RIAA Forces YouTube to Remove Free Guitar Lessons 341
Bushido Hacks write "Is it so wrong to learn how to play the guitar? According to NPR, a record company ordered YouTube to remove videos of a man who offered to show people how to play the guitar for free. One of the songs that he taught was copyrighted, and as a result over 100 of his videos were removed from the internet. 'Since he put his Web site up last year, he has developed a long waiting list for the lessons he teaches in person. And both he and Taub say that's still the best way to learn. If someone tells Sandercoe to take down his song lessons, he says he will. But his most valuable videos are the ones that teach guitar basics -- things like strumming, scales and finger-picking. And even in the digital age, no one holds a copyright on those things.' How could this constitute as infringement if most musicians usually experiment to find something that sounds familiar?"
Fair use (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't understand... (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, because the RIAA aren't artists?
Wraa (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the article actually say that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, the phrase "RIAA" doesn't even appear in the NPR article.
Didn't anyone bother to proof read the article before posting it, or did another strikingly similar (but different) article about guitar and YouTube get linked?
Summary doesn't mention one aspect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Taub sees the videos, at least in part, as a marketing tool for his paid instructional Web site, NextLevelGuitar.com.
Justin Sandercoe also has a teaching Web site -- justinguitar.com.
This does get uncomfortably close to using copyrighted material for profit (e.g. these videos are basically promotions for their sites, which are ad driven and have videos and products for sale.) Considering there are tens of thousands of amateur performances of copyrighted music on Youtube that aren't threatened I wonder if the RIAA sees it this way too.
By the way I'm all for fair use (and am no fan of the RIAA), but this seems a little murkier to me than the summary makes it out to be.
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
1 Song = 100 Videos? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to play the guitar, or any other instrument(including your voice), I'm sure the industry will offer up a player's license at a reasonable price so only authorized people can purchase use the instrument. And most people won't care. They're expecting a tax cut from the same politicians, who will be re-elected over and over. This issue will not endanger any of that. There was a time in the USA when it was illegal to teach slaves to read, so it's not like this is really a "new" phenomenon or anything.
Re:Fair use (Score:4, Insightful)
and before someone says "but there's a link to his website so he's technically profiting!"... no, he isn't. Anyone can watch those lessons online for free, he didn't sell it to you. Now if you decide you like his work and want more lessons and want to pay him for lessons that's fine, but you didn't pay him for the original lesson. Think of it as a teacher showing you something in a class, but then you decide to hire the teacher for private tutoring.
Re:Fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovation itself is at risk because of this stifling stranglehold. This is why the pirates mock the legal warnings of microsofts and the RIAA.
covers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fair use (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fair use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This bit is always amusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at it this way: neither did Jimi Hendrix.
That said, I agree with your other points. Just not the one about "depending" on the internet to learn how to play guitar. Plenty of great guitarists learned how to play just fine before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.
(Yes, that's a joke.)
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:4, Insightful)
Try to think it through before spouting knee-jerk anti-copyright nonsense.
And don't make us laugh by suggesting donationware (seen not to work or anything but a trivial scale) or state sponsorship. I don't want the government to approve all entertainment, and neither should you.
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine two scenarios:
1. you write successful book/album and it stays copyrighted indefinitely, bringing you income forever
2. you write successful book/album and the copyright expires in 14 years, depriving you of income
Under which scenario are you MORE likely to write a new book/album?
> J K Rowling (Harry Potter) was an unemployed single mother when she wrote her first novel.
And it was a hugely successful novel. She could easily have hung up her writer's cap and lived off royalties from the first book, but she felt compelled to write more Potter novels. Why? Just for the money? You want to tell her that to her face?
It's time to stamp out the myth that "without copyright, nothing creative would ever be produced." It wasn't true in the past, it won't be true in the future. The only thing that won't be produced is fat-cat middlemen who think music isn't something to be ENJOYED, it's merely something to be bought and sold!
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:5, Insightful)
Media companies don't want to encourage the creation of new works, they want artificial scarcity. They want to create the impression that making music, making pictures, writing stories, and making videos is some kind of black art that only they can do and that costs millions in investments. As far as they're concerned, if teaching music were outlawed, it would be all the better because they could just keep selling the crap they are selling right now.
Re:The Future Of Life..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Copyright
Star Spangled Banner
America The Beautiful
USAF Theme
USMC Theme
NAVY Theme
Hail To The Chief
I have played guitar for over 30 years, I Have my own style. I play keyboard, I play drums, I play just about everything I can get my hands on. But if you want to get technical that style is based on other styles, without which I would never have developed my style. Fingers are so long, guitars have so many strings sizes and frets, there are only so many notes, eventually everything could be copyrighted. It's finite, unless your music sounds like shit, because your no longer playing anything but random noise.
I played a lot of Stones in my time. The only legal problems, I ever had was the cops coming late at night for disturbing the peace.
The article said, "a music company accused him of copyright infringement for an instructional video on how to play a Rolling Stones song." So that is not the RIAA. Just a FYI. But in my opinion, it is "poisoned music" at this point. Yes the music (the stones) is good, but it's poison. Fuck man the stones are a foundation of learning rock music. If you can't play every fucking song by the stones you probably suck. In fact you ought to be able to play every song you hear on the radio by ear. I ain't the type that used a lot of music teachers, I had some. In school, and out of school. But this is not good any way you look at it. It ain't funny, and it ain't good.
We need to go back to the days of the Bard.
Fuck this fascist fucking crap our country is in now.
I don't have an solution beyond that, I don't see how your going to break through the corporate media to get real news out. We can't change the laws because we can't vote, we can't vote because the electronics in the machines, then looking at our senators, and oath of office breakers they're never prosecuted because the justice system is owned, and non of this shit will make it past the media blackout.
We are fucked.
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fair use (Score:2, Insightful)
Chords (Score:3, Insightful)
It's incredibly common to see songs using the exact same chords as each other (maybe in a different key), often with the same strumming pattern, e.g.:
- "Someday You Will Be Loved" by Death Cab for Cutie uses the chords of "House of the Rising Sun" all the way through, except in a different key, and with one chord made minor instead of major.
- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day and "Wonderwall" by Oasis use the same chord progression - this is just a very common progression.
But no-one cares about that, do they? So why should this case be any different? It's not illegal to play a popular song written by someone else, on the guitar. Try and find an electric guitarist who hasn't ever played the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit". So why on Earth should teaching someone to do so be illegal?
Re:Oops... I was wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair use smair fuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is Madness - eradicate all copyright! (Score:3, Insightful)
They do. They make exactly what the job market says they should be making. If stocking were a more difficult skill, the supply of capable stockers would go down and they'd make more. If more stores open and they need more stockers than are available, they'd make more. Until one of those things happen, the law of supply and demand says they won't make more.
You can argue all day about what constitutes a "good" wage, but supply and demand is busy setting the true fair value. Complaining about that is like complaining about gravity - say what you will but the law still applies to you.
Re:Sonny Bono is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Its great when everyone else works hard to entertain you for nothing, however, its not sustainable. I'm happy to pay $30 for someone to make pizza and provide a nice restaurant for me to eat it in, and I'm happy to pay $20 to a band to buy a copy of music that maybe took them a year to write, after maybe 10 years learning to play. I really don't give a fuck if the restaurant owner or the musician in question becomes rich from doing so. Just because some of them do, does not entitle me to take the fruits of their labour for free. Amazingly, I consider what *I* get for my money, and whether or not it's worth it to *me*.
Yeah, but why are musicians so special? (Score:2, Insightful)
The afore should highlight why i do music for myself and programming for a living.
I think it's time for musicians to realize that if they want to get paid for what they do without starting their own business to do it - be ready to do what most every programmer has done: Suffer the proprietary slop because it's eaiser, or support Open Source Music because it doesn't mean you sell control away. (but.. but... how do we get paid?? look at open source business!!)
Complaining that a company owns a work-for-hire done for them, sounds alot like musicians are just out to get a fast buck.
Re:Fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking an entire routine would be like taking an entire album. Also, you are positing somebody doing a comedy act, not non-commercial instruction or criticism.
Basically, you are making your point by amplifying the situation in question, which is not valid.
A more precise analogy would be if you did a comedy instruction video in which you took individual jokes from various comedians (credited) and showed how they could be told with different timing or emphasis. The result would not be a comedy performance, and so it would not infringe on the comedians' creative rights.
It would get interesting if the comedians had their own instructional videos in which they use their own materials. That would get interesting.
Re:Don McLean Fans will be going to jail now.... (Score:3, Insightful)
that's not so old.
"but I've seen Matlock a lot of times "
That is!
The DMCA needs to be modified so that ISP are still not liable for what people post(which was the main selling point) and only have to take stuff down if given a court order.