Sunday, February 22, 2009

don't mess with the WMG

Hey guys, sorry...trying to do this on at least a weekly basis. This past week I've been sick and I found out yesterday I have shingles. Good news is I miss work the next few days (hell, I deserve it after the last couple nights I went through at work...) but I'll pretty much drive myself crazy in my room trying to stay away from everyone. To those who don't know what 'shingles' is, I'll explain it the way the nurse did: To anyone who has had the chicken pox at an earlier age, the gene (?) or something stays in your spinal cord for a very long time. Think of it as a small particle of memory on your spine. (I had the chicken pox when I was 6) The chances of 'chicken pox' coming back are likely when you get older. So, twenty-one years later, I start feeling weird and soon I start getting large bumps of what I think is acne on my face. I even go to work for a couple nights while people ask me what's going on. I'll even admit, that I thought I was developing an allergic reaction to something, but at least I know now what's wrong. I got some good medicine so I should recover soon.......

Well, the main topic I was going to bring up is copyrighting. In the last couple years (or ever since we made Youtube a part of our Internet lives), we've found so much copyrighted material that you would think there is no such law anymore. True, we have seen some videos pulled over time because of that. But now, it seems its all changed. The WMG, or Warner Music Group, has now muted thousands of videos, because of people using their songs without permission. This includes my WLCA in Godfrey video that I plugged on this blog a year ago. It comes to me as a surprise because the video, after nearly a year on Youtube, has only gotten over 250 views, but somehow some Nazi in that WMG group found that I used 10 seconds of the Cure's song "Dressing Up". I didn't even put it in the description column. So I'm thinking some random person from that label is listening to over 10,000 videos a day trying to hunt people down. Oh well. Back in January, Facebook pulled my 'Voigt Family Christmas '07' video because I used Carrie Underwood's 'Do You Hear What I Hear?' throughout the video. It was my own fault bc I wrote it in the description. But I guess its time for me to pay the price, as well as many other people. My only solution for keeping 'WLCA in Godfrey' alive would be substituting different music but it would almost be impossible to edit that stuff down. I have been extremely lucky (knocks on wood) that my documentary (which has gotten 1000s of views) hasn't been muted (yet). It does contain several song clips from popular songs from the past.

But, as for now, I gotta face reality and respect others property. I understand the music business is doing bad, so they gotta do what they gotta do to make sure nothing gets out for free (unless its ok with them). But then you also got musicians like Tom Petty who are like, "As long as people can hear my music, what the hell's wrong?".

No comments:

Post a Comment