Jon, Bruce take on Reform of Digital Millennium Copyright Act
 

Asbury Park Press:

Watch out, YouTube, the Boss and Bon Jovi are coming for you.

Bruce Springsteen...(and) Jon Bon Jovi...added (their) name(s) to a list of more than 500 musicians...calling for the reform at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which protects of the rights of copyrighted works on the Internet. The signees claim that YouTube benefits from a loophole in the act that allows the web site to profit from works that should be protected but aren’t because the DMCA is antiquated.

“This law was written and passed in an era that is technologically out-of-date compared to the era in which we live,” reads the petition. “...Music consumption has skyrocketed, but the monies earned by individual writers and artists for that consumption has plummeted.”

“Labels made deals with YouTube out of desperation. It’s pennies and whack-a-mole...” said organizer Irving Azoff...manager of Bon Jovi. “YouTube can stop leaks of their own programs...but won’t keep music that leaks or demos that artists don’t want released...The playing field should be even for all digital players. Apple, Spotify and Pandora don’t hide behind safe harbor.”

“The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them,” reads (a) YouTube statement. “Today the revenue from fan-uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year.”

And, as the saying goes, somewhere in the middle lays the truth...

Ooooooooh shit! There are some awesome youtube channels like DamnedTV, NobodyHero90 and BonJovi Archives with great live and demo content. We cannot afford losing them!

Let the download to mp3/mp4 begin!

If I don't have a show from a trade or a group share - I have been downloading the youtube videos all along. I have had too many website just go "poof" on me and all the content is lost. That includes websites that I paid for the content. So I leave nothing to chance now.

I'm not sure what all this means exactly but I've always made it point to try and rip as much music as I could with the fear of something like this happening... (or it becoming a paid site as well)...

YouTube has always been a Bon Jovi vault (obviously including other bands too) for me... I've gotten so may shows and in better qualities due to fan enhancements. I'll rip the audio, separate all the tracks, and add my own touches thanks to Audacity. It's become a hobby.

This makes me think - push as much of rare videos into my channel until they kick everything or save the work????:confused:

A. It's a little too late

B. This might be an indirect blame for the NJ Deluxe Edition (& Super) not selling well a few years back...

I think that rather came from it not being promoted properly and the general interest being rather low. Casuals don't really care that much about a bunch of outtakes and the packaging wasn't really interesting for diehards either since pretty much all of it had been available beforehand.

The way to stop the leakage of demos and unreleased music has always been to stop the people who leak it. And those people are neither YouTube personnel nor the fans -- those people are the ones who work with a musical act's publicists, producers, media, outside music or lyric writers, rehearsal and recording studios, and, uh, management. Madonna's people were particularly good at uploading her unreleased material, after which she'd step up and grab headlines by screaming bloody murder about being the victim of online piracy.