Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Battling Goliath Again -- EMI this time

P*D and Ed, I'm not certain of this, but it was my understanding that the advertising revenue generated is used in part to pay the copyright holder royalties. Thus it is extremely important to deny pretenders any royalty income.

P*D, have you thought about copyrighting your son's performances and allowing youtube to advertise on it and then paying you royalties for each site visitor? What is involved in generating an actual copyright? Something more than just a letter to the Library of Congress?

We're well down that road. You do not need to copyright the material that you "monetize" on your YouTube account. Monetizing videos only requires that you swear and aver that the content is indeed your own. You create an Adsense account, and then you can allow YouTube to insert a text advertisement in the bottom of the video and/or allow them to place a short advertisement video before your video begins. Both of these ads can be closed out by a viewer if they hit an "x" button at the right time. Then the viewer proceeds to your video. Adsense has some algorithm for determining the value of each viewing of a monetized video based on how long the advertisement stays visible to the viewer. They also screen out self-dealing, i.e. you can't watch your own video over and over to boost advertising revenue.

For videos that go viral, the revenues can be quite large. For most people, however, it is mere pennies. And you have to get to $100 in revenue before YouTube pays out. P*S is closing in on that amount, actually, so I hope he can get a check for $100 in the next few months. He has two videos that are getting between 100 and 200 views per day. That's not too bad for classical. Both are Beethoven. Go figure. I think it's because they are graded pieces in the RSM scale, and thousands of kids in Hong Kong, Korea and Malaysia tune in to see how others play the graded works.

This is another reason why musical rights companies like EMI and Angel are getting aggressive about intellectual property rights. Somebody is getting money.

Interesting. And depressing that posters are dependent on youtube's integrity and scale.

I wonder how Daniel Barenboin feels about EMI claiming someone else as him. Be fun to get him involved.

Interesting idea. Does anybody have his personal email address ... ?

Maybe this one: mail.barenboim@gmail.com - it's the mail on his official website?

Yes, but I would bet that anything sent to that address will be read by some assistant whose job is to place as much distance as possible between the busy performer and the public. But heck, if anyone wants to point him to this thread, be my guest!

I'll email him. We all should!

Don't know if this is an option for you but you can change the Title and Tags sometimes to be more vague.

For instance, when I post covers that list both the Title of the piece AND the Artist then I often find Youtube sends me a rude notice my video may infringe on someone's copyright.

So now I just use the Title (and don't put the Artist anywhere in the Post). Or sometimes you can use just the Artist (if they only have 1 o 2 popular pieces). Many times, just the Title (if it is unique enough) is enough for many people to find your video .

You may avoid all this hassle by posting this way.

Blueston, this is not a cover. The "artist" is Beethoven or Mozart. The pianist is a boy. The piece of music is in the public domain, and the recording is my property.

For reasons that defy logic, EMI has reinstated its claim over these two works. Apparently this is automatic. I'm sure no human being has yet viewed the offending videos. I have appealed EMI's reinstated claim ...



YouTube uses threatening language at this point, saying that I may be liable for legal penalties, and they offer to have me remove the offending portions of my audio track by replacing it with something from "their library."

OK, now I will send something to Daniel Barenboim.

And EMI, I will hire a lawyer if you persist! Maybe that's the only way I can get satisfaction. Hire a lawyer and spend $1,000 to defend a YouTube video. OK, they're on. Warpath.

I have sent an email to the email on Daniel Barenboim's website.

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An Open Letter to Daniel Barenboim

What about calling them, or heading over to their office (EMI's office I mean)?

Or even more, I just feel the need to spread the word with this idiocy... I'm pretty sure that several high profile blogs will be interested.

So,

Who's got access (lives close) to EMI's headquarters please? Who knows a few blogs about classical music that can offer some insights and some promotion to this ugly story. I'd hate to see PD paying 1000$ to a lawyer in order to keep his sons videos on youtube! It's dead silly.

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P*D what about small claims court? It's not about small claims either, though, unless you provide evidence that you've lost. Perhaps if you'd reached 100,000 views, you could get some money from youtube and claim that EMI is depriving you of that, thus dragging them to small claims court?

But I'm not in the US to know much more than this...

Nikolas,

Indeed, I would appreciate spreading the word to blogs and other piano forums. Embarrassment is the best weapon here. That's why I sent the note to Barenboim. I also sent a piece of direct mail to EMI's New York headquarters, where I'm sure some secretary will laugh at it as s(he) throws it into the recycling bin.

There is no monetary issue here, for me at least. I'm just tired of the petty harassment from these "rights" societies. If I have to hire a lawyer, I will.

Firms like EMI do have a right to protect their intellectual property. People do use clips of music that they don't own. But someone has to distinguish between theft of prominent artists' work and young kids playing on their own piano.

Call your local TV station, they love stories like this.

So being dragged to court would actually be the most desirable outcome here because then you'd come face to face with your accuser and have an impartial judge to adjudicate. They'd also be liable for all costs when they lose. Bring on the court case!

Great idea!

You'll also get a lot of hits on your sons video when it finally comes back up on youtube.

They're tempting me. REALLY tempting me.

You could also contact Norman Lebrecht at his popular weblog. I believe he'd be interested in your story and may give it exposure or just even refer you to some EMI executive.