Thursday, January 15, 2009

YouTube Videos Being Muted

Mashable reports that some YouTube videos are now being muted due to copyright concerns. Stan Schroeder writes:

If YouTube starts being thorough about this, you can expect to see a significant percentage of all YouTube videos muted. The implications are a bit different than with removing copyrighted professionally produced content, like an official music video; we’re talking about tens of thousands of fan made videos, funny spoofs, remixes and the like being pretty much destroyed, and I’m guessing users will be less than thrilled about it.

Users for some time now also have the option to use YouTube’s “AudioSwap” feature. This will let you choose from a variety of allegedly sharing-enabled songs to add to your sound-less video or to replace your old video song with. However, not even these songs are safe; I recently had one of my AudioSwap-enabled videos muted. YouTube sent me the following message:

We regret to inform you that the audio in your AudioSwapped video Playing CaptionX is no longer licensed for use on YouTube. As a result your video has been muted or blocked.

Every day we work to make it as easy as possible for you to watch and share videos. For example, we work with the music community to license your favorite music for you to use on YouTube. But music licensing can be very complicated. The right to use a single song often requires permission from multiple owners, particularly when it comes to original fan-made videos that incorporate commercial music. That said, despite our constant efforts, it isn’t always possible to maintain these innovative agreements, as is the case with the song used in your video.

Please visit AudioSwap and select another track from our growing library of prelicensed songs. After you swap, your video will again be available globally.

[Thanks James Xuan!]

YouTube Videos Being Mute ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1+5)

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