Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Day YouTube Muted my Video













Last summer Sébastien and I made a little video of the gay pride parade and posted it to YouTube. Because the camera sound wasn't very good we edited the pictures to the sounds of We Are Family by Sister Sledge.

It's not Oscar material I admit, but I liked it. So imagine my shock today when I got an e-mail from YouTube informing me that along with millions of others I was a victim of this dispute.

And that our video had been muted.



Hmmm....I don't know. It's not quite the same. Now it reminds me of one of my Dad's 8mm silent movies. All it needs is me stumbling past the camera in my diapers babbling something like gah gah poo poo ca ca.

Which is how I feel about this dispute.

I appreciate that YouTube didn't take down the video. And that they offered me a list of licensed music to replace the audio track...with a click of a button. But after listening to artists like 3 Leg Torso, Ad Libitum, and Mattfatt I don't think I could ever forgive them.

And as for Warner Brothers and the other music companies maybe they should just get with it.

Perhaps, then, the solution is not to throw a cloak of silence over YouTube, but rather to try and persuade content owners that in the brave new world of web 2.0, content needs to be freed from the shackles of convention legal thinking, and allowed to evolve at the hands of the users and fans who really matter.

Duh. You don't say. Really eh?

When will they ever learn? Use it don't lose it.

Gah gah poo poo ca ca...

2 comments:

unokhan said...

still, it's fun to see people having fun, and fun for you to recall that day.

...oh, whatever that is at 46 seconds has an internal, stately music

Simon said...

hi unokhan...oh yeah...but I crashed a six hour edit and it worked perfectly with the music...*sigh* Still I suppose just doing it was half the fun.
And you're right he does have a stately music doesn't he? And he's a really cool guy too.... ;)