With friends like these, musicians don't need enemies

Nothing in this post is new, but I had a reminder of the idiocy of copyright today. I got a message from YouTube telling me my Edupunk video had been blocked because of a copyright claim. The account read:

"Your video, Edupunk, may have audio content from Anarchy In The U.K. by Sex Pistols that is owned or licensed by WMG."

Well, I can't argue, that is obviously true. But let's examine the logic of this and ask a few questions:

Question 1: "Is it likely that my use of Anarchy in the UK as the soundtrack to an ed tech video will damage sales? Will anyone who was going to buy it, now not do so, because they have my video?"
Answer: No, the opposite is probably true, someone may be reminded they don't have it and purchase it.

Question 2:  Am I, an individual likely to pay them for usage?
Answer: No, it's non-c0mmercial use, I am not going to be the type of licence fees set out for a commercial world.

Question 3: Are the artists harmed in any way?
Answer: Not as far as I can see. The use of the song to accompany the visuals surely creates something new, which they would never have intended. So, I am not stopping them from doing something they were likely to do.

Question 4: Am I profiting from this in any way?
Answer: No, not really unless being slagged off by Donald Clark counts (and in a way, it does).

Question 5: Isn't there something rather ironic in this song in particular being locked down this way?
Answer: Hell yes!

These questions (apart from no 5) seem like the type of ones artists and copyrighters should be asking in a digital age. Their preference though is to that no-one sees my video, even though, as I suggest above, the impact is at worst negligible and at best, positive to sales.

Oh well, there's always Blip.Tv.

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Comments

[AJ Cann]

You've brought the music industry to its knees Martin: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7837605.stm ;-)

[mweller]

@AJ - I heard the 95% figure yesterday, but the industry 'experts' they spoke to were all banging on about cracking down on illegal downloads.
Anyway, today the music industry, tomorrow, movies.

[Adam]

Vimeo is also quite good, and I've seen more and more embedded videos through them these days.

[wow gold]

Forget it, it's their lost. Maybe they don't know the meaning of free advertisement.

[namiopa]

More cool video may be found at http://rapid4me.com and http://file.sh - no copyright problems, only plaesure :)

[karambo]

I was looking for this kind of explanation for quite a while already, thanks for sharing.
http://healthnova.org