youtube, copyrights, & music sucking life.

my brother had mentioned to me that YouTube was slowly taking down videos of copyrighted content, and it was a discussion topic over dinner a ways back as to how they were tracking the videos. well, now it's at an outright record high, as YouTube is no longer giving removal notifications to users. this time, the videos are just soundless.

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this is indicative of a number of concerns. sure, legally, it makes sense. kinda. but only in this atmosphere where i feel like the RIAA is scarier than Big Brother. the music folks are on everybody's minds wanting to save a failing revenue stream, so they're cutting off other avenues of listening--like YouTube. i don't know why film isn't also up in arms, legally speaking--oh right, their revenue doesn't suck.

ANYWAY.

sure, mash-up culture will find another way to thrive, it always does. but i'm looking at you, YouTube: do you really want it to? the community there is great and could you really live without your favourite parodies and ridiculousness that circulates through the intertubes? it's not like the users are making anything off this, most of 'em, anyway.

SO. all YouTube is doing is alienating the user without directly contributing to the aching revenue stream of the music industry. it's a roundabout solution. that is, i don't see there being a huge correlation between increase in music sales and decrease of information available on YouTube. all you wind up with is more pissed off people.

RWW suggests: "It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue."

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i leave you with one of my brother's old AMVs. i asked which one he would prefer me to post, but he never txted me back, the little bastard ;) so i'm showing the one with most views. say goodbye to anime mashup videos forEVER! [full disclosure: i love my brother more than i love pretty much everything else ever.] [edit: he made me take down Third Eye Blind in favour of Rise Against.]