Viral Video Of 9-Year-Old Girl Football Star... Taken Down Because Of Music

from the now-back-with-awful-music dept

If you follow the "hot viral video of the week" you probably have seen or heard about Sam Gordon, the 9-year-old girl who is pretty damn good at football, (the American kind for all you foreigners), as shown in an impressive highlight reel her father put together: As tends to happen with these sorts of things, Sam was everywhere this week, with all sorts of press coverage including appearances on morning TV shows and such.

Just one problem. The original video had all sorts of famous songs in it:

Without the music in that video — Jane’s Addiction covering The Doors’ “LA Woman” and The Germs’ “Lexicon Devil” (as part of a medley) and the Beastie Boys’ “Soul Fire” (also in a sense a cover) — this video wouldn’t be nearly as effective, and thus not as viral. Her father Brent Gordon, who originally uploaded the video, chose these songs because they are exactly what this video needs. As any Hollywood director knows, pairing the right music with any video makes it way more effective.

Normally, the Beastie Boys, Jane’s Addiction, The Germs, and The Doors could choose to get paid when a video with their music goes viral like this. But that does not appear to be the case here, at this point anyway.

Sure enough, soon after people started pointing that out -- and even though the video had something like 2 million views lined up already, it went down due to a copyright claim. It looks like ContentID showed up late, because the "takedown" mentions a bunch of possible copyright holders, without saying who made the final call: After all that, Sam's father, Brent changed the music to something that wouldn't get pulled down -- though people are already complaining that the new music is "lame."

We’re pleased to see that the video is online, because that Sam Gordon is a sight to behold, with amazing moves and no small amount of moxie, which is the main reason people liked the video so much. But it’s a shame that the music is now so bad that we couldn’t even make it through one viewing without muting it. With the other soundtrack, I ended up watching it five times in a row.

And thus it was proven for the umpteenth time that A) The right music makes all the difference in a video, and B) Copyright, while necessary, tends to rain on parades, especially when multiple rights-holders get involved.

Of course, depending on your general position in this debate, you can make one of two arguments here. The copyright hardliners will say that this proves the importance of good music and that Gordon should have paid up in the first place. Those who find problems with today's copyright system will note that it's not like your average person is going to even be able to license, let alone want to pay for, songs to stick on a video like this (especially without knowing that it's about to go crazy viral). The music industry could make this easier with a simple database / store option ("want this song for your non-commercial video? $1 -- click here to buy the license") but they don't seem to want to do that. So, instead, we get this situation where no one wins. The video has crappy music. The good music providers don't get paid. How is that a good solution?

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, sam gordon, viral videos