Tech
Paul McCartney, U2, among 180 artists demanding YouTube stops stealing music
by Richard Howard
June 21, 2016
Trent Reznor accuses YouTube of being 'built on the backs of free, stolen content.'
The music industry and its artists have long been critical of YouTube’s model, charging that the video streaming website undermines artists’ abilities to earn royalties and doesn’t do enough to prevent copyright infringement. In the past week, however, the debate escalated beginning with some pointed accusations from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor.
Now also performing duties at Apple similar to his Chief Creative Officer post held at Beats Music before Apple’s buyout, Reznor accused YouTube’s business of being “disingenuous” and “built on the backs of free, stolen content.” Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney followed suit, tweeting: “Give me five minutes on YouTube and I probably can find 250 songs that are available which the artist isn’t getting paid for.”
YouTube replied with the following statement issued to Pitchfork:
“The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry–and that number is growing year on year.”
Well, looks like musicians ain’t buying it. According to Billboard, 180 musical acts including Paul McCartney, U2, Taylor Swift, Vince Staples, Carole King, and Kings of Leon have signed a petition calling for reform of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which regulates copyright online. The petition, organized by entertainment manager Irving Azoff and co-signed by a number of the industry’s organizations including the major labels, is slated to run as an ad in a number of major Washington, DC publications today.
One of the largest complaints is the fact that YouTube and similar services aren’t required to enforce copyright and are free from liability once they act on takedown notices from rights holders. Since the result is a huge amount of unlicensed copyrighted material remaining, the petition charges that this has created a situation which hurts artists.
“[The DCMA loophole] has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish.”
The ad goes on to request “sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment.”
At the same time, however, another faction of artists are coming out in support of YouTube. Video creator Hank Green, who helms the popular YouTube channel Vlogbrothers, responded to an open letter by Azoff with one of his own in which he argued YouTube’s ContentID system does an excellent job of protecting copyrights, but is rarely used by labels because “YouTube is good for artists and record labels, and everybody knows it.”
[h/t Billboard]
Tags: Tech, News, Black Keys, dcma, patrick carney, paul mccartney, Taylor Swift, Trent Reznor, youtube
