Boing Boing – by Cory Doctorow
James Rhodes, a pianist, performed a Bach composition for his Youtube channel, but it didn’t stay up — Youtube’s Content ID system pulled it down and accused him of copyright infringement because Sony Music Global had claimed that they owned 47 seconds’ worth of his personal performance of a song whose composer has been dead for 300 years.
This is a glimpse of the near future. In one week, the European Parliament will vote on a proposal to force all online services to implement Content ID-style censorship, but not just for videos — for audio, text, stills, code, everything.
Just last week, German music professor Ulrich Kaiser posted his research on automated censorship of classical music, in which he found that it was nearly impossible to post anything by composers like Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner, because companies large and small have fraudulently laid claim to their whole catalogs.
Europeans have one week to contact their MEPs to head off this catastrophe.
Stop what you’re doing and contact two friends in the EU right now and send them to Save Your Internet — before it’s too late.
“… companies large and small have fraudulently laid claim to their whole catalogs.”
So sue.
Give the jew lawyers something more to salivate about.
What ever happened to books and music falling into the category of “public domain” after a certain number of years?
No one would be able to “own the rights” to Bach, or anything else that old. (and I think it was only 20 or 30 years before you could no longer collect royalties on your creations).
Lazy bastards want to retire on grand dad’s work.