baD kARmA INk

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Last week, I touched a little bit on Creative Commons licensing and how it is being utilized in the creation of The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet.  The notion of making absolutely everything within the album accessible to the public, at no financial cost, is an idea that is bold, stunning and definitely worth supporting.  Which, by the way, other people are agreeing with, since the basic production cost of 4588 euros has been raised.  Regrettably, I have not been able to donate as of yet, due to a serious lack of fundage due to potential baby raising and, more immediately, the formerly past-due medical bills that assisted in the pending baby raising.  Still, I look forward to when I am able to listen to the tracks online, and hope to be able to provide to the cause sometime between now and July 13th.

Now, the Creative Commons concept is there to benefit the public and artist alike.   The normal person benefits by being able to read or hear whatever the artist is offering for free, not to mention share with whatever friends he or she wants to.   The artist benefits by being able to get his or her work out there into the internet to share while still retaining rights to the material.  For example, Bad Karma Ink here has a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.  Basically, at least for bkI, you can share whatever is on here where ever, just as long as you refer back to bkI via a link, do not alter the work, and do not make money off of it.

Not a bad trade-off, right?   The public gets free stuff and the artist gets noticed.

So, you would expect a big media company to respect these rights, correct?  After all, big media such as the RIAA and MPAA (That be the Recording Industry and Motion Picture Associations of America) expect you to follow copyright law.  One would think that big business would actually practice what they preach.

Which brings me to the present.

Viacom, the parent company of popular television channels such as MTV, Comedy Central, and CBS, is currently suing YouTube for lost revenue that, according to Viacom, equates to more than one billion dollars.   That’s right…I said Billion.   As in 9 zeros.  Their reasoning?   It’s because video clips of their shows get posted to YouTube.  Those clips usually get some sort of online advertising.   So, technically, YouTube is getting advertising money for presenting video that is copyright protected.  Usually, when these videos are identified, they are taken offline by YouTube.   There is no doubt that there should be compensation for those advertising dollars.   But, one billion dollars?!   Seriously?

Now, how is this related to music, considering that this is supposed to be primarily a music column?   Well, for that, let me refer you to the following:

Get the picture now? Viacom, via Spike.com, is doing the exact same thing that they are suing YouTube for. Hypocrisy in action. How serious do you think the public is going to take these outraged cries from big business in regards to ‘protecting intellectual rights’ when big business is not respecting these same rights?

As stated in the video, the Jonathan Coulton video has been taken off Spike.com.  However, considering that Viacom itself says that taking off the video isn’t proper compensation for their case with YouTube, it seems simply correct that JoCo receives compensation from the 4 separate ads that were running on his Flickr video.   A video that is protected by a noncommercial copyright.   And…while we are at it, some compensation is probably due to the individual owners of the pictures, using the same license, within the video itself.

Thanks go out to John Green, who released his video blog with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons license, the same license that Jonathan Coulton used for his Flickr video.

See how easy it is to share?  That is what Creative Commons is supposed to do.

We common people get it.   So, what is Viacom’s excuse?

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