It's not ethical for a distributor to strong-arm the hands that feed it on a 5 year basis, no matter how small a slice of the pie it may be.
Google has DMCA takedown capabilities. I'd suggest simply hiring a third party to monitor Google and send appropriate take-down notices. Then, on an annual basis, submit the invoice to Google. It's dirty pool, but then again, when has the music industry ever been a transparent and constructive and profitable enterprise for anybody outside of the top 1% of performers/acts/songwriters?
5 years is way to long for a social media platform that iterates almost every 2 weeks to the newest fad/trend/pop song. These contracts should be for 1 year max. Especially since they force to you release all and any of your new work there for free and pay. WAY to long of a time for that kind of control.
In artist-land, it's unethical to not give artists the services they want on the terms they want. Because art is the most important thing in the world.
I know that sounds sarcastic, but it's actually how a lot of artists behave and speak.
To clarify, this has more to do with controlling distribution - most artists want to retain ultimate control over when they can choose to terminate distribution.
To add a firsthand story, I am a part of an online music community, OverClocked Remix (http://ocremix.org ), that had to craft a formal content policy agreement for legal reasons to protect itself in the event a game publisher/rights owner decided to sue the site for hosting rearranged music from one of their games (the site only sells officially licensed music - the rest is free), or if an artist imposed many fickle demands such as 5+ artist handle change requests or a sudden takedown request of a track, which would affect distribution methods such as torrents. The site solicited feedback from the community, and we came to the decision to require a non-exclusive right to distribute with an identifier of our copyright (meta information in ID3v2 tags and the file name), no DRM), while the artists would maintain full rights of their track. Termination of distribution is left at the site's hands.
A few artists balked at this, and expressed strong disagreements based on the view that artists should retain full rights over distribution. They ultimately signed and most, even those who complained, ended up content with it.
> It's not ethical for a distributor to strong-arm the hands that feed it on a 5 year basis, no matter how small a slice of the pie it may be.
In the business world, this is known as negotiation. It's normal and ethical. Here, it's like being in a big store. You can buy the thing on the shelf or not, but you don't get to haggle over the price.
Zoe wants to haggle over the price until it's something convenient for her.
> I'd suggest simply hiring a third party to monitor Google and send appropriate take-down notices.
This is abuse. This will have a chilling effect on free expression.
As far as most anyone is concerned, monitoring YouTube for user-initiated copyright violations to send takedown notices is precisely what the DMCA was intended to be used for.
Agreed. My then-3 year old daughter danced to the tune of Da Funk and I uploaded it. The sound was removed, even though it was in the background. It was Fair Use for sure.
Shame on YouTube, quite seriously - I didn't cost Daft Punk anything!
"Terms are offered. You can accept them or reject them"
Isn't this the exact opposite of a negotiation? By definition, doesn't "negotiation" imply that both parties enter into a discussion in an attempt to reach an agreement.
When you buy a cup of coffee, Starbucks doesn't force you to sign a legal document saying that you will only drink Starbucks coffee for the next five years, or that whenever you buy a cup of coffee from somewhere else you must simultaneously buy a cup from Starbucks. Also, if you refuse to buy the cup of coffee, Starbucks will not post your picture in every branch in the country to prevent you from ever buying a cup of coffee from them again.
In this case the "product" is an automated system for paying royalties on the customer's creative output which Google is making money off the back of, and they haven't so much "dropped" it as changed the terms to compel the customer to agree to a distribution deal with YouTube.
If any other online hosting service (with substantial network or lock-in effects) changed their terms to give themselves rights to host and slap ads on any of your other public output there would be an outcry. Why is this one different?
And google uses search, in turn, to juice their own properties (such as youtube) by pushing them higher in the SERPs. See, eg, the europe antitrust stuff for demonstration.
Zoe's music is the product here, not Google's service; it's Google that's unilaterally demanding she monetize or block it, and trying to prevent her from entering into any exclusive agreements with any other distributor.
Note: In this specific instance, YouTube is using the automated system to monetize it for themselves and give a portion of the proceeds to the creator. This is an important distinction. Also, they are dictating rights with respect to distribution.
For comparison, Best Buy purchases the CDs outright from the Publisher/Label/Artist collective, and often sells below cost (first week release) to incentivize customers to patronize their store. In your mind, should Best Buy be taking a cut of the Publisher/Label/Artist agreement like YouTube is proposing in this case?
If Best Buy were to replace their markup with that agreement and offer labels the option of working with that or not, I wouldn't see a problem. It offers the supplier the option to walk away and do business with someone else.
Unlike Best Buy, YouTube can only guess at who the creator is. Best Buy has the luxury of a known supply chain.
So, sort of like Apple did with the Publishers in order to move in on Amazon's turf? I believe what you're describing is against anti-trust laws, if not in exact legal terms, then certainly in the spirit of the law. Best Buy still has exclusive releases (as does Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, iTunes), but they are part of a larger dynamic market.
YouTube effectively has monopoly status as a "Videos-with-music" service. iTunes/Spotify/Pandora/Beats/Deezr/Rdio are a different service class, so don't even try and throw those into the pot, because that won't fly.
YouTube is a monopoly in the same way that iTMS is a monopoly. Many of the terms (like the release-here-first) ones are reminiscent of how Amazon and iTMS do their pricing.
Release-here-first is not mandatory for all artists on iTunes, I know this first-hand. Maybe it is for certain artists with record label contracts, but they signed those contracts through other parties. I signed no such contract, and if I want to release something first on Soundcloud, Facebook, VIMEO, YouTube, or by burning CDs and leaving them tacked to boards in coffee shops, it is not in my distribution contract with iTunes or Amazon beyond the negotiated pricing platform.
Might I ask you to re-read my comment? I never claimed that iTMS used that particular stipulation. I compared it to a common pricing-relate stipulation.
YouTube chooses to only guess who the creator is, because that's convenient for their business model.
There are other choices available to them, they weren't forced into this one. They chose it because it's easy for them, and most importantly, it allows them in rapidly increase the amount of user-generated content they offer.
It's a problem that derives from the complexity of copyright law. The result is that the only way to be certain renders user-generated content sites completely unworkable.
If your intent is to have a chilling effect on free speech on the internet, requiring a huge and messy legal process to publish something is a good way to do it.
"In technology-land, it's unethical to not give companies the content they want on the terms they want. Because their service is the most important thing in the world.
I know that sounds sarcastic, but it's actually how a lot of technology firms behave and speak."
I don't know any tech people or companies who believe that about their services. I know a lot of artists who do.
Unscientific sample, obviously. I'm also not arguing that Zoe should accept what YouTube is offering. Just that YouTube isn't obligated to offer her want she wants.
Tell you what. Want to start a company offering distribution services to artists on the terms they want? Sounds like your kind of thing. I'm sure artists, publishers, labels, and customers will all love it and shower it with money.
I already have one that I pay for out of my own pocket, it's called DistroKid, and it's wonderful.
So, no, I'll stick to the business of creating things, sharpening my National Forensics League trained debate skills in forums such as this, and reminding myself that I do these from my soul. I gain absolutely nothing by engaging with you, other than heartache at the state of affairs in this world, but it comes from within and I choose to embrace who I am. I hope Zoe succeeds in whatever she does, and applaud her for trying, especially in the face of hostility such as yours.
My heart also aches at the state of affairs in intellectual property law. It's a terrible system from top to bottom that serves mostly to suppress creativity. It badly needs to be re-engineered, but there are far too many vested interests to make that practical.
I haven't thought back to Forensics in a very, very long time. Geez.
If you think my attitude is hostility, then I submit that you could stand to benefit by reading my comments more carefully.
EDIT: Also, DistroKid doesn't allow me to set my own terms. It doesn't look like what I proposed at all.
I have a hard time understanding how the copyright system suppresses creativity considering we have available now more creative output, in a wider variety, conveniently available at reasonable prices including free, than has ever been the case before
Part of that is the result of easier distribution, cheaper production, and more available leasure for classes able to do creation.
How the copyright system influence this is (to my mind) uncertain. The system may be positive, or it may be negative. There isn't sufficient research nor natural experiments to know. I strongly suspect some level of copyright protection is positive, but there are too many variables to be able to be certain.
If they had put it there themselves, I'd agree with you. They haven't. They have an automated system that accepts content from users.
Vimeo from conception made an ethical stand to get rid of all content that wasn't directly uploaded by the creator.
YouTube from conception decided to not only allow but to itself seed the network with content that its submitters didn't create.
YouTube ended up having more content than Vimeo and thus more users even though Vimeo was first to market and had a much better product and user experience.
YouTube won because it decided to ignore the ethics of distributing content that it had no rights to.
They were from the very beginning and still remain an unethical company when it comes to profiting from other people's copyrights.
Bear in mind that there is not and is unlikely to ever be any kind of system that can determine what color your bits are with any kind of reliability.
There are many forms of smart contracts and decentralized digital asset management systems that could be utilized to create an open platform for publishing and claiming ownership over digital goods. All it takes is software willing to opt-in to these contracts and people who would rather use an honest system over a dishonest system.
Systems that subsidize the storing and distribution of digital media with advertisements never allow for the creators to have any power in the conversation about their digital rights. They just get blanket contracts written by the largest rights-holders.
YouTube is designed for consumers and not producers. It is in the DNA of the product. It can't be removed. It will be its undoing.
This is an egregious abuse of copyright. It is not ethical to encourage this.