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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.
No. That's not what they want. They don't want youtube to make money off ads/advertising on music that is copyrighted and should've been taken down.
YouTube already gives a share of ad revenue to the artists. The ContentID systems aren't perfect, but if someone uploads a video of, say, a cute girl dancing to popular tune, the plumbing is already there to auto-detect the tune, associate it with the artists, and share ad revenue. Taking down the video would be lose-lose.
Google could probably make it easier for artists to engage with this system, could possibly make ContentID better, and could certainly give the artist a bigger share. However, I'm baffled why anyone would think it appropriate to take down the video, except in the narrow case where the YouTube video is nothing but the album cover (adds no value) and the artists has an official video on YouTube. But any video that adds any value at all, even lyrics on screen, can only bring in more views, and thus more ad revenue, for the artist.
This all sounds like either a negotiating ploy for a bigger cut from Google, or a hopeless attempt to force listeners to listen via some other system they can charge more for (good luck with the latter, as YouTube ad the streaming companies are just the modern version of radio, and the voters actually care about this, unlike most stuff on /.).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The real issue is they're looking at an era when high quality recordings first became available and people switched to that new media en masse, causing an artificial blip as people not only bought new music, but replaced their favorite current recordings as they came available. It also came at a time that singles (45s) were phased out, forcing people that wanted their latest band to purchase full albums. That time is past, and we should be looking at numbers that take into account those artificial boosting effects. So total revenue is a bad number. Don't forget to factor in that CDs cost a fortune to manufacture in the 80s and early 90s, and are less than $1 today.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
> Songwriters and artists are behind the scenes and vastly underpaid.
I see you have ZERO understanding of how the music industry works. Behind the scenes mainly get paid a going rate as work for hire, whether the album sells 1 or 1 million copies. SONGWRITERS are the ones who make the most royalties on sales. That's why the richest artists tend to be the ones who also have songwriting credits on some or all of their songs. PERFORMERS are usually last at the royalty trough.