Using music copyright music for other other than domestic perposes is theft
I’m not a native english speaker, but copying music is not theft according to the definitions I’ve seen. Theft is …taking and removing of … property…, but if you copy something, the original still stays in place. “Theft” is a concept alien to intellectual property rights.
My partner’s a musician – baroque/classical – and for many concerts she rehearses along with 60 other musicians, each paid 120-180 euros a day + hotel + travel expenses. When they make a CD there are normally 1-2 days of additional rehearsal and recording time, and the recording studio and equipment is hideously expensive so you can imagine how much it costs to make one. It’s true that they’re often aiming for publicity (to gain contracts for concerts) rather than profit, and it’s also true that some but by no means all orchestras receive public subsidies. But equally, without payment the whole process would grind to a halt. Even chamber music is expensive – to fund a CD of her quartet every member paid about 2000 euros.
There are some orchestras that record CDs that aren’t commercial propositions. School orchestras, for example. I also know of a vanity orchestra where the conductor is the son of a Russian oligarch, and an American one where the conductor is from an oil dynasty. But none of these produce music any discerning person would want to listen to.
I doubt this is any less true for ‘small scale’ art such as rock bands or artists than it is for orchestral musicians. When I was at university I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that the fine art students were amongst the hardest working in the university and certainly on a par with the medical and science students. The reason: materials cost so much that most had several spare time jobs to pay for them.
To excel in any of these endeavors you need to be able to devote yourself to them full time. If art isn’t paid for, then it’s condemned to mediocrity.
My original post was mostly to do with practicalities 
If Vimeo and Youtube implemented this thoroughly, they would lose at least 50% of their content, and the corresponding % of their clickthrough revenue
Most of the better aviation videos would be removed immediately! 
Personally, I don’t like the fact that Vimeo will remove even a video which I upload in a non-public mode.
Youtube seem less fussy but I won’t use them anymore because they now enforce the outrageous common google login system, and since I have to use a google login for the google analytics control panel (for various sites including the online shop stats of my electronic business) the only way I can upload personal (aviation related, etc) stuff to Youtube while maintaining some level of separation from the business is to access Youtube from a browser of a different type from the one which I use for the google login stuff and possibly use a different IP (more hassle, involving a VPN) and never use that browser for anything involving google. My office manageress was somewhat alarmed to discover that google linked her personal gmail login to the online shop stats site! I phoned up google (I pay them £600/month for adwords so I have a phone # ) and they said there is no way around this, and yes they get many complaints… Plus I pay $50/year to Vimeo for the “better” service… I have a load of videos on Youtube but they are stuck in an account I can’t access (even with a different browser) because they no longer support the non-google login, AFAICT.
I wonder if self hosting with a reasonably clean player is feasible? I looked into it a few years ago (in a different context) but the server side code was too damn complicated. So the videos on my peter2000 website are just direct mp4 links and they will stay that way.
As regards making the background music legal, if there was a way to pay say €1 for the use of the track on a video, I think most would pay it. But I am sure there isn’t, and even if there was, how would Vimeo or Youtube know you bought it? There would have to be a signed certificate server – the whole lot.
As regards making the background music legal, if there was a way to pay say €1 for the use of the track on a video, I think most would pay it.
Peter, there are several sites out there where you can license music for very little. Google (sorry, these guys again) is your friend.
As for the ‘most would pay it’ part. Not so sure, people steal what they can, and music is one of those things – alas.
Btw, I’m reasonably sure Vimeo does have some sort of background checking system. I use it myself with legally obtained (i.e. licensed) music and never had a problem.
Youtube seem less fussy …
Youtube behavior is very much dependent on the country of the viewer/listener. I think their policy is to respect national laws to the lowest degree where they can not be held responsible. In Germany (but that may change soon), the hoster of a website and the service provider share the responsibilty in cases where the originator of the video is outside German legislation. Therefore Youtube tends to be very careful here and blocks a lot of stuff that is freely shown almost everywhere else.
there are several sites out there where you can license music for very little
There are many but they are basically places where you can search for music by genre etc and pay the artist some money. A bit like Ebay for songs. But they host no-name music. I cannot find a single one where you can just type in the name of a major pop classic and license it. Let’s pick something totally random but which people of our advanced age will recognise: “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen, or “Bridge over Troubled Water” by the obvious. Can you show me a site where you can buy a license for putting these as a sound track onto a video and have Vimeo accept it.
Obviously it would involve getting a personal certificate of some sort (like an HTTPS certificate, from say Verisign; actually you can get those free nowadays from e.g. StartSSL) so you can show you own that license, and another certificate signed by the copyright holder specially for your purchase, which ties it all together. Then you would send that certificate to Vimeo. Alternatively, there could be a central database holding all the purchase certificates for everybody who ever bought a license for every song, and video sites would access that to verify each video uploaded to them. All these approaches would require the video itself to be signed with the purchaser’s certificate. There would be huge privacy concerns…
Technically anything is possible but does this really exist?
I use it myself with legally obtained (i.e. licensed) music and never had a problem.
What do you actually do (in terms of the video generation and the upload process)?
I’m not a native english speaker, but copying music is not theft according to the definitions I’ve seen
No matter what your stance on IP right is — copying music (or other stuff) is factually not “theft”. Stealing something removes it from the use of the owner, which is not the case with copying. Calling it theft is an appeal to emotion.
So, no idea was ever stolen?
I guess that if you take someone’s idea and patent it for yourself, you can say that it was “stolen”.
I had the same issue with Facebook. I have a small group of family members and close friends only where I upload photos and videos of my flying. I did a video with a sound track and Facebook removed it citing global copyright violation (it was actually quite an aggressive email).
Over Christmas 99% of the FB group were in the same room, so we watched the video anyway.
I always thought that the “copyright issue” became an issue when you tried to make money from the music, both directly or indirectly. e.g. you own and restaurant/cafe and you use it for background music. But surly if you use a piece of music and correctly credit it, then it is free advertising?
