I wouldn’t normally double up or duplicate post an item – but having received a blogger takedown notification from the good people at Blogpspot - and seemingly fingers being wagged at other bloggers on the same day - thought it would be worth loading up something I posted on The Word website here as a cautionary measure for any occasional embedders or music based bloggers…..
I don't know many many of the contributors and chippers-in to The Word website are music bloggers or blog-browsers themselves - but if you qualify for either category, I have some disturbing news for you.
I run a small piece of music based puffery , a strictly happy amateur affair in some small corner of cyberspace - so a surprise yesterday then to be on the wrong end of a DMCA copyright violation warning. It concerned a post (made several months ago) featuring a 30 minute home-made mix. Fair enough really, as the mix featured a run of high profile performers like Ian Brown, Prince, Talking Heads plus Blondie and Kylie bootleg remixes. There was no clearance, permission or official endorsement for any tune used - so I can see why the plug was pulled, and have no beef about this.
But here's my concern, this particular mix was posted around Christmas/New Year 2007, as a sort of 'end of term' piece when the hits were low and the blogs weren't busy. It's rarely been a point of entry on my blog, and never been a particularly popular page according to my stats. So how did it get spotted? By a belligerent blogger or perhaps some stealthy spy-eyed software?
Through a Facebook contact I heard of another blogger also receiving a similar DMCA warning shot yesterday. I haven't checked any forums or message boards yet, but wouldn't be surprised should reports of taps on the shoulders of music bloggers and downloaders become an increasingly common occurrence.
It seems the internet traffic police have shifted gear and raised their game. If non-leaguers like me are appearing on a radar at DMCA HQ and being trawled for copyright compliance, heavy hitting blogs and sites like Hype Machine, could well be going the way of Kazaa, Winmx and Napster.
If this is the case, fill your boots where you can, while you can.
9 comments:
Bloody hell! It wasn't so long ago that I was writing about this copyright crack-down on my blog - but even then, it didn't seem real. Now it does.
Why that mix though? Surely most of the music we post online constitutes copyright infringement?!
Someone mentioned the clincher may have have been using a Prince tune - I mixed from Pull Up To The Bumper into Alphabet St and onto Reasons To Be Cheerful - you can check it here
I would have thought most of the tunes posted on the blogs would fall foul of DMCA, but it's probably only high profile acts or tracks that will raise an eyebrow.
It's a unnnerving to know that perhaps someone or something has been entering keyword searches for blog postings - and where do they draw a line at what's acceptable
Ironically whenever I've had Q and A's Damien from The Undertones, Marco Pirroni and Brian James of The Damned all of them have been happy to endorse the inclusion of MP3'S in postings..
And I can see why they'd pull full album postings but oddities and obscurities? Seems a bit harsh.
Ebay used to a goldmine for hooky bits and bobs bootlegs live DVDs - but is dead for that now. I wouldn't be surprised to see music blog go the same way
PS putting artist or track details in the comments could be a way round it
These are people with way too much time on their hands. This is getting so ridiculous. It's not like you're trying to make money off of someone else's work. The record labels, etc. need to get with the times. I don't think they really understand technology. They worry about album sales today. If they stopped making such crappy music, then people might buy albums. Why buy an album for one or two good songs. Prince really seems to get his panties in a bunch over any of his stuff being online.
Heck, Will Birch showed up at my blog to offer some commentary and backmatter about "Television Generation."
I remember reading a piece about the how that East German secret police collected so much information of citizens that it was impossible to effectively use it, apart from specifically targeted examples. I think that's what we're seeing now -- random actions involving hot-button artists. (I have a list of acts I will not feature for that reason.)
It also doesn't help that there are some shady operators out there trying to mimic the Hype Machine's format for monetary purposes, creating a search engine of ad-supported direct links (unknown to the various bloggers) which borders on P2P hijinx.
If worse comes to worse, then I'll just do away with the musical annotations and turn AT into a pure commentary site.
K - BA - that's exactly it -
I'm not going get myself all Chicken Little 'the sky's falling in' about it - I'll just carry on blogging until someone at Team DMCA decides to press the delete button.
I've been thinking, it's a while since I posted some tunes up..........
Cheers for reminding me Mondo. I might leave the password for folks to download while I'm at it.........
Oh to be a web nazi. A job for life is that.....
It all stuff and nonsense, so it is. I blame Metallica meself. Bunch o' money grabbing bastards.
The buggers have now had a go at me a couple of times, even getting rid of one of my podcasts, the bastards.
It seems to be totally random, that's what I don't get. For example, I've posted 2 cheesy as hell K-Tel '70s compilations recently, one of which received no attention, the other of which was obliterated.
They're all cunts. Keep it going Mondo and fuck 'em all!
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