Did Pearl Jam Enlist Fan Club To DMCA Fan Videos? Probably Not...
from the but,-still-is-odd dept
Kaden sent over this article from an OCWeekly reporter who had a short video he had shot of Pearl Jam performing live taken down from YouTube. What struck the reporter as most interesting was that the DMCA notice came from Ten Club, which is Pearl Jam's fan club. Oddly, we've even used Pearl Jam's Ten Club as a great example of how a band can give fans a reason to buy. In fact, Pearl Jam has actually been really good on issues like copyright. The band embraced the internet early on, has always worked hard at connecting with fans, used the Ten Club to give people extra reasons to buy, shunned DRM, and recognized early on that giving away free music can actually help a band make more money.So, I'm a bit confused about this strategy of DMCAing short fan videos. However, despite the claims in the article and Ten Club's refusal to respond to the reporter's questions, I doubt that (as the article implies) that it's really "the fan club" itself that's issuing the DMCA notices. Instead, it looks like the corporation that's set up for Pearl Jam is called Pearl Jam Ten Club LLC and that covers both the band's business and the fan club. You can see the full name on various DMCA takedown notices at Chilling Effects. So while it's still a bit surprising that the band would run around chasing fan videos, rather than embracing them, at least it doesn't appear to have reached the point of deputizing fans to file takedowns for the band...
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fan club, pearl jam, takedowns, youtube
Companies: pearl jam ten club
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That is some screwed up thinking. The bootleg live recordings did not diminish the sales of Pearl Jam's studio albums. Nor did those bootleg recordings diminish the sales of tickets to Pearl Jam concerts.
But selling CDs and concert tickets was not enough for the members of Pearl Jam. To Pearl Jam it was a zero sum game. They not only had to get a lot of money for themselves, they had to make sure no one else made any money either.
After that I stopped being a fan. They're mean-spirited money-grubbing pricks.
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Every concert was a double CD and sold for only $10. Probably not much profit in that for having to mix them down and do very limited releases of those CD's.
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I think in the early days, they would let people hook into the sound board to record if you had the correct cables and stayed out of the way of the guy running the board..
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Legal Boy In Action
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I never said it was a money grab. I said it was to stop other people from making money. The Grateful Dead allowed other people to record their shows and sell their shows, without throwing a hissy-fit. I had several friends who made money in the summer traveling around with the band, recording and selling the shows.
And if the quality of anything is poor, people won't buy it. The market will solve that problem very quickly. But yet, for nearly a century, the market for bootlegs still exist. Maybe, just maybe, it's not about the quality? Bah bah, little sheep.
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Close, but not quite. The Dead never had a problem letting people record and distribute audience recordings, but they NEVER permitted people to sell those recordings. For that, like PJ, you could buy the official release CD for $15-20. (still a good deal)
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Also don't forget Pearl Jam tried scheduling a tour without using Ticketmaster, and found it next to impossible. I think they eventually caved, and lost a lot of fans who just thought they were being greedy or whiny or something.
This was all back when "keeping it real" stopped having any meaning.
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muscians versus celebs
That is because this is a band of musicians, who enjoy PLAYING music for a living. This sort of philosophy always brings me back to the great Jerry Garcia line about people bootlegging Dead shows (which built likely the largest continual following any band has ever enjoyed). He said "once Ive played a note, Im done with it, you can have it".
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muscians versus celebs
That is because this is a band of musicians, who enjoy PLAYING music for a living. This sort of philosophy always brings me back to the great Jerry Garcia line about people bootlegging Dead shows (which built likely the largest continual following any band has ever enjoyed). He said "once Ive played a note, Im done with it, you can have it".
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