YouTube neuters Keyboard Cat
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Warner Music is, on the one hand, desperately touting Choruss, its school ‘licensing’ scheme, and on the other, continuing to behave like a miserable SOB — just like Vivendi Universal, EMI, Sony, the other members of the Big 4 organised music gang.
Says the Wikipedia »»»
Keyboard Cat is an Internet meme. It consists of footage of “Fatso”, a cat (now deceased) owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, wearing a blue shirt and “playing” an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard, in reality being manipulated like a puppet by Schmidt. The clip has gained popularity by being appended to blooper and other viral videos as if to “play” that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe, usually accompanied with the title Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat or a variant.
Now, “The audio appears to have been deleted on behalf of music label Warner Music Group,” reports Caroline McCarthy on CNet News. “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG,” a message adjacent to the video read. “The audio has been disabled.”
Not the one we saw (see below) — for now, anyway
“The Keyboard Cat-Hall & Oates video was getting popular, with over 375,000 views on YouTube in fewer than two months and press from blogs like the AOL-owned Urlesque, so it’s not quite clear whether WMG was alerted to the video directly or if the sound was pulled because an audio fingerprinting technology trawled through it,” says CNet, closing with a quote from a disgruntled fan who said:
“I hate you, Warner Music Group. This video is hilarious and? promotes a song that would otherwise never reach the ears of young people. What is wrong with you?”
And, “When did the music industry go so wrong?” – asks the fan.
That’s easy.
It all started (online, anyway) back in 2003 when the Big 4 first sicced their RIAA extortion on their own customers.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
desperately touting Choruss – `Tens of thousands` sign up for Choruss, June 12, 2009
CNet News – YouTube pulls audio from greatest music video ever, July 15, 2009
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July 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Its really sad that something like this is attacked by the greed of the music labels.
Nobody is making money from this, no one is being hurt, leave people TF alone!!
July 15th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
The industry is only hurting their own sales and PR. I never would have discovered the last three artists and their albums if it wasn’t for YouTube users. Doesn’t the material in this case fall under the category of parody/satire? Maybe I’m wrong but I thought this is protected as fair use and free speech. If people are no longer allowed to make social commentaries/criticisms by poking fun at public icons, isn’t that then a form of censorship? The user should replace the music in the video with a good band that likes having it’s music heard by the public. Everyone should do this in fact. Might help these greedy corrupt corporations die faster if they no longer have all that free advertising out there working for them. Would serve them right too.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Warner has apparently gone OCD with the “Mine! Mine! Mine!” seagull mentality. Let me tell you a little story me and WB :
A couple months ago, I was treating a bit of the blues by streaming some cartoons I have not seen for many years. Among the characters revisted were a couple of lab mice hell bent on taking over the world, and I gave them their own playlist of episodes on youtube. I was actually the first viewer of these – they had been uploaded seemingly moments before as if manifested by the power of my mind digging through my memory of their existence. I watched one or two I remembered and a couple I had never seen, then compliled a list of a few more to watch tomorrow figuring I could make up for having no tv to watch fairly well for a while in this manner. Less than a week later the entire list was non-existent, removed to “infringement” claims.
Being a little obsessive myself, the sudden scarcity of a product I was craving made me suddenly ravenous for it, and I immediately began googling. My web crawling eventually to a blog which complained of the fact that although the rodential duo’s spinoff show episodes were compiled and commercially released on DVD, the original shorts from the animaniacs cartoon where they were first introduced were not included along with any of them nor in their own package, meaning that any true fan would have to buy the entire series of that show as well to effectively complete their collection. I thought this was kind of a bogus way for WB to push the sales and while a potential buyer for the spinoff DVDs, I had zero interest in buying 15+ discs worth of full animaniacs episodes for the sake of at most a dozen 8 minute shorts featuring my faves. I figured they had to be out there somewhere and began looking for ep 3×28: “Hercules Unwound” which as a Greek mythology fan as well, I was curious to see.
Curiousity became determination as that particular episode proved to be a rarity – even torrents of complete collections skipped from episode 25 to 35. (For some reason this was how the DVD’s were packaged, and to make matters worse, WB was also rumored to have decided against releasing the fourth and final animaniacs volume due to lack of demand.) Though I had originally figured the issue on youtube to be a particularly egregious offender that was commanding this attention from WB, as my search for the one that got away intensified, I discovered that WB has cleansed the net with ruthless efficiency. Over the next few days, determination morphed into my new mission in life; promising search results were rare and each inevitably linked to some variation of the “This video is no longer available…” infringement theme. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE that was available to watch online in any form other than an incomplete snippet or clip that was in some way altered by the uploader has been yanked- not just from youtube, but Megavid, AOL, Rapishare,… you name it, they’ve pulled it! I Googled; I SurfedTCs; I Asked and I Blinxxed; I Hunted and I Yahooed and I Hulued ’til I hollered – and all to no avail. I’m no slouch with the search engines, either; they must have somebody on full-time just to seek and destroy.
And here’s the kicker:
If I had been allowed my pleasant stroll down memory lane unmolested by all this nonsense, I very likely would have become nostalgic been reminded of the appreciation I had for an “after school” kids cartoon that was clever enough to amuse a college grad. The purse strings are pretty tight nowdays, but laughter is always a good value. I think I would have been smiling enough to use some of my amazon gift certificate rewards from survey sites to buy myself a little treat that might well have been triggered by something I came across in the online world where I spend a great deal more of my time than in the mall or video store. I say “if” and “might” now for two reasons that may not have occured to the powers that be at WB:
1 – The irritation resulting from WB’s exercising their copy”right” (to charge me to see something that went out over broadcast airwaves a decade ago for free) and denying me instant gratification was off-putting enough that I immediately made a conscious decision to AVOID buying the DVD at all costs out of spite.
2- WB’s aggressive campaign to create scarcity has succeed in triggering my hoarding instinct. Since I was suddenly panicked that the material would disappear forever I wanted to make sure I didn’t have a similarly frustrating experience in the future. Though a few episodes may be slightly lower quality than the originals I might have eventually purchased, I managed to ensure that I can now revisit any and all of them at my leisure. During the few days of seeking and not finding what I wanted, I found everything else and saved it just in case. The first one I sought turned out to be the last one I obtained.
Resultant set of Policy: Profit Potential decreased to $0.00 instead of being increased from $0.00
= FAIL!
July 17th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Do you still have originally figured the issue on youtube to be a particularly egregious offender that was commanding this attention from WB as your search for the one that got away intensified you discovered that WB has cleansed the net with ruthless efficiency ?