Comments on: YouTube users caught in Warner Music spat

This isn't a case of people pirating videos and then getting caught. Many of those seeing their videos pulled off YouTube once had Warner's permission.

[jahfreeka]

I've long been miffed about paying for cable channels that run 30 year old reruns and lots of commercials. Those shows made their money long ago but are now being milked through a medium that was largely undreamed of when the shows were made. For every artist that was behind the creation of the material, there must be ten or more suits over the years who have made a living off of that material.

But that's to be expected. The people who run the media corporations are simply trying to make as much money as they possibly can. Anyone who believes that business exists primarily to please the consumers is naive. The primary objective of every business is to make money. In a free market, this is done by making consumers happy. But as companies gain more power over the consumer, it is not as necessary.

We are slaves to cable and the Internet now. They had such great promise - especially for offering a venue for creative talents. To a significant extent, they've provided that within the context of a fairly robust economy. But now that we're heading into an economic downturn the big companies will use their power to extract more money from smaller companies and consumers.

As we've seen before, such as with the car companies, it can get to the point when consumer needs and desires no longer appear to be of much concern to the companies that serve them. The car companies were forced to shape up when foreign competition took hold. As for media, I don't see much possibility of that happening.

Therefore, I often dream this will happen: that one day all the disgruntled cable viewers will say "I've had enough" and, in conjunction with a very large group of other disgruntled cable viewers, make an announcement and then simply disconnect their services for at least a month to send a very strong message to the companies. Likewise, it would be nice if all those disgruntled music and sample lovers would band together and boycott the buying of music for at least half a year.

The leaders of these companies only care about one thing - their bottom line. That's good, because it often forces them to consider the needs and desires of the consumers. But sometimes when companies refuse to change with the times, or begin to feel their customers have nowhere else to go, the only thing that gets their attention is a rapidly deteriorating bottom line directly traceable to large-scale customer dissatisfaction.

My guess, however, is that consumers are way too addicted to these mediums to ever pull off such a move. Therefore, in the future I would expect content providers to continue clamping down on content in an attempt to squeeze as much money as possible from older material and from samples of that older material offered on sites like YouTube. And why wouldn't they? Everyone keeps giving them money no matter what they do.

[olivernomad]

your a big corp. , you want to sign a juicy deal with another corp. but weaker , it refuses. you're mad . so , you abduct one of their best-money maker , and you wait for the new deal to be closed . It's simple and it works...

[VonPip]

And they have been removing content they don't even own

http://vonpipmusicalexpress.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/looney-tubes-warner-brothers-vs-youtube/

[dequa]

I think that Corey's video should be put up, however, I don't think he should get payed by youtube for his videos. If youtubers weren't getting paid, the companies wouldn't get so upset. It probably outrages WMG to see a youtuber getting paid to use their stuff. Corey also created a "new version" of the song by putting in an acapella twist to the movie themes. Youtube should also have the user credit the music to the specified record label. There are also un-answered questions such as: "If WMG is suing Youtube over small music clips, should Youtube charge music giants, such as WMG, to "rent" a space on youtube to advertise their music, since they get 24 million views per video?"
I'm convinced that part of WMG's decrease in sales is not just due to the down economy, but also because of the angry youtubers broadcasting hate messages and boycotts about WMG and non-users are seeing them. If WMG made youtube take those down, it would be a violation of free speech. Music companies, not just WMG, should be afraid of Youtube and the power it holds, the millions of users it has, because if they anger the youtube crowd, like WMG started to do, there will be bigger boycotts and steeper declines in revenue; youtube is the public, the music industries consumers.

[2TuuTango]

I put together a short memorial video for my father and after his funeral, uploaded it onto YouTube so friends and relatives who couldn't the funeral could see the tribute. Warner Music Group slapped a copyright claim on my video.

I didn't make the video to profit from it...
I don't suspect people are downloading a video shown at a funeral and redistributing it...
If anything, someone who may have liked the music track, would purchase it on iTunes (and not copy a bad quality track) off of my YouTube video.

You can see this video by going to YouTube and typing in "Aviator Memorial Video" under my moniker TuuTuuTango on YouTube...

I think Warner Music Group is a greedy, filthy bunch of corporate bottom-dwellers.