RE: digital Beatles -- the mother of all licensing

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

The music companies may not have taken on YouTube but the movie 
companies have, in Viacom vs. YouTube:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/23/business/la-fi-ct-viacom-20100623.

Though the initial decision went against Viacom, it is on appeal, 
and I would bet that RIAA will be among the amici filing briefs 
in support of Viacom, as the publishing industry is.

Sandy Thatcher


At 4:46 PM -0500 11/17/10, Ken Masters wrote:
>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