1: YouTube. 2: The RIAA. 3: Our Last Best Hope.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

1) Don't post at YouTube:

YouTube Owns YourStuff (So does YouTubeTwo)

Excerpt:

In its Terms & Conditions, the wildly popular video sharing site YouTube emphasizes that "you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions".

There's quite a large "BUT...", however. Not only does YouTube retain the right to create derivative works (emphasis mine), but so do the users, and so too, does YouTube's successor company.

2) Don't post in the open:

In case you haven't been following the news for the past few years, the RIAA will be more than happy to come after you for doing that. While the tv show and movie bigwigs haven't gone after vids much (arguments can be made for fair use re: clips vs. episodes/full-length films), the music industry is BAT-SHIT INSANE about musical artists' tracks being posted anywhere they can be listened to/downloaded for free (and yes, btw, you can download off YouTube if you know how). It doesn't matter how the song is posted; you've shared their material for free and they are completely mental about it. Ask the people who run the AMV, who had to take down hundreds (I believe) of vids after hearing from various recording artists' labels. Ask people who have been sued (not just issued C&D letters, but sued) and had to pay for downloading music.

3) How to host vids as safely as you can:

Set up a subdirectory at your own domain. If you don't own your own domain space, find someone who is willing to share. Password-protect the sub-directory using an .htaccess file. Don't use the name of the song in the filename of your vid (example: if you've vidded Buffy to Bring Me to Life, name the file BringBuf.zip). (Oh, yeah, zip your files to avoid hotlinking menaces.) Put spider-avoiding code in your .htaccess as well. If you don't know how to do these things, ask.

Bottom line - vidders create and host illegal downloads, plain and simple. Don't be stupid about it.

Comments

[trythil.livejournal.com]

f you bring a copyright violation to the attention of a record label they have to take action

I believe (at least under) US copyright law, one is not required to take action for the copyright to remain valid. See, for example:

- § 501. Infringement of copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501), in which the term entitled and not required is used in (b);

- Chapter 3, Duration of Copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html) makes no mention of early termination in the absence of enforcement (and neither does Chapter 1, Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)).

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but the law seems to suggest that such actions are not required.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, requirement is true of Trademarks but not of copyright IIRC.

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

I could easily be wrong on this, but I was thinking less about the copyright law itself and more about the purpose of a record label. Managing distribution and enforcing copyright protection for bands that sign with them is part of a record label is for. A band can easily choose ignore copyright violations even when someone brings it to their attention directly, but for a record label to do so means they're not doing their job.