Will Happy Birthday be criminalized?
p2pnet news view Music:- Big 4 record label company Warner Music promises it’ll yank, “hundreds of thousands of videos from the site following the collapse of talks with the Google-owned company about renegotiating a content-sharing deal,” says The Guardian.
“We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,” story has Warner saying.
But it, “had yet to remove all material from YouTube by yesterday afternoon, with Madonna fans still able to watch a video for her single 4 minutes posted by WMG on the site – the promo for James Blunt’s ubiquitous You’re Beautiful was also available,” it says, mentioning other Warner artists include the despised Metallica.
“Content will be removed from the site along with recordings owned by Warner Music’s record publishing business, Warner/Chappell Music, which controls the copyright to songs including Happy Birthday to You and Winter Wonderland,” says The Guardian, noting, “Warner Music’s withdrawal also covers amateur clips that feature its artists or copyrighted songs — potentially widening the action to huondreds of thousands of additional postings”.
“The world waits with bated breath — will Happy Birthday be criminalized?” – wonders Tom Barger, going on »»»
Speaking of a song that was written in 1897 — I say it’s long over-due that Google get a spine and cease the useless negotiations with these virulent corporate lawyers. Is YouTube now part of the problem? Are they a layer of naysayer?
Specifically, my desire to sing a cover song.
The ascendancy of the digital file seems to make the corporations believe they can get rid of the compulsory.
Their dream is — each and every use will require a negotiation.
If the Music Publishers Assoc is behind this, I say — let’s remember the police state mentality behind all this. It turns out the mystery man, the sixth person in Ashcroft’s hospital room, was David Israelite.
Congratulations Warner. Nobody plays public relations worse than thou.
p2pnet has asked Warner when its ‘product’ will disappear from YouTube.
If you care, stay tuned.
The Guardian – Warner stops the music on YouTube, December 22, 2008
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December 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
“Warner/Chappell Music, which controls the copyright to songs including Happy Birthday to You”
No really. What Warner/Chappell Music does is run a protection racket. They threaten to sue anyone who uses a public domain song such as Happy Birthday and get people to pay because it is safer and easier to pay than to fight. All protection rackets are based on this principle, it is safer and easier to pay than to fight.
Many public domain songs are used for the protection racket by many publishers. The racket works because, as in Wall Street, the government is always looking the other way and people have a habit of believing in politicians by faith.