YouTube users caught in Warner Music spat
Corey Vidal is no pirate, but he's been branded one as a result of the licensing spat between Warner Music Group and YouTube.
On YouTube, Vidal posted a humorous video tribute to John Williams, the man who scored the soundtracks for such blockbuster films as Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. In his clip he included some of Williams' music. By now, everybody knows that YouTube removes videos that violate copyright law. What's different about Vidal's work getting pulled is that when he posted it in October, he was permitted to use Warner's music.
Until last month, YouTube had an agreement with Warner Music--one of the four largest recording companies--that allowed video creators to include the label's content in their clips. Last month, talks to renew the deal broke down and that means YouTube and its users no longer have access to Warner's library. For this reason, the case is much different than YouTube's high-profile fight with Viacom or run-of-the-mill piracy that once flourished on the site.
In 2007, Viacom and YouTube failed to come to terms on a licensing deal and Viacom requested that YouTube pull its content. In that case, there was no prior agreement. Most of the people who posted Viacom's films or TV shows to YouTube did so without authorization. In this situation, YouTube fans used Warner Music's songs for two years with the label's blessing. Now, through no fault of their own, the videos that YouTube users made in good faith are being yanked.
"I don't understand who I'm harming," said Frank Stallone, a 41-year-old former DJ who is quick to point out that he is not the less-famous brother of the box office draw. Stallone's video was removed for using 45 seconds from "Forget Me Nots," a 1982 song from Patrice Rushen. "If anything, people are hearing the 45-second tease they haven't heard in a while and they'll want to go out and buy the song," he said.
Warner Music declined to comment, but YouTube had this to say: "While we work with music labels and publishers to keep music on the site, sometimes our negotiations don't pan out," said a spokesman for the company. "In those cases, we try to give people options when they receive a copyright claim. Instead of automatically blocking videos, we give uploaders the choice to dispute the claim (in the case of Fair Use, for example), use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music, or to replace the video with a new version with no sound."
If nothing else, the situation serves as a warning to those who think that because YouTube obtains rights to music or films one day, the agreements will last forever. That's just not how these deals work.
One of Corey Vidal's fans has reposted the video that was removed at Warner Music's request.
(Credit: YouTube)That hasn't stopped some YouTube's fans from posting angry videos denouncing the situation at YouTube. Most of the protest videos take aim at Warner and the other three top recording companies. While all four of the big labels are in discussions about renewing licensing agreements, Warner is the only one scuffling publicly with YouTube.
In fact, sources close to the situation say YouTube is close to finalizing a new agreement with one of Warner's chief rivals: Sony Music.
The situation illustrates how Web services and entertainment companies are learning hard lessons as they cover uncharted ground. It's doubtful that Warner Music or YouTube intended to alienate their customers. Presumably Warner Music wants more concessions from YouTube and the Web's No. 1 video site wants to pay less. What they likely didn't consider when they penned their initial contract was what would happen to users if they failed to agree on a new deal.
Vidal, a 22-year-old from the Canadian province of Ontario, is more than happy to help them understand.
Vidal makes his living by creating YouTube videos. He's a member of the company's YouTube Partners program. This allows him to sell some of the advertisements that accompany his clips and pocket the money. He says that his videos see about 3.4 million to 4 million views per month and YouTube is his only source of income. As for how much he makes, Vidal only will say it's enough for him to live comfortably.
Vidal hit the jackpot with his tribute to Williams. YouTube featured it on the site's front door. He says for a time the clip was generating a million views each day and was nominated for a "People's Choice Award" at CBS, parent company of CNET News.
But on January 18, Vidal's cash cow went down.
YouTube sent him a notice that said Warner Music had claimed his video had infringed on the label's copyright. Vidal doesn't dispute that the label owns the rights to the music he used. "I'll share the money I made with them but I just want my video back up."
But he has so many questions about whether his video truly violates copyright law and if so, what part of the video infringes? That's the other problem raised by the quarrel between Warner Music and YouTube. When users are dragged into it, there's few places to get answers. Vidal said he called Warner Music and talked to about half a dozen people in the eight days since his video was removed. He has yet to hear back why exactly the video was pulled down or whether he and the record company can strike a separate deal.
To its credit, Viacom set up a support hot line to help answer questions and address disputes when it began pulling content from YouTube.
That's what Stallone, the former DJ, says he needs. He says he doesn't think using 45 seconds of a song is breaking any law, but he doesn't have anywhere to go to get legal help. Also, he said he was discouraged by some of the language in the takedown notice YouTube sent him. Specifically, this passage: "There are very few valid reasons for disputing a claim," YouTube wrote in the notice. "Submitting an invalid dispute can result in penalties against your account."
Stallone wants to know how he's supposed to determine what an invalid dispute is?
YouTube users should not assume copyright holders are always correct when they accuse someone of a violation, according to Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group that advocates for the rights of Internet users. In the Viacom case, for instance, the company acknowledged erring in a small number of cases.
In another case, a Pennsylvania woman is suing rocker Prince and Universal Music for accusing her of copyright violation for including a brief snippet of Prince's music in a video of her baby. Universal and Prince dropped their copyright claims against the woman and her video has returned to YouTube.
I'm no lawyer, but Stallone's case sounds very similar.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
I don't agree with people having their videos pulled (especially the guy doing the tribute), but you're dealing with the law, not what is morally right.
DJ Frank Stallone
~ Stephanie Lenz (the Pennsylvania mother suing UMG)
www.vimeo.com
More video, less hassle
Like it or not, if he used Williams' music and then Warner Bros entered a dispute, he is part of that dispute and he took the risk knowingly. If he didn't understand that, he may be a great YouTuber but a poor businessman.
Time to grow up and understand the realities of content production.
Shut down YouTube??? Are you kidding? Nobody has dinged the company for lacking a business model more than me, but there's no way I can conceive of a world now without this site. YouTube has become such a huge part of how people communicate and obtain information. When someone wants to share a song with a friend (legally) they now send a YouTube link of the music video. Politicians share their views with the masses via YouTube. The site has help expose wrongdoing by policeman and government officials. I have to believe that even if Google was forced to charge a small subscription fee, this site will live on.
FYI, Most elementry kids could come up with a better solution then your answer.
Quite simply, neither YouTube's nor Warner's business models are flawed. Renegotiation of content supply contracts are a standard business practice. This is precisely the point where major recording artists are able to wrangle a better deal from their label. The model that is flawed is the 'mashup' business model. It does not account for supply stoppage as is the case for any other business. The victim of this piece is not a victim. He was profitting by the supply arrangements made outside of his control.
As others are pointing out elsewhere on the web, you can't stand a heavy object on a cloud for very long. Cloud computing has this flaw in its very design if executed without contractually obligated Terms of Service that include this perfectly forseeable outcome.
As Obama said with that quote from Corinthians, grow up.
Tip of the hat to you. You make an excellent point.
What's weird is this: YouTube reinstated her channel, but only her original, selfproduced material is available. The dozens of videos of her singing to Karaoke tracks are gone. I am certain that WB does not own the copyright to those tracks, so WHAT is going on here? (I much prefer those informal cover performances, because her funloving, silly personality comes through.)
I've read on a YB fansite that Prince asked YouTube to take down a video posted by a fan of a concert performance in which he was covering a song by another artist. He was afraid he would be sued for copyright infringement. This is INSANE!!!
One the one hand, we wouldn't necessarily have much of a music industry without the record labels as not all artists have the means of self producing albums. But at the same time, consumers have been quite arguably overcharged for music for years, don't appreciate having their self-produced videos removed or being sued. and generally have very little sympathy for either the RIAA or the labels. I know plenty of people who can fully afford to buy CDs who won't. They'll happily go to concerts and buy things there because more of that money supports the artists and bands directly than revenue from CD sales. It's a a form of protest in a way.
Some if this stems from not fully understanding the law, such as how many copyrights are attached to a piece of music and that even when you buy a CD, you don't ever acquire full ownership of the material on it. But at the same time, how smart is it to go after the very demographic that you want to purchase your product and then whine when you lose customers? Plenty of albums have only a handful of good songs on them, while others are loaded with hits. When it becomes hard for consumers to easily know the difference, and we can't sample first either by downloading or by listening the songs on sites like youtube, in conjuction with all the other crap the music industry has pulled over the last 9+ years, where's the incentive to support them at all?
http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/did-youtube-users-actually-have.html
The problem is an industry model where unit sales have been the accounting figure for dividing up the royalties. The web is a copying machine. That is well understood. And in fact, point of sale systems such as iTunes are working quite nicely. What happens to the copy after that is a problem but there is an inevitable downturn in the royalties to be collected there. A file sharing site is a different problem. On the web, the URI is the means of establishing the identity of the source of an authenticatible copy. Taking a copy and redistributing it without a license from a different URI is of course a copyright violation. Thus, shuttering sites such as Napster is the right thing to do.
What is going on with the licensing agreements is similar to mechanicals (what ASCAP and BMI collect from the restaurants and other venues that play recorded music) but isn't quite because the author put the music into a different form in a mashup. One assumes the Warner Bros/You Tube licensing covered that but if not, it should. Once again, the user of YouTube licensee arrangements is profiting within that arrangement and can either live with the terms or negotiate separately. The whole idea of licensing to YouTube is to enable others not to negotiate separately.
However, that is not the issue here. Mashups are. Both technically and legally, mashups live in the gray area of 'fair use' when done without licensing and this is one area of copyright that is badly in need of revision, and scrupulous oversight during that process given the habit of the music industry to take advantage of any opening to increase revenue.
But if someone is profiting by a mashup within a license, then they are subject to the terms of the license including sharing in stoppages. This is something that any sharp business builder will want to be aware of when building their application over third party services.
This is not about copyright. It is about licensing. Steps that will improve the situation:
1. Review the terms and conditions of copyright law to ensure they are realistic within the context of the means of distribution.
2. Revisit the copyright law for rights of collection over a term of time. Sonny Bono and Disney are nuts. These terms should be more limited instead of extended.
3. Revisit the fair use provisions and come up with an equitable formula that enables mashups and doesn't deprive the commons, but quit assuming the commons is anything you can copy digitally. That's theft pure and simple.
4. Understand the music industry is not simply artists and that not all artists tour or should tour. Many a good songwriter is a poor musician and many a fast hand Luke is a poor songwriter. The industry is an ecosystem of different talents and they all need to be paid. The current meme of 'tour for money; give away for promotion' will turn the music ecosystem into the National Football League just as M-TV turned it into a fashion industry.
5. The industry knows that it needs to concentrate on different sources of monetization. It also needs to develop new means for artists to collaborate and negotiate such that a mashup artist has a much easier means to Do The Right Thing via registration and permissions.
The fly isn't copyright; for the current industry, the fly is *auditability*. In a transparent system, the means of inflating the unit sales fades away and that takes some serious money out of some serious pockets. For now, the people most able to influence the industry are its top earners but they are also the ones who benefit by it and it will take a generation for new deals to be made.
But they must be made. Artists who understand how this works will have unprecedented control over their work and there are those who don't want that or need it. But it is happening and it can't be stopped legally or technically.
When I say, time to grow up, I mean everybody. A culture doesn't change because technology changes in the first order. Business changes when technology changes and the culture changes because the business changes. It is a second order effect. It takes time to work but it is relentless.
You definitely have a lot of good things to point out but I think the generation growing up right now holds an extreme amount power and won't stop at anything less than virtually free (people do give money to artists when they offer their work for free). Itunes is a good model but Steve Jobs is the only guy in the world that could bring that kind of big time collaboration together and there's only one of him. It's just too easy to get music and this isn't just a minor shift its a radical reorganization due to world becoming "flatter". I got a chance to catch up with Corey (his video was restored today under fair use) and I wrote an article on it (aboutviral.com) reshaping the way we look at the three variables; technology,business and culture. Take a look, would love your opinion. http://aboutviral.com/video/star-wars-an-a-capella-vs-warner-music-group-the-saga-continues/
i hope the masses can tell Google to go f themselves and discover Dailymotion or Myspace's video site
Patents should be treated the same way, for the same reasons.
- by Wak_Em January 28, 2009 7:20 AM PST
- Copyright Law: 93 pages and 42,000 words, that is just Chapter One. No wonder the consumer is at a disadvantage. Who thinks this stuff up?
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