In my opinion the consumer side of things is not too much of a concern at the moment, the tradition is to get heavy with the creator/publisher/distributor. And this trend continues in the modern era of action, it is people who share music, and the services that enable them to, that have been targetted by RIAA and friends.
By far the most important element of RIAA's agenda is that by raising awareness of digital property issues, via well publicised cases against a few people, they are getting people's internal policeman to recognise digital media, music etc, as products. They want people to understand that its supposedly a much of a theft as if you stole the CD from a store, even though there are clearly some differences. Its not a new battle, and people have never accepted that sort of control over music. Human beings relationship to music and other things is not the same as relationship with physical products. We've been here before with recording off the radio, recording tape-to-tape, and the same with video. Its just that the removal of physical media from the equation, and the ease of digital duplication, coupled with the internet, scares their pants off. This is also partly because the one area that in the past was not grey to most people, was people selling illegal copies of cd's, videos etc. The fact that money was involved makes the moral dimention of that stuff much easier to agree on. But now with the internet people can do it so easily and at no cost to themselves, so like with software and anything else, you get some people just sharing because they can. It starts to get grey. But I dont think the example you gave is very grey at the moment anyway. The defense you mentioned would almost certainly work, and theres little chance youd need it. Your position is pretty solid, the creators/publisher of the video's position is whats very grey. There are reasons that the copyright holders might go after the creator and cease/desist the video, and there are reasons they might not. Awareness that a potential 'violation' has occured is likely to increase the chances of action being taken, I would have thought, but the lack of money involved makes it less likely. Im sure I heard that 'fan created music videos' are becoming a phenomenon these days, so have any of them had any legal adventures we could learn from? The best reason I can think of for them leaving people alone on this issue, is that music videos are supposed to be largely a promotional device anyway. I know they come to mean more than that, but traditionally they are just another part of the system that wants you to buy the album. So in this regard, fan created music videos have something in common with fan websites. Enlightened bands/labels can see fansites are free marketing, whilst others may cause ill-will by getting heavy with trademark or domain issues and closing sites down. Still to be fair trademark owners are supposed to actively protect their mark, wheras Im not sure the same is true for copyright at all? Steve of Elbows > It all gets a little murky here. I subscribe to a feed to get content > created by people independent of 'big media' and I get something that > the RIAA might not like me being in possession of. I'm not sure if the > excuse of "I just subscribed to a feed, my software downloaded it, not > me!" is going to work. > > (I'm not trying to complain, I'm just exploring the issues here...) > > Pete > > -- > http://tinkernet.org/ > videoblog for the future... ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back! http://us.click.yahoo.com/T8sf5C/tzNLAA/TtwFAA/lBLqlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
