Warner to Send Videos Thru YouTube

woutube is warner plus youtubeIn a potentially groundbreaking move for the music / entertainment industry, Warner Music Group is set to announce an deal to distribute copyrighted content through the video upload/download/streaming megahub, YouTube.

Details are still emerging, but interesting provisions have already been leaked regarding the preemption of inevitable remixing and mashing. YouTube has apparently developed royalty-tracking software that promises to “detect when homemade videos are using copyrighted material.” Somehow, the technology will enable Warner to maintain ownership control and “review the video and decide whether it wants to approve or reject it.”

“Technology is changing entertainment, and Warner Music is embracing that innovation,” said Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. “Consumer-empowering destinations like YouTube have created a two-way dialogue that will transform entertainment and media forever.”

An interesting twist to a weekend that began with Universal Music Group’s head, Doug Morris, flat-out cursing out YouTube and similar Web sites as “copyright infringers.”

Read the entire A.P. article (source).

MORE: TechCrunch, PaidContent. Buy the rumor, sell upon the news?

UPDATE: NYT’s article quotes Sonific CEO Gerd Leonhard:

“The record companies are realizing their game is completely lost in terms of controlling the market,” Mr. Leonhard said. “Digital sales aren’t picking up as they should. If they don’t play ball now, they’re going to sit by themselves while everyone else is using their content for nothing.”

PLUS: Peter Kafka in Forbes on the adolescence of YouTube.

Universal Threatens to Sue YouTube, MySpace

No surprise here. As if NBC/Vivendi/Universal is not already getting enough free pub and promotion from the UGC-oriented social networking and video sharing Web sites alone, now they’re getting double the love after threatening to sue YouTube and MySpace over copyright violations.

Universal Media Group Exec Doug Morris: “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.”

Making the issue sound even more ridiculous, Morris proceeds to say Universal is just adapting from experience, saying: MTV “built a multibillion-dollar company on our (music) … for virtually nothing. We learned a hard lesson.”

This is a blatant misunderstanding of the law, as the infringers would be arguably those who download the music/video, not the sites that unknowingly host it (and would be quick to remove it, at least in the case of YouTube, if an argument was filed).

Does Morris blame FM radio for coming along and broadcasting cuts from records other than or in addition to the singles he pays them to play? I do wonder.

LINK

MP3 Blogging Controversy

Pitchfork Media, a top indie music review site (profiled in this month’s Wired) of which I’ve been a fan since 1999, is embroiled in a shake-up concerning the posting of MP3’s and the etiquette inherent to linking through to said files.

On Tuesday, Pitchfork secured an exclusive right to post “Summer Song,” from the upcoming Decemberists record.

According to Stereogum:

…[T]here are a number of tacit rules that the music blogging community seems to agree upon. Most are pretty obvious (e.g., if a label asks you to take an MP3 down, you take it down!)…. Don’t deeplink to other bloggers’ MP3, right? I think we can all agree that if some blogger takes the time to share a song, and put it in an editorial context, one must link to his/her post (not the file) as a courtesy…. Ah, but there are exceptions: we all freely deeplink to songs on official band websites, MySpace, corporate sites…

Pitchfork, clearly NOT a corporate site, was forced to shut down its download hub after many corporate media music sites — including AOL, USA Today, and Rolling Stone) went ahead and deep-linked to the file (not Pitchfork’s site/post), in effect circumventing Capitol’s exclusive licensing to Pitchfork and offering the file as if it were licensed to them.

Personally, I’m not so comfortable with deeplinking thru to even corporate sites, however, I do often post MP3 files that I have downloaded myself (legally) and host on my own server for others to stream (by RIAA definition — illegally).

For example, click here to visit AOL Video’s exclusive on Bob Dylan’s new video starring Scarlett Johanssen.

Click below to listen to Leonard Cohen performing “Tower of Song” with U2, from the I’m Your Man soundtrack (I own this, but even streaming it without paying royalties is considered illegal).

Finally, there’s Live365, on which I’ve broadcasted (WOOZradio) for 7 years. Early in the Napster/RIAA controversy, they worked out a sweet deal to ensure that the proper royalties were being paid and that all broadcasters were producing legal ‘casts.

The main issue with the Pitchfork controversy from my p.o.v. is that — it should be just as illegal for AOL, Rolling Stone, etc to provide access to Pitchfork’s licensed MP3 posting (without linking through to the page on which the file is posted) as it would be to host said file without proper permission / license.

Dave @ Rawkblog has more on Pitchfork’s legal & “illegal” MP3 hosting, its implications, as well as aural evidence of the soon-to-drop Joanna Newsom bombshell, Y’s.

‘The Hawk of Lebanon’

I finally tracked down the song that I can’t get out of my head. Firkat il-Shamal’s “The Hawk of Lebanon” is catchy as hell, in spite of its lyrics (the translated verse begins: I hail thee, hawk of Lebanon / I welcome thee, Hassan Nasrallah / Here are your men, Hezbollah / Victory, victory with the help of God).

I originally referenced it last week, after hearing it on The World (click here to listen to Aaron Schachter’s piece).

Firkat il-Shamal (Band of the North) consists of The El Haija brothers from Jenin and until this summer was known primarily as a top band on the Palestinian wedding circuit. That is, until they penned the hottest song of the summer in Gaza, and the West Bank. Israeli police are confiscating copies of the song on grounds that it is inflammatory, According to the AP. (The article, published yesterday and written by Sarah El Deeb, carries the bizarro title, “Boy band sings praises of Nasrallah.”)

The World’s Web site has an excellent feature on the song and the El Haija brothers, complete with a translationn of the lyrics and photos. (click here).

Even as the war has let up militarily, it appears that Israeli soldiers continue attacking Palestinians with Nasrallah screen savers on their mobile phones, according to this article by the Palestinian News Network’s Ali Samoudi. Interesting.

One-sided songs of war are nothing new, however, the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East contain many examples, including this, of how technology and the Internet is revolutionizing the way war is fought by states and publics. (See my presentation “The Internet is the Machine Gun of the 21st Century” and Jade Miller’s “Hezbollah, Israel, and the U.S.: A Conflict with Far-Reaching Implications.”

I am posting an MP3 of “The Hawk of Lebanon” for educational purposes and with no intent of making a political/cultural statement of any kind. (thx to BBC/PRI/WGBH)