About 18 months ago, the Cyberclinic column looked at the legality – or otherwise – of uploading music videos by your favourite artists to YouTube. This came in the wake of the Warner Group coming to an agreement with the online video giant that not only saw Warner's music videos being officially made available to view on the site, but also gave permission for songs in the Warner catalogue to be used in home-made video productions. Thus if you wanted to upload a clip of yourself miming to a James Blunt song, Warner would be fine with that. But another major label giant, Universal, aren't so benevolent. And this has again come to light with an ongoing furore surrounding the presence of a Prince song in a home movie on YouTube.
This was first mentioned on this blog back in November. Here's the video that all the fuss is about. Note several things: the distinct lack of audio quality; the fact that the music isn't dubbed on, it's just buzzing away in the background; the fact that it's barely 30 seconds long; and above all the unlikelihood of anyone being interested in watching it, let alone it getting a nationwide cinema release.
The mother who was so proud of her toddler's dancing skills, Stephanie Lenz, received a standard take-down notice under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act from Universal. It's a strongly-worded legal document that, in Lenz's own words, made her "panic". After the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) got to hear about it, they contacted Lenz and pointed out that the act allowed her to demand the video return online under "fair use". She made that demand. Universal accepted it. And so we're able to watch the video clip. But the video has, nevertheless, become the subject of a court case, because the EFF believe that the distressing take-down notices of the kind Lenz received shouldn't be issued unless the company or individual issuing them has assessed whether "fair use" applies.
As record companies don't have the time or money to monitor unauthorised use of their music online, they may use devices such as YouTube's Video Identification Tool, which instantly flags up anything supposedly untoward and allows the record company to start firing off notices. The EFF contend that this blanket bombing of innocent parties is unfair, and it's an abuse of the DMCA. The judge is due to make a ruling soon.
But in the meantime, I've dug up another YouTube video that incorporates a Universal-owned track. The chap who uploaded it, however, instead of receiving a take-down notice, received one stating that Universal has claimed some or all audio content in your video... [It] is still live because Universal has authorized the use of this content on YouTube... They will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.
So, instead of taking down a clip – indeed, one that might not even qualify as fair use – they leave it there, and stick advertising on the page instead. It seems that Universal's stance has softened in that respect. But this hasn't stopped them battling hard in court over their right to deliver whatever kind of notice they want, regardless of whether music in the video is truncated, barely audible or completely incidental.
CONFUSED ABOUT TECHNOLOGY? SUBMIT YOUR QUERIES TO CYBERCLINIC USING THE COMMENT FORM BELOW, OR EMAIL QUESTIONS HERE.
Comments