Copyright And The YouTube Battle
Being a rockstar has its benefits, but when music doesn’t pay, artists unite for change.
YouTube has come a very long way since its first uploaded video in 2005. When co-founder Jawed Karim posted a video of himself entitled “Me at the Zoo” documenting his trip to the San Diego zoo, he could hardly have imagined that one day the platform would stream millions of hours of video every week.
Bring On The Fanfare
One of the primary ways that YouTube users use the service is to listen to music. If, for example, you don’t pay for or have access to a streaming service, or you don’t own music yourself, YouTube serves as a free and reliable stand-in. In countries like Japan, where streaming services haven’t taken off, use of YouTube is incredibly high, according to ComScore. Even if artists don’t upload their own music videos or tracks to the network, third parties often do it for them, and it’s not uncommon to find rare versions of tracks posted by mega-fans.
This is great news for music fans, but as is customary in the digital era, not great for the creators themselves. While streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music offer royalties to artists (albeit in sums that many say are far too low), YouTube cannot offer royalties if the music was uploaded by a third party. That means that the onus falls on the artist to find and report unauthorized listening of their music. But in reality, with millions upon millions of hours of footage on YouTube, this method is simply not effective enough to prevent IP theft.
Copyright Reform
It should come as no surprise then that there is a movement within the music industry to reform YouTube so that it provides more royalties to creators and musicians while protecting the intellectual property they work hard to create.
Earlier in the year, a list of artists including Katy Perry, Billy Joel and Rod Stewart sent a petition to the U.S. Copyright Office asking for changes to be made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The main crux of the letter was that YouTube was benefiting from music and not reimbursing artists fairly. The mechanism that artists have to police infringement, they claimed, was outdated and not suited for the digital era. This has implications for businesses too, as uploading videos or content with music that they don’t have the rights to use could result in a case of infringement.
Slice Of The Pie
More recently, another open letter to Congress was published and backed by Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and U2. Swift has been a vocal and controversial critic of music streaming in the digital age, notably removing her music from Spotify entirely due to feeling that the service doesn’t give artists enough of a cut. Though the letter, which also focuses on the DMCA, doesn’t single out YouTube, it’s clear who it’s aimed at.
“The DMCA simply doesn’t work. It’s impossible for tens of thousands of individual songwriters and artists to muster the resources necessary to comply with its application. The tech companies who benefit from the DMCA today were not the intended protectorate when it was signed into law nearly two decades ago. We ask you to enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment. It’s only then that consumers will truly benefit.”
YouTube’s Response
YouTube, for their part, say that while they appreciate the efforts, this terrain is fraught and there’s bound to be disagreement. They claim that they are doing their best to treat creators fairly. They wrote on their blog in April:
“We work to ensure rights-holders make money no matter who uploads their music…to date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry and that number is growing significantly year-on-year.”
Like most things in the digital era, the fact that content is already being disseminated for free is the biggest hurdle; it’s hard to take something back once a user has had access to it at no cost. There’s simply no going back to how things used to be, so both artists and tech companies are going to have to reach compromises on the best way forward.