Phil Collins hates the Army
First, Happy New Year everyone! It was a great one and I’m looking forward to 2009. That being said, I was surprised to wake up on 1/1/09 and see an email in my box from YouTube saying that a video I had in my account was removed because it violated copyright laws.
Dear Koka Sexton,
Video Disabled
A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video 101st Airborne Iraq. The audio content identified in your video is In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.
I hardly use YouTube. I have a few movies in the account but for the most part I use the service to look at other peoples videos like SXEPHIL, iJustine and funny stuff like the Retared Policeman. I have ten times as movies added as favorites than I have actually available through me.
The background of of the 101st Airborne in Iraq video is an easy one. When I was stationed overseas, one of the things some of the troops did when they weren’t dodging IEDs and ambushes was create short videos of their unit overseas. There are hundreds of these now since the war has been going on for years and years but the 101st Airborne video was one of the very first. Someone from the 101st put it together and shared it with us while we were stationed in the same base. Phil Collins should be happy that his music is being listened to in such a great way. In fact, I only think like 45 seconds of his song was used in the 4 minute video. I never would have thought that the music in the background would violate copyright laws.
What gets me is that there are thousands of videos on YouTube that people have put together and have other artists music playing in the background. Some of these videos are nothing more than a person lip syncing or *gasp* really singing for their webcam. Those videos seem to be alright. YouTube does have something called the AudioSwap library and I can see if the video can be reactivated with some YouTube approved music but I don’t know if any of it will fit the video flow the way Phil Collins did.
Does YouTube do this a lot? I don’t want a lesson in copyright law. I understand the issue to a point but I’m not using the music in the video as the primary focus, it was only the background to actual videos of what the soldiers were doing.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Categories: Technology Tags: 101st_airborne, Army, copyright_laws, email, happy_new_year, Iraq, new_year, phil_collins, YouTube
There are 4 comments. Leave a comment!
¬ Nate
#2752 January 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
That sucks. I saw the video in your YouTube profile before and it was really good. It goes to show that soldiers can be very talented. Is there a way you can repost the video to another video sharing site?
¬ Koka Sexton
#2753 January 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Ya. It was a nice video. I’m going to repost it, I just need to figure out my options.
¬ Ryan Kazinec
#2759 January 1st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Koka,
You would be amazed at how many things violate copyright laws. Websites such as youtube are legally obligated to take immediate action when a copyright holder approaches them about a copyright infringement. The legal obligation or law is known as the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” (DMCA).
This actually happened to me on Ebay. I was selling a Apexi fuel computer for a Honda and since I used an image from Apexi’s actual website Ebay removed the auction because they were contacted by Apexi. The premise of the law is great but some rights holders should back off a bit, so long as the use of the material isn’t discrediting their image or hurting their bottom line.
Ryan Kazinec’s last blog post..Is Job Security Becoming More Significant Than Compensation and Benefits?
¬ Anonymous
#4627 August 29th, 2009 at 2:08 am
fuck you phil collins.