RIAA to YouTube: You’re Next.
Jun 15th, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Licensing|
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I was working in radio, and part of a team that was running what was, at the time, one of the ten most-listened-to live streams in the world, when the RIAA and the PROs steamrolled streaming radio with some pretty hefty licensing fees. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone the right to earn some royalties, but the number that came down from the copyright office was a wild-eyed, pre-web-bubble-burst figure that effectively shut independent webcasters out of the legal streaming business. At least until Live365.com and others integrated licensing fees into their subscription plans — that was clever.
So, today’s buzz is that the RIAA’s going to C&D (or maybe just skip the flirting and sue) anybody that’s posting a video to YouTube with music in it. Which would be, like, nearly all of them.
Because what the recording industry needs right now is more people mad at it.
Yeesh.
Will YouTube end up the next Kozmo.com — beloved by users but doomed by mathematics?
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June 24th, 2006 at 9:55 am
As a guitarist, it’s a lot of fun to see all the virtuoso/prodigy things uploaded, like Li Ji’s Paganini, Paco de Lucia, that crazy Flight of the Bumblebee uploaded by the old guy–but man, it seems 90% of the stuff up there is copyrighted. It really does remind me of the Napster thing–an insanely popular cultural phenomenon that is illegal and traceable.
It seems too good to last, doesn’t it? I have to admit I have felt guilty looking at some of the copyrighted material on there!