In the age of Social Media, Copyright Protections Seem Anti-Social

Since 2005, YouTube has reigned supreme as the go-to site for sharing user-generated videos online. The popular social media video-sharing site is host to an increasingly massive range of content, where users can find everything from music videos, television show clips, home movies, karaoke attempts, and viral pranks, just to name a few. But because of its popularity, YouTube is often at the center of multimillion dollar lawsuits, heated online debate, and public scrutiny over the site’s usage of copyright-protected content. Many companies, such as Warner Music Group, view user-created videos utilizing their content, whether in part or in whole, as a violation of copyright law. As a result, YouTube has begun to take more proactive measures. Videos containing any form of copyright-protected audio will either be involuntarily muted or removed from YouTube entirely.

Affected videos now display the following message:
“This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”

Web Advantage conducted a recent poll to gain insight into the general opinion regarding YouTube’s recent policy changes. We posed the question: What will happen to YouTube’s popularity as a result of its decision to start muting copyright-protected audio from user videos? An overwhelming majority (83%) of respondents felt that You Tube would lose popularity as a result.

YouTube’s decision extends beyond the music industry into television as well. For instance, Fox has been known to remove recorded content of its popular show American Idol almost immediately after it is posted to YouTube. Although Fox offers full-length episodes of many of its shows on its website, American Idol is not one of them.

Copyright concerns affect other media formats as well. Apple iTunes, for example, has always offered content with built-in Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection, preventing users from sharing music or other media purchased through the iTunes store. iTunes has recently taken a step in the opposite direction by first offering more DRM-free content and by allowing users to convert previous music files to a DRM-free file, enabling users to listen to the content on more than one device. But this feature does come at a price. The new tracks will be priced on a tiered scale of $.69, $.99 and $1.29. If a users want to convert previously downloaded tracks to DRM-free format, it will cost $.30 per track and must be an all-or-nothing decision. Users will not have the ability to pick and choose which tracks they can convert.

With all of the copyright issues and concerns over DRM content, many recording artists have taken it upon themselves to release their albums independently. Last year Radiohead released their most recent album through their own website and gave fans the option to pay as much or as little for the album as they chose. By the date of release they had reportedly sold over 1.2 million copies, proving that non-traditional methods of online marketing and digital distribution can work, despite going against the grain of the recording industry.

In today’s Web 2.0, it seems counterintuitive for companies to reject what should be considered free publicity rather than embrace it. The recording industry could choose to view YouTube videos as free promotion of their content. How many times have you discovered new bands because you heard their music featured in a completely unrelated YouTube video clip? As we continue to witness the growth and evolution of social media, these drastic steps backward seem almost anti-social.

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