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.

Comments

obviously

[desdinova 216]

what needs to be done is stiffer penalties for DMCA takedown abuses.

Re:obviously

[theM_xl]

What needs to be done is the removal of all the content and accounts of the artists on that list from YouTube, because they obviously don't want to be on there... That will make them happy, right? RIGHT?

Awfully full of themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Less money but more creators?

[innocent_white_lamb]

There may be less money in this stuff for the creators, but it's my understanding that there are more creators and more content being created than ever before.

So why does the less money part matter to the public and all of the creators who aren't expecting to buy a yacht or two with their earnings? In the "old world", most of those folks wouldn't be able to buy a yacht anyway, and their creations wouldn't be seen or heard by more than six people -- now they can perform for the world.

It does need Reform

[OverlordQ]

But not what they want. YouTube's system is too easy to abuse by large players to shut down legitimate content.

Highest earning artist in america

[Anonymous Coward]

wants more money.

fuck you bitch

Funny, google thinks they make more every year

[Anonymous Coward]

"while songwriters' and artists' earnings continue to diminish."

[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.

Re:Funny, google thinks they make more every year

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you know nothing about the music industry

Taylor swift wrote the 2010 album Speak Now entirely on her own

We know Bono writes all the lyrics for U2 and the band has known each other since high school

Kings of leon are brothers, who write their own stuff.

Then there's McCartney's legendary songwriting contributions.

Yes even Trent Reznor writes his own music.

It's up to the underlings to negotiate a contract with a record company that benefits them in the royalty department, and these 180 artists are definitely NOT speaking up for the underlings.

This is exactly what is going on here.

Re:Funny, google thinks they make more every year

[barc0001]

> 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.

Re:I agree down with the DMCA

[Joe_Dragon]

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 .

Can't stop the signal...

[Fire_Wraith]

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.

We want more

[ADRA]

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.

Balance

[mwvdlee]

"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.

Greed.

[JustNiz]

...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.

Re:Greed.

[PopeRatzo]

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

This. I'm thinking more along the lines of 25 years, for the musicians and composers out on the "long tail" so they can make a few bucks too.

But there is absolutely no reason why the Frank Sinatra/Tommy Dorsey records that were recorded in the 1940s, and were written even earlier than that should not be in the Public Domain. That's how crazy it's gotten. There are IP protections for artistic works where everyone involved in their creation are long dead. Now how does that help culture?

Bullshit.

[CrashNBrn]

There has been far more music created that is NOT available ANYWHERE than ALL of the Music services combined.

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

How many songs have been recorded since the beginning of time?

James Piazza, Music Archivist, Audiophile
Paul Mawhinney's record collection consists of ~1 million LPs and ~1.5 million singles. The Library of Congress conducted a study of Mawhinney's collection and found that only 17% of the titles were available to the public on CD. A smaller fraction still were made commercially available in a digital file format like MP3 or FLAC.

And to take it one step further, the majority of the LPs in Paul's collection are American and UK recordings. That doesn't even begin to consider the musical output of the rest of planet earth.

The iTunes library (or that of Spotify for that matter) comprise a tiny, tiny fraction of the history of recorded music. 26 million digital songs is a starting point, but the world's catalog of recorded sound extends so much farther than that.

And once you've finished the lifetimes it would take to play through official recordings from the Library of Congress and other national archives, you could then move on to the libraries of the universities of the world which will open you up to demos and performances from some of the greatest composers in the world, none of which are available commercially.

Without some concrete figures from the LOC, national archives and from universities, I cannot provide even a ballpark of an exact total track duration, but I hope my answer gives you some perspective beyond the limitations of digital music.

Re:I agree down with the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

First reform needed:

[QuietLagoon]

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.

boo hoo?

[argStyopa]

"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.

This again

[GeekWithAKnife]

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.

Re:I agree down with the DMCA

[lgw]

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 /.).

My open letter to artists

[sootman]

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.

Where's the full list of those 180 artists?

[vadim_t]

I want to make sure I don't accidentally give them any money.

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