Youtube starts muting videos with copyrighted music | Hacker News Reader

Youtube starts muting videos with copyrighted music

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18 pointsvaksel14 comments

Obligatory: Larry Lessig's TED lecture on why remixing shouldn't be illegal. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law...

The interview he did with Colbert last week was really good.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/21545...

Fantastic talk! Thanks for sharing.

In other news, Youtube-clone video sites suddenly rise in popularity.

Youtube doesn't have anything in particular that makes it unique--they're competing in a market among many video sites that are equal if not far superior to them from a technical perspective and they have already lost in many parts of the world.

See Nico Nico Douga in Japan, for example, which outcompeted Youtube with a unique interface, better attention to their specific target audience, and a more effective revenue model. They're breaking even--something not even Youtube can say yet.

Changes like this, even if one can justify them by saying they are "forced by the record companies," will simply accelerate Youtube towards irrelevance in more and more markets. Youtube isn't like, say, World of Warcraft--anyone using the site can literally just pick up all their uploaded videos and leave at a cost of nothing to themselves. This is what makes changes like that described in this article so dangerous.

No, Youtube isn't about to go away, or even lose significant popularity, but huge sites like Youtube don't die overnight--they lose niche audiences one by one.

They forgot to mention that YouTube has a tool that lets you replace the copyrighted music with music that YouTube has actually licensed.

For two reasons, I agree with the article's premise that YouTube is screwing things up for its users.

First, my video actually lost all audio when I tried to use the AudioSwap tool yesterday to reinstate my video after YouTube blocked it from public view; the video (and sound) still previously viewable in the edit pane of my YouTube account. I've just tried again with another AudioSwap song from their library--maybe now it will work and add a song.

Second, my video was simply a parody of the music video set to a real song, which there are likely millions of on youtube.

Not too often you see a company go out of their way to make their product suck. IMHO, the RIAA is a bunch of dumbasses. I've heard music in YouTube remixes, on TV, and in movies where I sought out the artist and bought the album.

Here's a good example. I liked the music on this video so much I bought the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ybGOK8PtA

(Natural Blues by Moby) I'm surprised the music companies don't view this as free marketing. Very short sighted.

Thanks, RIAA. Instead of making it easier to buy your music when I hear it, you've chosen to make it more difficult for me to hear it at all.

In Germany Youtube has signed a deal with our local version of the RIAA. Youtube pays for using their music there.

It's not "their" music. It's not a middleman's music. Most artists I know personally love YouTube. They love remixing. They want everyone who would like their stuff to be able to get to it easily. They certainly want to get paid, but an unauthorized video != not buying an album. In fact it is the opposite: watching a video leads to buying an album.

This move is dumb on both the RIAA's part, and YouTube's. They added the link to buy mp3s, which I thought was brilliant. I might actually use that. But now I'm not going to go to YouTube for videos. I'm not going to bother.

Who does that benefit? I certainly didn't give more money to the artist. In fact, I probably took money away by decreased notoriety. I won't share that link or post the video to my blog.

Morally you may be right. From a legal point of view, the GEMA (the 'German RIAA') has an exclusive right to market the contracted musicians.

Those musicians gave up the right to sell their music. They can not even give their music away for free after signing up with GEMA. Though many would love to.

I guess someone has a vested interested in keeping the myth alive that you can not get paid for radio airplay without signing up.

GEMA also has a complicated system to pay out more money to music that's more 'deserving'.

You're certainly correct. But there businesses will not continue to exist if things evolve in the same pattern.

Depending on how good the recognition algorithm is, I expect to see an increase in the popularity of cover bands, sound-alikes, and/or royalty-free producers.

I've noticed I visit a certain youtube clone in my country more often lately.

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