Brainpunch: Usability, Social Media, Design, Punk Rawk and more …

I’m really (!) annoyed by the imbecile dinosaur-like company that is called Warner Music.

They have recently started to harrass many (MANY!) users on YouTube who all share one common (non commercial) goal: create, re-mix, be expressive, cover/sing their favorite songs in their bedroom, and so on and so forth.

Warner Music is currently hunting everyone who uses “their material” down, even their own artists! Warner has ordered tens of thousands of YouTube video’s to be removed. Special software is used to identify people who use sound from any artist on the Warner Music label. People who use this “copyrighted” material are shocked to find out that the sound has been removed from their home videos. People are (rightfully) outraged by this. Public opinion is therefore quickkly turning against Warner Music. The message is pretty clear: FUCK YOU, WARNER! See: “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdFe4JNsuIo&eurl&fmt=18;” and “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hklsnCunHis“.

Fuck You, Warner Music

This happened to me recently. I mostly use YouTube to upload video clips (recorded with my camera) of punk rawk shows I visit. Thus giving fans / the punk rawk community, and myself, the opportunity to enjoy the show after the concert. But this time I uploaded a snowboarding-video portraying my colleagues and me who went for a skiing trip in Austria. I used music by Reel Big Fish (<3) and Jason Mraz. The video was only viewed by a few friends and colleagues and got about 100 views. A few weeks ago, I was in shock to find out that the sound from this video had disappeared (leaving a quite boring video). There was a “warning: copyright infringement” notice from Warner Music, stating that what I had done was illegal=. Sheeeezzzz %-/.

This is going too far! The major record companies are not web 2.0 compatible. All they care about is money. They do not understand how modern media behavior has changed. How people have changed. They say that the public is “stealing” from them, costing them money. But this is not true. An excellent article about this can be found at “http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-kill-the-music-industry-090227/“. A must-read.

Illustrating how weird things can get I found a blog post today, by one of my favorite bands: Streetligh Manifesto. They apologize to their fans that their record company removed their OWN video material from YouTube: “For some reason our own record label hit us with a cease and desist via YouTube. It seems we were broadcasting copyrighted material (our own music video) on our own YouTube channel. Which is a No-No in douchebag-land. So our video was taken off of our channel forcibly. We’ll have a new link up soon. Man, with “friends” like these… One day we’ll write a book. Until then, well, you know…”

It will be interesting to see how this resolves. Copyright is certainly a hot issue right now. I think the concept has to be re-defined. If only I was a lawyer specialized in copyright law, I would definitely launch a counter attack on Warner Music . But for now, all I’m gonna do (besides writing this blog post) is being thankful that I don’t listen to their mainstream crap anyways. Ha!