Rock stars go to war with YouTube at their peril | Eamonn Forde
Digital music and audio | The Guardian 2016-07-04
Summary:
Nothing in the music industry happens in a vacuum. Last month, notoriously bellicose artist manager Irving Azoff marshalled the support of 180 musicians to lobby policymakers in Washington to radically redraw the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This was a piece of legislation written in the dial-up and Nokia 5120 handsets days of 1998 but that still governs the way content is circulated in an age of fibre optic broadband and 4G-enabled smartphones. By “revise the DMCA”, what they really meant was to nail YouTube to the floor by making it pay more in music royalties while also detonating the “safe harbour” exemptions that mean services such as YouTube are not held liable for any copyright infringements by their users. YouTube argues its Content ID system is so sophisticated today that content owners can quickly and easily identify their music online that has been uploaded by others and either block it or make a claim and monetise it. The rights holders are claiming it is not robust enough and they are potentially losing millions as a result.
Marching in lockstep, more than 1,000 musicians last week wrote to the European commission to demand it clips the wings of YouTube, which stands accused of “unfairly siphoning value” away from recording artists and songwriters. This echoes the record company trade associations – the IFPI, RIAA and BPI – synchronising their bemoaning of the “value gap” that threatens to swallow record labels and musicians. While they all said that it was not an attack on just YouTube, it was clear who was being held up as the biggest offender. This is the music industry’s most resolute attack ever against one company and the legislation they feel is failing them. There are reasons to support them as music has been greatly devalued in the past two decades, but there are also problems with how they are going about addressing this.
Continue reading...