Re: [videoblogging] Re: Will The Bubble Up Fizzle Down?

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:22:12 -0800

Well... since you mention A.R.Rahman, I thought perhaps the (only?) Indian here should pitch in his two cents. 

I would say that the temptation is huge, but then as any video/film creator would say, sound contributes a huge lot to the video itself. If that's the case, whenever we take music from anyone else (royalty free or not), we don't remain the sole creators. Hence attribution is a must. The difficult question to answer, however, is whether we *should* use it at all or not. While, like most questions in the universe, there is no right or wrong answer to this, but (just in case you feel that you did something wrong):

1. The entire Indian music and film industry is based on copyright violation -- every film that comes out of the west is copied, remixed, scenes stolen frame-to-frame, stories lifted right out and pasted with Indian dialogues... it doesn't stop at that. The entire Indian music industry picks up songs from 1960s/70s (the golden era of Indian music and films) and remixes them and makes money. I can hardly remember the last original piece of work I saw. Is that a copyright violation? One of the most successful films that came out last year - Black - by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, is a straight off lift from Miracle Worker (Helen Keller stuff), and the director had the audacity to send the film to Cannes/Academy awards with the hope of winning best foreign film. I wish someone just listed out the copies floating around in the market and found out a way to catch the thieves. But then again...

2. In a world where we all know each other, copyright would become useless because we would know if its your original or not. As it is, the copyright laws are highly skewed, and so is the entire economics around the media industry -- for instance, I understand paying $15 for an album in US... but when you go to Asian countries and the same album sells at a similar price (where the dollar conversion is 50 times the currency!), I start wondering if this is "right" (Rs 700 of album price buys probably 70 meals for some sections of society). 

Obviously, things are not as they should be. We all know that... and I believe that at the very heart, this ongoing media revolution is nothing but letting the market decide what's right and wrong instead of corporate players. So, whatever your policy is Dierdre, I don't think there is a black-or-white explanation. 

 

On 23-Feb-06, at 3:38 PM, Deirdre Straughan wrote:

On 2/22/06, Pete Prodoehl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

And I really wish it would stop. I cringe every time I see a video by
someone in this group that is using music they obviously do not have the
right to use. If we are supposed to be here helping newbies get into
videoblogging, what sort of example does that set?

I plead guilty, and state (again) my reasons:

1. Sometimes you have to use well-known music to get a particular effect (often humor). Fanvids are an example in which neither the video nor the music belongs to the fanvid creator, who puts the two together to create something new and wonderful which is usually a compliment to (and advertising of) both sources.

2. Sometimes you just want music to create an atmosphere, but it's too hard/time consuming to find "safe" music to use. For my trailer, I wanted something Indian because a lot of the footage was shot in India. I did a bit of searching around on various "podsafe" sources, but there didn't seem to be any Indian music available except 5-second instrument samples. So I used music I was already familiar with, and kept it short (37 seconds out of a 5- or 6-minute piece), in hopes that AR Rahman would see this as fair use and a compliment - if, indeed, he ever sees it at all!

3. I own thousands of CDs and know by heart many more thousands of songs. It's a lot easier and faster for me to "search" this interior catalog (and/or my iTunes library) than to listen to hours of new music to try to find something suitable for whatever project. Editing video already takes more time than I have - I don't have time to audition the music as well!


Of course anything can be abused, but I would argue that much of the use of music in vlogs is part of the fast-growing and creatively fertile mash-up culture. We can hope (faintly!) that the music industry will eventually come around to seeing it my way. In any case, so far no one has complained about music in any of my videos (have they about anyone else's?), nor have they been removed from any service, to my knowledge, for copyright reasons.

--
best regards,
Deirdré Straughan

www.beginningwithi.com (personal)
www.tvblob.com (work)

SPONSORED LINKS
Individual Fireant Use

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS






SPONSORED LINKS
Individual Fireant Use

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS



Reply via email to