As EMI Cites Harvey Danger Lipdub As Inducing Infringement, Harvey Danger Singer Says Lipdub Makes Him Incredibly Happy
from the who-did-what-now? dept
You may recall back in December that we wrote about the oddity of EMI suing Vimeo, claiming that by creating its own "lipdub" videos of people singing along to a song, it was actively encouraging (i.e., "inducing") copyright infringement. The main example, of course, was the company's first lipdub, which kicked off the craze, to the song Flagpole Sitta by the band Harvey Danger:Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.
That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you's.A thousand thank yous... and a lawsuit from your label.
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Filed Under: copyright, flagpole sitta, harvey danger, inducement, lipdub
Companies: emi, vimeo
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Are the videos "happy"? Yes. Do they have rights to the music? No.
You attempt to cloud the rights issue by bringing in things that are just not relevant to the rights situation. Does it matter if the singer is happy or sad? Would it suddenly be terrible is the singer was sad, or would you just tar and feather him like Bono?
No matter how much emotion you try to inject, the story remains the same, Vimeo made and encouraged people to make videos with materials they don't have rights to, and then profited from them (or at least attempted to profit). No happy or sad, just the facts.
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I think you're confused. The entire point is that EMI got a ton of free advertising, and they're suing for the service. That's stupid, regardless of what 'rights' you have.
BTW, Harvey Danger is actually a guy named Harvey Danger? I'm strangely disappointed.
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The system is out of whack because the person who wrote the song approves of its use. But, someone else owns the rights to it and doesn't.
The argument is not: the lipdubs are right and EMI is wrong. The argument is: the system is messed up.
Not to mention ...
How can a video be happy?
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In this case, the point is that the artist himself was in favour of the video, and the average consumer believes that it is artists who get to decide what happens to their music (that's what anyone would guess without knowing more about the situation) - however, as we know, it's usually not artists, but their labels, who make these decisions, and that the decisions themselves often make very little sense.
No matter how much emotion you try to inject, the story remains the same, Vimeo made and encouraged people to make videos with materials they don't have rights to, and then profited from them (or at least attempted to profit). No happy or sad, just the facts.
Mike is not injecting emotion - the emotion is already there. The artist himself "injected" it, not to mention the fans. You might only want the facts, but this isn't a Fact List, it's a damn Blog. To Mike, and to me, and to a lot of other people, this is a pretty sad situation, and a good example of just how estranged the music industry has become from music itself.
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And yet...
And of course, you ignore issues within this like fair use, and if the infringement causes actual harm to the original content and their owners. According to you, there would never be documentaries that didnt pay for EVERY SINGLE thing shown in them that are held by a rights holders. According to you, there would never be transformative use, of which this most certainly is. Luckily, the law, and common sense, sees some of these things differently than you and your Corporate Masters do.
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http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/02/2056210
I downloaded this album and their songs come up on my iPod all the time.
So while I agree that EMI shouldn't be suing, clearly the relationship between the artist and the label are strained and the two of them would likely never agree on this.
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You have to protect artist's rights by preventing artists their fair use rights.
Makes so much sense, doesn't it.
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http://scrapthetoll.blogspot.com/
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An Idea
How about making 2 consecutive posts taking both
sides of an issue, any issue, one in each post.
Love to see how TAM responds. Would he disagree
with both of your posts? Or would he be forced into
actually agreeing with one of them.
Then he couldn't, by definition, be the anti-mike
any longer. Right?
I need a drink.
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Yep
any longer. Right?
I need a drink."
Jan 28th, 2010 @ 4:43pm
by Anonymous Coward
"pretty sures hes already done that, and TAM was caught contradicting himself"
Um, yes, in EVERY POST HE POSTS. EVERY single opposite-stance he takes, he hypocrisizes (word?) and contradicts himself in some way.
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What Rights?
I feel that artists who've sold out their Right's, have no cause for complaint and those that go out on public record voicing their discontent at their record companies, need swift dressing down verbally.
It makes no difference whether it was rights to be exploited for several years or not, then reverting to back to the artist. A deal is a deal, and reneging on a contract is bad form whatever your back ground.
Unless the contract was misrepresented, or the advice received was flawed or biased because of associations with the parties involved, then sorry no case.
What needs to happen, if you believe in this new utopia that will bring new income streams to artists. Is have artists move away from old distribution models, not do deals with them.
With respect to Vimeo exploiting the fair use angle, by deflecting responsibility on to the services user base. Well this is becoming the norm, but certainly pushes the fair use grey area and will no doubt be tested in the legal system, until the powers that be realize it would be best to redefine the terms given to "Copy Rights"� within the international systems of LAW.
This would require that humanity as whole would need to agree on something for a change.
Thats when I begin to laugh ..... LOL
I can see, and have seen, both sides of the fence. But artists are NOT abandoning these old distribution bastions in droves, and successes are varied in the NEW frontiers of distribution. Though I for one do believe in their merit.
I think in the future you will see new models appearing, and perhaps the Old Record companies have had their day. But I dare say they'll be around for a lot longer than you think, just not in their current form.
I look forward to the day when they are leaner and more creative in their operational directives. Not run by penny pinching accountants with no real depth of knowledge of the medium or how to generate sales.
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I wanna see an artist get sued...
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Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
"You attempt to cloud the rights issue by bringing in things that are just not relevant to the rights situation. Does it matter if the singer is happy or sad? Would it suddenly be terrible is the singer was sad, or would you just tar and feather him like Bono?"
Alienate people who the record labels are supposed to be working for and helping. Thats why comments like this ...
"That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you's."
Combined with yours make me realise you and the record labels are self defeating. I get the new business plan, Alienate the Fans and alienate the artists. Makes great business sense in the alternate reality I just got back from ....
.... where the labels were all publicly traded and all the board members went short on the stock.
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Re: I wanna see an artist get sued...
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Re: Yep
Carry on.
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Re: Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
Let's say the record labels (or the rights holders, it isn't just labels, no matter how much you want to blame them) allow this. Then next week, someone makes another video, uses the music again, and sells advertising with it. Then the week after, someone uses the music for their non-profit organization video. Then a week later, someone uses it to sell toothpaste. Where in there should they suddenly react?
You (and Mike) may not like where the line is being drawn, but at the end, there has to be a line, otherwise you are in the give a little, lose a little business until you have no more rights left. It's the old legal slippery slope.
In the end, Mike knows the rights holders are well within their rights here, that Vimeo really doesn't have much to stand on, but we are suppose to be swayed by the "factoids" that the videos are somehow fun and that someone who appeared on the original song thinks they are fun too. I have to laugh, only because people here get upset at me if I don't have anything other than an emotional argument about something, yet this one is entirely on emotion.
So keep going.
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Wana see an artist get sued?
Classic misrepresentation, ... or should I say they believed the hype unfortunately.
Prince would have to be a classic, because they [ label omitted ] said they would give him complete creative control.
He didn't bite at fist, then they offered a seat on the board with a deal worth 700 million US.
He bought it hook line a sinker and signed.
Only to find out how rules in the board room change very quickly, and the control can shift all of a sudden.
Before long he felt like the character Kunta Kinte in the Alex Hayley novel [ ROOTED ], .... or should I say SLAVE!
Silly move, he already had enough money, recording studio's & film studios in Minneappolis care of Paisley Park.
He only need have organised his own distribution, not sold his soul.
We all now know how many years he lost in the wilderness as Mr. Love Symbol.
You have to give him credit for putting up one of the most creative legal battles in legal music business history.
Which more than makes up for a slip in judgement.
Hats off to you SIR :)
P.S. He now has all business in house via his crew, artists and private fan club. Which incidentally offers great offers and perks for loyal fans.
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Is the hypothesis really that everybody is just an idiot?
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Re: Re: Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
You argument, as ever, is ridiculous. To begin with, there's a good argument that the video falls under some kind of fair use exception to copyright. Even if this is not the case, EMI are unlikely to have actually lost anything from this video - but have much to gain. It's free advertising, and there will definitely have been people out there who had never heard the song and decided to pay for a copy after seeing the video. No harm, no foul.
"Then next week, someone makes another video, uses the music again, and sells advertising with it."
Perhaps a grey area in some ways, but so what? The video still gets distributed and EMI get the benefits, only someone else gets a slice. Legally not correct, and in a grey moral area, but EMI will not lose anything unless they were also trying to stream the video with advertising. They're not, so the point is moot.
"Then the week after, someone uses the music for their non-profit organization video."
Why would this be a bad thing, either morally or legally? A charity decided to use a song? Great. EMI should support that, they would come across as the good guys and regain a bit of the good will they've squandered since the mid 90s. If they worked with the organisation to set up a sponsorship deal instead of calling in the lawyers, all parties would ultimately benefit.
"Then a week later, someone uses it to sell toothpaste. Where in there should they suddenly react?"
There we go - they react right there. Such an action would not be covered by any kind of fair use rights and is a clear violation of copyright law. EMI could happily sue, and neither the artist nor the general public would be likely to have any objection. This is the type of situation that copyright is set up for, not situations like the one in the article.
"there has to be a line, otherwise you are in the give a little, lose a little business until you have no more rights left"
...and yet, as we often point out here, the actions they're taking to "protect" those rights are causing them large costs and a lot of lost business. The point is that everyone who posts here, with very few exceptions, are the customers (or potential customers) of companies like EMI. You consistently trash the ideas presented here, but all we're really saying is "these actions make me not want to buy music, here's a suggestion of how to make me want to buy".
I personally used to not care about labels until the RIAA started their overreaching "protection" attempts. Now, it's over 5 years since I've bought a major label album - and, no, I don't "pirate" them either - as a direct result of their actions. I buy at least 4 albums per month. It's not "piracy" that's the issue here, nor other so-called infringement. It's the labels' own actions that have lost them not only existing fans but also the chance to sell the product a new generation actually wants.
"we are suppose to be swayed by the "factoids" that the videos are somehow fun and that someone who appeared on the original song thinks they are fun too."
The fans like the video and are encouraged to buy more music. The artist responsible for creating the original music is happy with it, stating that it reignited his love for a song that he had long tired of. Everybody wins, or they would if the middlemen weren't so utterly stuck in a previous era of marketing. All these actions are supposed to be "for the artists" and to "protect their business", right? How, then, does it make sense to piss off both the artists and the fans, and try to prevent a free form of advertising?
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I watched the video but I'm not buying
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Re: An Idea
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The midddle man that makes both sides unhappy...
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Re: Re: Re: Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
As for the rest of your post, let's poke some thing:
and yet, as we often point out here, the actions they're taking to "protect" those rights are causing them large costs and a lot of lost business. The point is that everyone who posts here, with very few exceptions, are the customers (or potential customers) of companies like EMI. You consistently trash the ideas presented here, but all we're really saying is "these actions make me not want to buy music, here's a suggestion of how to make me want to buy".
This starts back down the road of entitlement, where end consumers have been taught that they have all sorts of rights over IP that they just don't have. Would it have hurt Vimeo to get the rights first? Why should they have a business model that ignores the rights of others?
Fair use in this case is very unlikely, the video is long, the content is fully used, and it is clearly being used with commercial purpose by Vimeo. If you permit this sort of use, why would the IP holder be allowed to stop the next commercial use?
Vimeo may feel somehow entitled to thumb their noses at copyright law, and the end consumers may feel entitled to get something for nothing, but the buck has to stop somewhere.
The fans like the video and are encouraged to buy more music. The artist responsible for creating the original music is happy with it, stating that it reignited his love for a song that he had long tired of. Everybody wins, or they would if the middlemen weren't so utterly stuck in a previous era of marketing
There is no indication that the fans are buying any more music (they are likely to download it for free from a torrent), and in the end nobody wins. The rights holders who paid the Harvey Danger guys a sizable amount of money up front don't get paid, the artist / writers don't get paid, and pretty much the only people happy are the "fans" and Vimeo, who each get to profit from a free pass. Your version of "everyone" isn't very inclusive, is it? I have a feeling that the "everyone" you point to is the group you are in, but which doesn't include everyone.
I personally used to not care about labels until the RIAA started their overreaching "protection" attempts. Now, it's over 5 years since I've bought a major label album - and, no, I don't "pirate" them either
So wouldn't it be better if Vimeo only lipdubbed those artists that want it, and that Vimeo gets the rights to? Oh, wait, that would mean using music that few people know, few people would want to sing along with, and likely would not help promote Vimeo. I sort of see where this goes.
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They STILL don't get it
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Same old, same old...
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No. "If anything better underlines my point it’s an email I received from Sean Nelson, the frontman of the band Harvey Danger..."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
I have bought music because of hearing it in a YouTube video (not uploaded by the rights holder). It seems surpassingly unlikely that I am the only one. It seems much more likely there are thousands or more probably millions of other people who have done the same thing.
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Re: Re: Yep
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Anti-Mike .... may the war begin ...
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