This mentions something that has always irked me, YouTube trying to be informative about who the music is licensed by. For one, it's completely useless on classical piano music because the Content ID algo finds similarity in a dozen different recordings. But even when there is one canonical recording, such as Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, I'm informed that the music is licensed by:<p>(on behalf of Sony BMG Music UK); UMPI, Kobalt Music Publishing, LatinAutor, Warner Chappell, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA - UBEM, LatinAutor - UMPG, SOLAR Music Rights Management, AMRA, UMPG Publishing, CMRRA, LatinAutorPerf, LatinAutor - Warner Chappell, and 15 Music Rights Societies<p>What is happening here? Does YouTube have legal arrangements with all of these bodies to make sure they get their penny per kiloview?
> Here’s what triggered this: The ceremony includes bits of a recording (of tenor John McCormack singing “Funiculi, Funicula”) made in the year 1914.
The Corporate Takedown<p>> YouTube’s takedown algorithm claims that the following corporations all own the copyright to that audio recording that was MADE IN THE YEAR 1914: “SME, INgrooves (on behalf of Emerald); Wise Music Group, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, UMPG Publishing, PEDL, Kobalt Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, Sony ATV Publishing, and 1 Music Rights Societies”<p>So what's going on here? Did some record company reissue the song later on CD, so YouTube is treating it like it was released at a later date than it was?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_St...</a>:<p>> All works first published or released before January 1, 1926, have lost their copyright protection, effective January 1, 2021.<p>Google probably should compile a list of public domain recordings to act as a blacklist for YouTube copyright claims. Maybe that should even be legal a requirement for such automatic enforcement systems. If they partner with some library or national archive, such a project could help with media preservation efforts.
The problem isn't that this video was quickly taken down by an algorithm, but that it cannot be restored by the same. Susan Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube. We should hear from her why YouTube's systemic takedown problem can not be rectified.
I know that music rights is a complicated subject with no really easy answers[1] but there's got to be a way to do it better than the current system where you need to chase after platforms to actually get them to unblock your misclassified videos.<p>1. Unless you believe artists should make money solely from performances and not from streamed music which I was sorta onboard with until streaming-music-as-a-service turned into a gigantic industry.
In the case of the Happy Birthday song, falsely claiming rights over public domain content was expensive for the putative rights-holders.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-warner-music-lawsuit-settlement-idUSKCN0VI1PE" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-warner-music-lawsuit-sett...</a>
In previous years, we'd look at stodgy bureaucratic systems like this and think "Just wait until Google and/or venture capital disrupts them!"<p>But now it is Google and venture capital perpetuating the slow, banal, bureaucratic injustice.<p>The good news is, there's no reason to believe that Google won't also be disrupted eventually. It's sort of happening already, with people voluntarily deciding to not use music in their videos, which makes YouTube less valuable as an asset, something Google brought upon themselves.
This phrase right here is what’s wrong with all major sites/networks/apps/services >>> “We have so far been unable to find a human at YouTube who can fix that.” Replace YouTube with Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google and it pretty much sums up the problem of moderation or human decision. This can be solved very easily by these big corporations, by using some of the millions they have as profit, by hiring more people who will take the results of the algorithms and have a second look at all appeals by using common sense :-)
speaking of take down notices...<p>I don't know the full details, but as a point of interest, the Ig Nobel awards was a project at MIT, and after a dispute between the editor, Marc Abrahams, and MIT, he claimed to own the intellectual property rights and MIT dropped it and he moved it to Harvard where he is an alum.<p>here from "The Tech" <a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V115/N48/ignobel.48n.html" rel="nofollow">http://tech.mit.edu/V115/N48/ignobel.48n.html</a><p>"Legal rift takes awards from MIT<p>For the past four years, the Ig Nobel prizes were awarded at MIT, by the Journal of Irreproducible Results and its successor, the Annals of Improbable Research. However, a legal dispute that arose between the MIT Museum - the publisher of AIR - and its editor, Marc Abrahams, caused the ceremony to be moved from MIT to Harvard.<p>Abrahams and the MIT Museum produced AIR for a year without a contract between them, but the museum wanted to create another organization to publish the magazine because handling the AIR required too much effort from the museum staff, said Warren A. Seamans, director of the MIT Museum.<p>Last March, contract negotiations broke down, and Abrahams claimed sole control of AIR. To avoid a lawsuit, MIT abandoned the magazine and the Ig Nobel prizes."
Ingroove is known to be a fraudulent troll. They have been doing this to massive amount of creators, in many cases asserting rights to music they do not own the rights to.
This happens in the Synthesizer world. It started with Starsky Carr's channel has had a takedown because he did a filter sweep on his synthesizer, and YouTube removed it because it violated Chemical Brother's works, but it's happened to a lot more since then.<p>Soon a single stroke of a piano will be all it takes to take down videos :(
I remember a time before youtube. Recording tunes on a tape recorder as a child. It's not so fanciful to project that history to the digital now and run with it.<p>I'm rambling, but I'm over youtube. I'll access it via third party tools stripping adverts, and recording (just like I did as a child) but I don't see them as necessary.<p>Youtube was a delight before. And generally still can be. But not necessary and increaslingly clunky and way too overly advert dominated.<p>Maybe they should rebrand it as a historical archive and be done with it. If they can't make the copyright work, sunset it like almost everything else and let other players emerge who can.<p>/endrant
YouTube has so many bad practices beyond just this kind of stuff. There are a lot of reasons not to go there any more.<p>We need suitable alternatives. Maybe something decentralized in nature.
'Funnily', youtube does not tell me that the video has been deleted. youtube tells me that the video has been made unavailable in my country by the uploader.