Corey posted the video after contacting Moosebutter and creatively meshed together four shots played simultaneously to get an instant viral reaction.  The success was spurred as the video was featured on YouTube Canada and then quickly moved to a worldwide feature.  The attention didn’t stop there either as the clip was voted second in the User Generated Content category for the CBS Peoples Choice Awards.

Warner Music Group had the video pulled by submitting a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim when the video was approaching 4 070 000 views and had received over 15 000 comments.   

This isn’t the first time WMG has pulled one of Corey’s videos either.  4 Minutes is a demonstration of Corey’s dance skills and it bares a strict warning to WMG to stay away from an already disputed case.  The video remains one of the few “4 minutes” related clips as the licensing squabbles have even resulted in Madonna’s channel being reduced to dust. 

Of course contacting Warner Music Group is futile.  They have an army of secretaries equally skilled at putting you on hold until you hang up or they tell you they will call you back.  This is too familiar of a situation for Corey as he waits for his “call back”.  That being the case WMG has yet to offer an explanation of the grounds for its copyright infringement claim. 

There is sheer hate radiating from the YouTube community towards WMG.  Just type into the YouTube search engine “F@$% you Warner Music Group” and see how many results come up.  If Warner applies the brakes to Corey one of his fans clever enough to have used keepvid.com before the video was pulled can simply upload it again in defiance.

In the earlier AV post Mash Ups Help Test the Line Between Media Giants, Prosumers and Innovation Viacom’s head lawyer on copyright discussed his intentions on when they would look to take action.  As mash ups continue to hit the Internet if Warner Music Group doesn’t find a solution to cope with the times they will be given (if not already) the black spot by the online “pirate” community.

Most users commenting on the CNET article have strong words against WMG however, Len Bullard offers a fresh look from a different perspective.  He comes from the music producer side and is well versed in digital media landscape.  He points to the many issues that need to be addressed to sort of the gray area of mash ups and the use of copywrite material.  He fails to realize one fundamental about how the music ecosystem has and is being shaken up.  This is because his formula for the interplay of business, culture and technology is out of order in this case. 

Business changes when technology changes and the culture changes because the business changes – Len Bullard 

YouTube (new technology) provides new means to bring music (a pillar for cultural development) to an audience that is now reshaping business models due to the ease of production and sharing.  The old style of music production and distribution was difficult and therefore created the opportunity for huge centralized music companies to exist.  Now the business isn’t driving this change of music consumption, the consumers are, and that is a powerful cultural shift as a result of technology. 

In the mean time there will be no stopping Corey.  He’s already released his next video Flight of the Concords “Friends” and plans to continue using his creative flare and the gift of music to make waves online. 

Cheers        

The newest injection of mash ups into the online video world seems well timed with the head honcho appearance of Viacom’s lawyer on Ad Age. It seems like the lawyers are the ones dealing with the center of a problem that governments don’t know how to ignore or deal with effectively; intellectual property.

Mash ups like the recent wave of Christian Bale remixes (also David after the Dentist) may be the on the radar for content that needs to be checked over to ensure there is considerable creativity added.

While lawyers pick their battles with backing from conglomerate media owners little sprouts of economic hope spring up. Hulu for example is one web platform that has a viable means of creating a revenue stream. That stream is nowhere near the size of the torrent flowing behind the scenes. Peer to peer sharing in 2006 accounted for 2 thirds of Internet traffic and 71% percent of that was tied up in video, according to research by the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Source: Pirates and Samaritans: a Decade of Measurements on Peer Production and their Implications for Net Neutrality and Copyright by J.A. Pouwelse, P. Garbacki, D.H.J. Epema & H.J. Sips.)

The introduction of the popular term “wikinomics” brought to light a new way of thinking about the digital media landscape. The battle ragging between media companies, artists and consumers is one of the results. Consumers and innovation pioneers continue to test their limits and have lawyers and judges decide their fate when it gets too far (piratebay.org).   Governments try to make bills to catch up with this paradigm shift but the reality is that policy making is too slow for an information system bred for speed (not to mention the various compenents helping to spread sharing are dispersed internationally).

A macro reality of the ongoing battle is that the outcomes will either benefit protected enterprises with policed revenue streams or innovation. Considering the views that spinoffs and mash ups get from associating themselves with something popular (Darth after Dentist, Feb. 15th 900 000 + views) the prosumer’s content pieces act as front line soldiers testing the frontier of protected intellectual property.

There is one trend in the evolution of the technology/consumer world that should help those struggling to grasp these changes: evolution moves to benefit the majority. Consumers are this majority. When an independent force tries to stop or restrict consumers from an obvious increase in value, like Sony tried to do with its rootkit, it will only create a speed bump but nothing more.

Cheers