Copyrighted Music on Youtube

Fair use lets you use music you've paid for in your own private videos. As long as they're not published publicly and/or used to make a profit.

Wedding videos are private events, only seen by the people who paid for the service/product. That satisfies fair use in one way. The vidoegrpher/photographer get paid for using that music, so that violates fair use.

If its your vacation video for your family at home, nothing wrong with that legally or morally. If you "publish" it, which includes ANYTHING online that is public, you need to pay to use it both legally and morally.

Period.

Because I am easily able to murder lots of people and get away with it, then that makes it OK to do, right? Isn't that how that logic works? Because you "can" should make it "legal"? Because your wife "can" have an affair with another person, and get away with it, that should make it OK and not legal grounds for divorce? Because someone "can" vandalize your car and get away with it, that should make it legal and morally OK? Because rape happens daily, and folks get away with it, we should eliminate all rape laws?

Saying because an action can happen, and that people get away with it, on a daily basis, means it should be made legal, well, that sort of pretzel logic is retarded.

Bring on the negative karma...

Ben - you're on the side of righteousness here; only good karma can come your way.

Lee - I am sorry to hear about your troubles. But didn't you get the memo; you're meant to be totally stoked that people are able to steal your work and use it how they want! Get with the program you dinosaur; from here on people are going to do whatever the hell they want with your work. You don't have a say in the matter because you're not making a 'material thing' like a car, and it costs you nothing after you made it the first time. Maybe someone, somewhere, somehow might pay you an ever decreasing pittance (of their choosing) at some point. And you better be fucking grateful about it, buddy, because its going to be a race to the bottom from here on, and things will only get worse....

(I am being sarcastic here - in case someone jumps in at this late stage).

Julian - Lee is one of your happy customers; glad to see it all worked out in the end.

Here is another happy customer. Kevin MacLeod makes the music on Incompetech; royalty free music that you can use in your projects (though donations are usually made if you use a song).

However, one of these Music Trolls has been claiming all the rights to his work, and collecting the revenue. He has had to battle and contest each instance; wasting his time on it.

Read about it here:

incompetech.com/wordpress/2012/10/668/

So even people offering royalty free music are being screwed!

The same thing also happens when people use a royalty free recording of classical music; inevitably it clashes with other peoples recordings of the same piece.

I used one of Kevins silent film style piano songs for a project involving a bar/night club. It was fantastic... I integrated his credit on the ver opening scene and made it look like it was a part of the sign I was filming inside the bar. It then went into a modern swooshy trance club music thing with lots of glitz and glam and cool light effects. Alas, the client, (a friend), disputed the terms of the contract and never paid what was owed. thus the film sits in storage.

How cool is that. Someone makes music for you to use...all ya gotta do is credit him...and presto! What a shame. he's going through.

I really didn't mean to cause such a firestorm here. i kinda wondered if it would. I just wanted some info on Youtube's practices. Ii have that info now if everyone wold like to stop bickering.

I remember when it was fashionable for bloggers to forcefully argue that downloading music wasn't "stealing". Funny thing people started "downloading" whole articles and reposting them...then the bloggers turned into banshees.

Youtube's content-id is terrible. The answer the question asked in the imcometech article:

Why does YouTube allow them to claim ownership of compositions written hundreds of years ago? I have no idea.

is simple. Youtube allows it because there is a financial incentive to let it slide. Youtube makes money on any ads that are added to videos whose audio matches content-id. The only way to correct the problem in my opinion is to change the rules so google loses money on invalid content-id entries. That is about the only way they'll push back against bogus content-id registration.

About 20% of the videos I've uploaded have been flagged when the only audio used is ambient sounds I've recorded mixed with iLife jingles. You know, those audio snippets that are licensed for unlimited royalty free use. A bunch of them are in the content-id database as being owned by other than Apple.

It seems the posts in this thread primarily involves the economics of copyright.

Sometimes the artist may not want their music used with your images due to political, social, morale reasons because it creates an association they don't approve of. In that case being compensated in any "automatic" fashion is really want they want. They simply don't approve of their music being associated with your images.

FvH wrote: And I do not understand why it would be so difficult to ask the copyright holder for permission to use his or her music (or video).

It's not difficult to ask, assuming you can reach them, but it's almost impossible to gain their permission if they are any sort of prominent artist. Nobody really cares to relinquish their rights to anything they created unless they have no future plans for it or see some benefit (self promotion, market awareness, etc.) by allowing you to use it. Generally, if there is something in it for them, they may respond. Certain non-well known artists may be happy to allow their creations use simply for exposure.