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180 Artists, Labels Including Taylor Swift Take On YouTube, Join Copyright Plea (cnn.com)

Posted by msmash on from the chatter-in-the-hall dept.

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.

8 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. obviously by desdinova+216 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. Awfully full of themselves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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?

  3. Funny, google thinks they make more every year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "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.

  4. Can't stop the signal... by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Greed. by JustNiz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

  6. Bullshit. by CrashNBrn · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  7. Re:I agree down with the DMCA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion