The other day when I watched a fun YouTube video I felt that urgency when you realise you should ‘catch’ something before it disappears.
It was a harmless video of a wedding group’s entrance into a church. The ‘problem’ was the participants were dancing to a commercial soundtrack.
It wasn’t a piece of music I was familiar with, but obviously it was a published, commercial track. I had the spine-tingling sense that at any moment the rights holders would demand the video be taken down on account of copyright breach.
After all, if videos showing 13 month olds dancing to music on the radio 1 can be forced off-line, then surely this one was headed for the same fate.
Apparently though, the rights holders recognised the potential and decided to ride the wave of popularity, rather than trying to turn back the tide. They realised they could turn this popular video into a money-maker:
… a shift in how copyright owners can interact with unlicensed content users. After being uploaded to YouTube only 12 days ago, an elaborate wedding dance routine to Chris Brown’s, “Forever” has already garnered more than 12 million views. And according to the YouTube blog, rather than blocking usage of their unlicensed property, Sony instead used Google’s tracking tools to monetize.
… They added a simple pop-up overlay that offers users a chance to purchase the song from iTunes or Amazon. According to YouTube, in the last week, the year-old song has risen to #4 on the iTunes charts and #3 on Amazon.
[Via : Build Profit Not DMCA Suits: YouTube and the Wedding March.]
What a triumph of good sense! I hope other rights holders see this as a model of how they can work with fans, rather than opposing them.
1 YouTube – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
In August 2008, a U.S. court ruled that copyright holders cannot order the removal of an online file without first determining whether the posting reflected fair use of the material. The case involved Stephanie Lenz from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, who had made a home video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” and posted the 29-second video on YouTube.
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Oddly, an episode of the wildly popular “fake news show,” The Daily Show was pulled offline when the Major League Baseball Association claimed rights on a 10-second segment showing Barack Obama throwing the first pitch at the All Star game. Host Jon Stewart was using the clip to make fun of the president in a lighthearted, teasing kind of way. Because of this, the entire episode was pulled of Hulu (where I usually watch it). It’s downright silly, if you ask me.
The concept of “fair use” is widely misunderstood, ranging from people thinking they have the right to do anything they want with a copyrighted item to no rights at all. Until this is cleared up, use (be it fair or otherwise) of copyrighted materials will continue to be questioned and either allowed or disallowed on the whim of the copyright holder.
As the owner of a good deal of intellectual property, I’d rather have uses questioned than to see all rights lost in a free-for-all.
Yes, sensible of the rights holders to ride the wave. However, given that in this case, Chris Brown needs all the positive publicity he can get, it was most likely option
Thanks for that added dimension Jane.
Whatever the reason, though, here’s hoping it’ll set the big rights industries off with some new thinking.
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