RE: digital Beatles -- the mother of all licensing

["Ken Masters" <kmasters@ithealthed.com>]

Hi Sandy

The legality is an entirely different issue - for the most part, 
the music companies have made noises about Youtube, and have then 
backed off.  There may be several reasons for this, including the 
possibility that the artists get a share of the advertising 
revenue earned by Youtube.  In addition, they don't seem to be 
upset by people doing things like miming themselves to the music, 
or creating their own videos based on the music.  (The music, 
however, is the original, and can be extracted).  When they have 
objected, the videos have been removed.

Someone like Lady Gaga (hate the music, but you have to admire 
they way she's figured out the advertising), knows that it's 
exposure, and it gets people to her live concerts.  (Where she 
also allows, even encourages, the audience to video from their 
cell-phones).

As for the peer-to-peer networks like the one mentioned in the 
article. Well, I steered clear of mentioning those because it's 
simply impossible to measure how much downloading happens through 
those (it's even impossible to try to work out how many of those 
sites exist, because they can come and go at a whim.)  Those who 
get caught are usually those that blunder into sites like those 
without knowing about VPNs, encryption, etc, and then brag openly 
about doing it.

As a side note - I'm certainly not promoting the illegal 
distribution of music, or any other material - I'm merely 
commenting on practices.

Regards

Ken

----

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education