YOUTUBE - when copyright is copywrong

YouTube more recently began blocking music videos from all companies from its site in Britain after failing to reach terms with PRS for Music, a group that collects royalties on behalf of singers and songwriters.

The question for the two sides is, who will users blame — YouTube or the record label, in this case Warner?

NVDL: Recently millions of Rands worth of DVDs were destroyed in Johannesburg. While this sort of thing makes complete sense right now, in an energy deprived (and cash-strapped) future, not only will piracy be cost effective and energy efficient, copyright will become obsolete. The whole idea of it, endlessly rewarding some initiaitve by massive reproduction and distribution with high packaging and distribution costs...sorry, that's not going to continue. The internet is already turning the concept into a myth. While to some extent I support copyright (to ideas, source material etc), I think the lengths music companies are going to to protect profits is both impractical and greedy.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Countless other amateurs have been ensnared in a dispute between Warner Music and YouTube, which is owned by Google. The conflict centers on how much Warner should be paid for the use of its copyrighted works — its music videos — but has grown to include other material produced by amateurs that may also run afoul of copyright law. “Thousands of videos disappeared,” said Fred von Lohmann, staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group that asked affected YouTube users to contact it. “Either they turned off the audio, or they pulled the video.” In late December, Warner and YouTube failed to agree to terms on a new licensing deal that would have paid Warner a cut of advertising revenue in exchange for permission to stream the music company’s videos. Warner then began having its music videos removed from YouTube. The site has licensing deals with the other major music companies, and had a deal with Warner for two years before the recent impasse.