MattHaupt

I just have to vent for a minute.

YouTube, if you haven’t heard, has started making major steps to eliminate copywritten music on user generated videos. Basically what they are trying to do is notify users if their videos contain copywritten material, and give them a chance (using a software they can provide) to remove the material, such as a song, out of the video.

Although I think it is great that they are giving users the ability to keep their videos up instead of just deleting them off the site,  can we think about how honestly stupid this really is? And how pointless?

Now, I’m not mad at YouTube at all. Well maybe a little. I understand they have to follow the US Copyright laws that apparently say using copywritten material in user generated videos is not a form of “fair use”.

I AM mad at, who else, the music industry as a whole.

Honestly do you not get how having your music on YouTube will most likely benefit you?

Think about it this way.

You are watching your favorite TV show that plays a lot of music in the background, lets say something like Scrubs. How many times have you ever thought, “Wow, that’s a good song, I really want to know who sings that!”

And then they Google it, find the artist and the song, and they download it through iTunes (or illegally, but that’s a different story).

The music industry should think of these user generated videos as FREE PUBLICITY. It’s basically just another way to get the music you would like people to buy out there.

MTV doesn’t show videos anymore, really, and neither does VH1, so how are people really suppose to know if they like a certain artist or CD without hearing it first?

And let’s talk about this whole “fair use” mumbo jumbo. Andy Warhol is famous for his pop culture art, such as the famous Campbell’s picture. Obviously he is using a copywritten logo as a way to express his ideas and thoughts. Can’t YouTube videos be the same way? Just because some people don’t believe somebody using a Kanye West song in the back of their skateboard bloopers video is art, doesn’t mean it isn’t.

Okay this is probably a little more of a “ranting” post than I wanted it to be. I just don’t want a bunch of muted videos on YouTube as time passes on.

Photo by thms.nl