Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Copyright craziness
After Stephanie Lenz video recorded toddler son Holden bouncing and swaying to Prince hit “Let’s Go Crazy,” she posted the short video on YouTube for relatives to enjoy. But then she received an e-mail from YouTube informing her that her video was a copyright infringement and that it had been removed at the request of Universal Music Publishing Group.
“At first it frightened me, because I saw who had filed” the takedown notice, she said.
“It was Universal Music Publishing Group, and I was afraid that … they might come after me. … And the more afraid I got, the angrier I got. … I was afraid that the recording industry might come after me the way they’ve come after other people for downloading music or file sharing.
“I thought even though I didn’t do anything wrong that they might want to file some kind of suit against me, take my house, come after me.
“And I didn’t like feeling afraid,” she continued. “I didn’t like feeling that I could get in trouble for something as simple as posting a home video for my friends and family to see.”
You can view a clip of the home movie here. You’ll notice the music is hard to hear in the background, and it is only about 29 seconds of the song–the focus is clearly young Holden’s dance moves. Did Universal go too far in claiming copyright infringement?
back to top15 Comments to “Copyright craziness”
Yes.
Next case …
Report comment to moderator
Ridiculous.
Report comment to moderator
I think claims of copyright have gone waaaay overboard, and have gone from encouraging creativity by ensuring that people get paid for their work, to actively discouraging creativity.
Richard Stillman has been one of the voices encouraging Copy Left
The irony is, that if her video became popular enough, it would raise awareness of / remind people of the original version of “Let’s Go Crazy”, possibly even spurring some sales of the work. IOW, he turned down some free advertising and publicity.
Report comment to moderator
I posted this in the wrong thread. So I will duplicate to be a pest.
Don’t open those Windows(TM).
For that matter, you owe me a dime every time you post a random comment.
Report comment to moderator
Intellectual Property laws in this country are fundamentally broken. Unfortunately, seniority in Congressional offices is based not on expertise, but on seniority and favoritism (witness corrupt Senator Ted “series of tubes” Stevens leading the Commerce and Science committee), so that’s not likely to change any time soon.
Report comment to moderator
I agree this example ridiculous, but it served to highlight a real problem with abuse of copyright. My teenager and I have gone round and round on this and it is ugly. She said, “By the time I’m an adult all information will be availble for free, so I don’t understand what your issue is.”
“I’m a writer. I won’t get paid for what I write if anyone can ‘post it’. How do you expect creative people to live if they don’t get paid for their work?”
She doesn’t see it–a member of the morally relative generation, even when I remind her “a workman is worthy of his hire.”
Report comment to moderator
#6:
I understand exactly what you mean, Michelle. On the one hand, this is a ridiculous and obvious mistake by Universal. But then again, some people are so enamored of file-sharing and pirating their media that they assume that everything will eventually be free like it is “supposed to be”. Recorded music, I’m told, will be a loss-leader for bands and labels, with musicians making up the difference of lost record sales by selling lots of concert tickets and t-shirts.
As an independent musician with an upcoming album on the way, I’m not sure what to think of these claims. I’d love to give away my music to everyone, but if I put in hundreds of hours of work, should I not get paid *something* for that work? Not everyone can take off the time from their day jobs to tour like the pros, and not every independent musician is popular enough to charge lots of money for concert tickets. Prince may have given away his last album in a newspaper, but he’s also filling out stadiums at $50 a ticket.
I certainly realize that there needs to be a better system in place. Perhaps it could be a better licensing system that would, for this example, let people post video clips with other people’s music for inexpensive micropayments. Instead of suing, Universal could have gotten a few bucks out of the deal by licensing the track inexpensively to the woman (and she could play it as loud as she wants). Maybe YouTube should be giving more of their ad revenue to the labels. Perhaps when the RIAA finds someone with music they downloaded through less-than-legal channels, they should just charge them the normal value of whatever the music would have cost if bought legally, like the replacement cost my local library charges if you lose one of their books and can’t return it. There must be a better way, though I’m not sure what it is quite yet.
But I’m pretty sure the solution is not to completely normalize piracy just because “everybody’s doing it”. I’m not saying it should be a criminal offense where the RIAA kicks in your door (as they do now), but the music makers (who put in the hours of work) should still be paid somehow.
Report comment to moderator
I work for a public agency. I teach computer classes. A couple of years ago my employer agreed to teach a series of classes on Internet research for a private Christian school elementary school. Because of a conflict, I had to teach a class instead of another teacher.
The children were well behaved and attentive. Fifth graders as I remember; the topic was research on American history. The teacher participated and kept an eye on the children, and seemed happy with my teaching, but felt I had not put enough emphasis on providing proper credit when citing and copying information, so after the first class, I made a strong point in each class of how important it is to give credit when taking information and also on respecting copyright.
It seemed to me that this school was very conscientious in this regard, and the Christian children were attentive and well-behaved.
They provided me with a free lunch. Although I believe the school is primarily Protestant, I was a bit surprised (though neutral) to see a picture of the Pope hanging in the staff lunchroom along with other pictures.
I had a pleasant conversation with the other teachers and did not make a speech about my daughter’s out of law partner and baby, though I would not have evaded the issue if asked directly. However, wmb provides me with a safe outlet for rattling conservative Christians, though you don’t rattle very satisfactorily that much any more.
Report comment to moderator
Michelle, just tell your daughter that when information is available free there will be no more information.
Report comment to moderator
In our home, we also think that the copyright protections as they presently exist are really silly at times.
But, we also feel that the workman is worth his hire.
So, the vast majority of music and software have been paid for legitimately. Our rule is that we can download something free, or “borrow” it from a friend, but — if we use it regularly — then we need to buy it.
My husband has “owned” some games even before they were available for purchase, but — once they were — he went out and bought them.
However, we don’t feel guilty when we download a television show. It is free anyway! But, technically, if we don’t pay for it, then we are doing wrong.
And, we own ONE copy of most software and share it amongst our computers. Why? Because we already BOUGHT it, and we have many computers in the house, and why do we need to buy a copy for EACH computer? 99% of the time, only one person is using it at a time, so why does it matter? That seems wrong to me, but the software manufacturers would tell you that you have to buy a copy per computer.
We’ve also given copies of software to friends and family to try, but, if they like it, then we get them their own legal copy for Christmas or for their birthday.
So, I’ll admit to being not technically legal in all senses of the word, but I do think we play ETHICALLY, and that is what is important to me.
Report comment to moderator
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Universal Music Group is worried that someone is not going to buy an old Prince (or is it “The artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”?) album because they could instead get a terrible sounding copy of it by ripping the audio from a YouTube clip?
Let’s Go Crazy is an apropos title to be the subject of this story.
Report comment to moderator
instead of a “a terrible sounding copy of it”, I should have said “a terrible sounding copy of a small part of it”.
Oh, for the good ol’ days and Preview Comment buttons…
Report comment to moderator
Heh…this smacks of lawyers behaving badly.
I think that if Prince had heard about this, he would have played up the PR of it, since he seems to be extremely competent in that field. The mom and son probably would have had 15 minutes of fame, in a fun way.
Instead, it’s 15 minutes that may end up embarrassing Prince because of his lawyers, since the mom was probably not intending to make any money off this. After all, YouTube is filled with homemade music videos, which get hardly any complaint at all.
Report comment to moderator
My avatar up there is the copyleft symbol, so my feelings on the subject should be fairly clear. I really don’t see it becoming a problem that creative artists won’t be able to live off their work… If they’re good enough plenty of people are going to be willing to support their endeavors, a la Radiohead (who made ten million off their album already, directly into their pockets, no sharing with a label or distributors, ka-ching). And if you’re not so wonderful an artist that people are willing to support your work then I really couldn’t care less if you can’t make enough money to support pursuing it full time. Tough luck; move on; get a real job.
Report comment to moderator
Still, the question is really that of fair use, and much as I might think Universal foolish, it remains their call. As Stephen points out, there are other economic models, and it is not exactly clear that the recording industry’s strong anti-piracy rule has stopped piracy or the decay of CD sales.
The same issue goes for copying material off of web sites. Like photocopying of a previous generation, it is a matter of fair, and I might add, just use. Or as Paul says, the laborer deserves his wages. Even Prince.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!