined to comment Tuesday, but in a statement in April said, "Any claim that the DMCA safe harbors are responsible for a 'value gap' for music on YouTube is simply false." This comes days after musician Trent Reznor said YouTube is built on the back of stolen content.
what needs to be done is stiffer penalties for DMCA takedown abuses.
"It's only then that consumers will truly benefit"
I'd say the consumers are benefiting just fine as it is. The content is available, it's easy to access, and costs next to nothing. If you add DRM, more advertisements, easier exploitation of laws like the DMCA, you're just going to drive people to alternative sites or back to torrenting. It's that simple.
Is it really about the money for rockstars like U2 and Paul McCartney? Or is it about control? If copyright law hadn't become the monstrosity it is today most of these musician's works would have been in the public domain. Can't have that now can we?
wants more money.
fuck you bitch
[citation needed]
Taylor Swift annual income $80 million
U2 annual income $78 million
Kings of Leon annual income $58 million
POOR FUCKING THEM. BOOHOO. I feel so sorry for them. Honestly I do.
no they want DMCA 2 where you can't even copy a song from a cd that you own to idevice with out reburying the full CD for the idevice .
Unfortunately for them, they're trying to put the genie back in the bottle. It won't work. The advance of technology is what enabled me to carry around access to virtually every song there is, not something caused by the absence of artificial legal barriers. Barriers which, I might add, will not enable the recording artists and companies to perpetuate the old model indefinitely - it'll just move it back to the illegal realm, at best, at which point they'll get no money.
Also, increasingly, places like YouTube, along with streaming services, are where people discover new music. I don't listen to radio anymore, so the majority of the new bands I discover come from the suggestions that pop up, or the random songs I let be slotted in based on what I've been listening to. This may not be great for someone like Taylor Swift or Bono who are already famous, but for smaller bands, it's kind of a big deal.
Youtube has two uses: Legitimate and Illegitimate.
If Youtube is violating DMCA, shame on them and file a suit.
If they're not violating the DMCA, you want congress to give you a law forcing YouTube to pay more for your legally provided content because you weren't able to do do using contract negotiations? YouTube is very popular, but is NOT a monopoly. This article and the artists are ridiculous.
Bye!
"We ask you to enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment. It's only then that consumers will truly benefit."
Yes, only when the interests of consumers are completely ignored, will consumers truly benefit.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
...because Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney are obviously not already rewarded well enough for just having written a few songs.
I'm happy with artists/publishers being in total control over new songs, just as long as they also agree to laws that make the music revert to public domain after a reasonable time, say 10 years, not the 100 or so years that a few years ago Sony managed to convince the courts was necessary, which is patently ridiculous.
Well, then the artists should get the shit people are listening to up on youtube legitimately. Vevo does not count.
The problem with that though is what happens to music that shouldn't have been up there in the first place is based on what the record companies say. And they own the rights to this music, not the artists. If the record company says they want it removed, it'll be removed, if they say they want ads and have it be monetized, then that's what'll happen.
If these guys have a problem with the music not being removed, they should file their complaints with their labels. Now, this is not a defense of the auto-take down system Youtube has, as it often incorrectly flags things that shouldn't be and leaves the original author with little recourse, but that's a different discussion.
Return copyright back to its original concept of a short time period, and take it away from being seen as a long-term revenue generator by greedy media companies.
"Taylor Swift, U2, Kings of Leon and Paul McCartney are some of the 180 recording artists and labels petitioning Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.) In an open letter to Congress, they write that the current online copyright law has allowed YouTube and other sites to "generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters' and artists' earnings continue to diminish."
Net worth:
Taylor Swift: $200 million
Bono: $600 million
Paul McCartney: $660 million
If they're really just doing it for the poor little indie artists that are being "taken advantage of" then perhaps they could between them drop a cool $1 billion toward those artists - and with their piles of cash they'd never even notice.
-Styopa
but its hard to imagine 180 recording artists snored through 40 years of being bankrupted by the RIAA, MPAA, and Ticketmaster only to suddenly give a shit when www.youtube.com started returning their names in search queries. These arent artists, theyre brands owned by their respective copyright holders. And those copyright holders --the RIAA and MPAA -- have decided to use their purchased products to shill congress. its really no different than, say, an automaker driving to Washington in a hybrid SUV that will never see production, only to beg for a bailout
Good people go to bed earlier.
It was the radio once...essentially the end of music as we knew it.
Cassette players and recorders were the doom of all revenue for recording artists and labels.
A bit later lycos MP3 search killed all the artists and dried up all the cash flow streams.
Napster came. The great satan of music. The record labels lost more money and more artists went hungry...Napster stole food from their baby's mouths it was awful.
Then was Kazaa, Bearshare, Morpheus and a slew of gnutella apps - these truly put the nail in the coffin of countless poor studios.
Everyone moved on to torrents and then there was The Pirate Bay and ISO hunt. After these came about there were no more artists in the world because there was no money it.
So really I don;t even know who is complaining about youtube, a sharing platform. After all, all the artists moved on to working for a living (read performing) and there were no more record labels or studios left as they all ran out of business because of evil file sharers.
Let them sue YouYube. Let them sue the next platform that HELPS THEM spread their work and by popularity HELPS THEM secure more lucrative deals that end up HELPING THEM become richer.
Ignorant twats.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I'll agree to stronger copyright enforcement if you'll agree that the duration of copyright protection should go back to 14 years. Until then, STFU. If you're going to steal from the public domain, I'm going to steal from you.
Side note: I wonder if this could be defeated by representing it as a world's-smallest-violin-worthy plea from the 1%? Seriously, look at who signed this, and look at their net worths.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I want to make sure I don't accidentally give them any money.
is to be paid anytime when you even so much as thinking of lyrics or melodies in your head. the only thing that's stopping them right now is their inability to read minds.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
As has been obvious for over a decade, consumers overwhelmingly want to be able to use recent technological breakthroughs so then can listening music easily and conveniently. Most are willing to pay for this and most probably want to support the artist.
The music labels have been fighting this tooth and nail pretty ever since it was possible to download music via the internet. This is slightly bizarre since part of the service they are supposed to be providing to society is to streamline the distribution of music (hence the RIAA curve, etc). Instead, perhaps due to somewhat sociopathic CEOs, they try to cripple distribution of music in order to create false scarcity which harms society and harms the artists and only benefits the labels.
The only reason a 3rd-party can make money from this is because the labels are totally failing at the task of distributing music in the best and easiest way possible. The answer is not to close off 3rd parties who are doing the job the record labels are supposed to be doing. The answer is for the record labels to do their damned job and distribute music in a reasonable way given current technologies. The tighter the labels grip, the more revenue will slip through their fingers. There is no way consumers are going back to buying a vinyl album and then a cassette and then a cd of the same music.
The actual cost for distributing music has plummeted to near zero. If the record labels are not going to take advantage of this and distribute music in a reasonable way then good for Google and for anyone else who steps up and removes the artificial scarcity and artificial inefficiency create by the music labels.
While we're at it let's shorten the length of time copyright stays in effect. That way these rock stars won't be lumping their recent music together with music that was made back in the 30s and 40s by people who have long been dead.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, I'm unable to find much information on what these artists actually want other than they're not happy with the fact that the DMCA protects hosts from the actions of their users. This implies that they actually just want to make the DMCA far, far worse.
The problem they're talking about where artists get fucked by labels is a problem with copyright and is trivially solved by making copyright non-transferable from the author. That way the music industry can still offer them contracts and help them produce and sell, but can never take ownership of their creation and fuck off and make all the profits on it without paying the artist a penny.
As such you'll have to colour me sceptical that the artists aren't just doing this on behalf of the music industry, because what they're suggesting will destroy the technology industry to the benefit of not the artists, but the very companies they're complaining about.
As such I will treat this list of artists as the list of artists I will not pay a penny to as what they're suggesting is anti-progress, anti-consumer, anti-technology, and pro-big music industry.