Google dumbs down videos: literally
p2pnet news view Movies | Music:- Google has taken the concept of dumbing down to a new level which’ll bring joy to the icy little hearts of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA.
TechCrunch says it best.
Under the headline YouTube Full Of Creepy, Soundless Music Videos, “YouTube has been testing a new way of combating copyright violations on the site,” he says.
And that’s removing the audio, leaving the video with a, “wasteland of music videos that are creepily silent” as the result.
Says Wired »»»
Major label Warner Music Group made big waves with its proclamation that it wasn’t being paid enough for its music being played on YouTube, and its attendant demand that Google remove all of its music from the site.
As Mashable mentioned, YouTube is now muting the audio tracks on some of those tracks, leaving the video online.
However, as it did not mention, all four of its examples – Albert King, Seal, John Michael Montgomery and Jason Mraz — are on the Warner Music Group label. The muting appears to be part of Google’s response to the label’s demand that they pull all of its tracks, because it wants more money for them than Google is willing to pay. Some tracks by these artists still play with sound, so this appears to be an ongoing process as YouTube identifies the tracks.
And in an update, “a Warner spokeswoman points out that the muting policy was Google’s idea as a way to remove the music at the request of Warner Music Group and other labels who don’t want it on there.”
Says the GooTube notice:
This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.
And according to NewTeeVee, the YouTube blog explains »»»
Previously, when a music label or other rights owner issued a copyright claim to block audio, the video was automatically taken down. Uploaders had two choices: dispute the claim or use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music. Now we`ve added an additional choice. Instead of automatically removing the video from YouTube, users can choose to leave the video muted and live on the site, and many of them are taking that option.
And God Created Woman
In another example of Google’s sycophantic efforts to keep the cartels happy, “Kevin B. Lee, who wrote for us about the best music videos of 2008 and whose video essays I’ve linked to of several times in the past, just informed me that his YouTube account has been ‘permanently disabled”,” says Spout Blog, continuing
Kevin`s video essays wed critical commentary or conversation to clips from copyright films in a teaching context, and most of them were created as part of his project to view every film on the list of 1000 greatest films of all time, as compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don`t They?. Kevin says he received a copyright warning earlier today in regards to his video essay on And God Created Woman. It was the first time YouTube had ever slapped his wrist over one of the video essays, although they had contacted him about two unaltered clips in the past, one from The Sorrow and Pity and one from Dames. Three strikes, and Kevin`s out â YouTube has removed all 70 of his videos, including 40 original video essays. If you`ve embedded one of these in your own blog, that embed will now be unplayable.
Not only but also, “Kevin is one of a number of people producing film criticism via online video who have had trouble with YouTube of late,” says the post.
Censorship in the name of the Almighty Dollar. And the thin end of the wedge.
TechCrunch – YouTube Full Of Creepy, Soundless Music Videos, January 14, 2009
Wired – Warner Music Group and Others, January 14, 2009
NewTeeVee – YouTube Lets Users Mute Rather Than Take Down, January 14, 2009
Spout Blog – YouTube Cracking Down on Critical Video Essays, January 13, 2009
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January 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Time for TheBayTube lol
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:34 am
Why not just remove the video completely then? Eventually we will be lucky just to be able to watch a video with sound by just removing the audio.