Youtube: ethics and reactions

[Ilja]

Hi Mike, first of all I'm fine with any business model that is endorsed by the copyright holders. Ideally it might help fund new recordings, but it is also their right to make (smart or stupid) business decisions with their material.


Looking at Qobuz, it looks as though one can either choose a regular download at iTunes-esque prices, or pay a subscription fee and stream tracks a la Spotify. I don't see a subscription for endless downloads here.

[mbhaub]

eschiss: I don't copyright does exist for the Edison cylinders. There is a company, rediscovery.us, that takes LPS and transfers them to CD or makes downloads available - and not Edisons, either, but LPs from the Golden Age. I have several Paray recordings from Mercury that never made it to CD. And the Scherchen Gliere 3rd among others. They are meticulous in choosing mint or near-mint condition LPs and then doing minimal processing and the sound is rather extraordinary. Somehow in the copyright process, the LPs were overlooked and copyrights ran out and all this is legal. Copyright law is indeed mysterious and complex.

[mikehopf]

Hi Ilja 

OK it is a streaming service but in "True Quality CD sound" and with a couple of minor exceptions all tracks are available  and can be continuously streamed from first to last  unlike with  Naxos where it is one track at a time. I get around 20 CDs per week this way which at Australian prices works out about $ 600 or $ 30,000 per year. Even if they were all available here .. which they aren't.. my pension would not even cover a tenth of the cost. Viva Qobuz!

[chill319]

There's no point in attempting to police the internet...

However (other than inflexible profit motive) what reason could Google give for failing to police their own site more effectively than they are doing? It would need a combination of more prominent and clear legal upload language and a couple of annual salaries that, in Google's scheme of things, would be smaller than a financial flea bite.

In fact, I believe Google already polices their YouTube site when stakeholders have deep enough pockets to at least threaten legal action. For example, I've been hard pressed to find recent recordings from DG on YouTube. Their Trifonov releases, say. No, it is chiefly the more idealistic publishers of recent classical recordings who get ripped off day after day on YouTube.

[Double-A]

I am not sure "policing" youtube would be such a small matter.  The issue goes way beyond classical music uploads (any private recordings of almost any sort of public performances for example would have to be policed also.  Some kid playing a Mazas etude is fine, but the same kid playing one of Martinu's rhythmic etudes isn't). 

Maybe they are busy test driving the self policing YouTube...

[adriano]

Unfortunately, some of my own Sterling and Naxos recordings still can be downloaded from YouTube! In the past there were dozens! Now, since I pushed a few investigations, after which the responsibles could be traced and penalized, there remain just a few. I have nothing against making available a few excerpts for promotional purposes, but not complete recordings! Especially in cases where the composers are still under copyright. Google does not really care: all my letters to them remain unaswered... I had to contact foreign copyright societies, since, even in Switzerland, they are too indolent and pesismistic to take action in cases like this.

[Ilja]

Adriano, I know that Bo Hyttner has been fairly successful in getting most Sterling material removed from YT - even if by now some stuff has returned. As far as I know, YT is no longer a part of Google; rather, both are now subsidiaries of Alphabet, the parent monolith. Your best chance is therefore to fill in the infringement form I linked to above.

[adriano]

Thanks Ilja.
Just notice that Bo, when I first complained years ago about this, said, that he had nothing against these Youtube publications, that this would help selling the CDs! I went utterly mad at him... And I insisted and tried through other channels...

[sdtom]

eschiss: I don't copyright does exist for the Edison cylinders. There is a company, rediscovery.us, that takes LPS and transfers them to CD or makes downloads available - and not Edisons, either, but LPs from the Golden Age. I have several Paray recordings from Mercury that never made it to CD. And the Scherchen Gliere 3rd among others. They are meticulous in choosing mint or near-mint condition LPs and then doing minimal processing and the sound is rather extraordinary. Somehow in the copyright process, the LPs were overlooked and copyrights ran out and all this is legal. Copyright law is indeed mysterious and complex.

I am familiar with rediscovery and have downloaded material from them

[sdtom]

I really feel that for me Utube is like FM radio. If I like what I hear I'll purchase it. When I had no money for LP's I would record material off the FM radio.
Tom

[Ebubu]

"I think it's a scandal that commercial recordings are made available in this way. An absolute scandal."

It's funny that no one seems to complain of the contrary, when a company like PremiereOpera (and others) commercializes and makes profit off of recordings (usually radio broadcasts) without having ever paid any "rights" to anyone... I've just checked the list of their production, which is indeed very impressive, but which seems to me totally illegal, for the larger part.  These people probably have got these recordings from sites like this one which makes available for free radio recordings from arious countries (which is not illegal), to commercialize them and make profit without rewarding the artists that made them (which is totally illegal).

Of course, like most people here, I'd rather see these recordings available to a larger audience that rotting away on some INA or BBC shelves, but still, if one wants to question the legal aspects of it...

[Alan Howe]

You make a fair point, of course.

[Ebubu]

And thus, if you strictly stick to your policy of taking off the site the broadcast downloads (which might very well benefit their "business model") when they are "commercially issued"...

[Alan Howe]

That's assuming they get them from us...

[Ebubu]

No, no, they are many sources where they can get them of course.
BUT I've seen already at least 3 recordings that they have "issued commercially", which are still offered here (and that's only because I've not checked any further).
My point, of course, is that one should be clear about what "issued commercially" means, and we probably should add "and legally".