Here is the midterm video project, embedded as a video in this blog entry. As stated in the info box on the video’s YouTube page, its purpose is to analyze the reasoning of the action of user-generated videos that have content from artists signed to Warner Music Group being muted and removed from YouTube and the impact on amateur video makers and their dependence on corporate content.
In writing the script of my analysis, I strove to constantly be grounded in the writings of theorists both from the media, and from digital copyright law. It was a very broad subject at first but after watching a myriad of YouTuber’s videos about the subject I was able to get a far more condensed feeling of a manifestation of culture that has been brought about by anger, frustration and an almost vigilanty attitude.
The resources which i drew upon were varied but they consisted of:
“Digital copyright law in a YouTube world” O’Brien and Fitzgerald published in the Internet Law Bulletin 9 pp: 71-74 (2006)
“YouTube Changes Everything: The Online Video Revolution” Gannes, published in Television Goes Digital, Springer Science & Business Media, LLC 2009
“Toward A Theory of Copyright: The Metamorphoses of ‘Authorship’”, Jaszi, published in the Duke Law Journal, Vol 1991:455
“When creators, corporations and consumers collide: Napster and the development of on-line music distribution”, McCourt & Burkart, published in Media, Culture & Society, Vol:25: 333-350, SAGE Publications, 2003
“YouTube and Its Mobile Distributing Consumer Media Venturing”, Hang, published in Peer-to-Peer Video, Springer Science & Business Media, LLC 2008
“Viacom vs. YouTube & Google: Copyright Challenges For User Generated Intermediaries”, O’Brien, presented to the Digital Content Industry Conference in Shanghai 28-29 May 2007
“Well, That Didn’t Take Long! Viacom Battles Google and YouTube”, Newkirk & Forker, published in Privacy & Data Security Law Journal pp: 523-539
“YouTube: an opportunity for consumer narrative analysis?”, Pace, published in Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol: 11; 2, pp: 213-226, 2008
News Articles:
“YouTube’s Music Videos: Popular, Money-Losing. For Now.” By Peter Kafta, Published in MediaMemo on December 19, 2008
“Warner Music Group Disappearing From YouTube: Both Sides Take Credit” By Peter Kafka, Published in MediaMemo on December 20, 2008
“Warner Music Group Pulls Music From YouTube” By Rob Levine, Published in Billboard on December 22, 2008
“Warner Music Group and Others Muted on YouTube” By Eliot Van Buskirk in Epicenter from Wired.com on January 14, 2009
“Sources: YouTube, not Warner Music, puller videos” By Greg Sandoval in Digital Media-CNET News on December 22, 2008
The images of screen shots of videos that were a manifestation of this video culture were from the YouTube users:
BluePounder,and another from BluePounder,ladyrockndoowop, ClockStrikes9, TygerWDR, wanabee2w, and kielbaseball
All of these are links to their videos of protest. This is an issue that still as not been resolved, and it is possible that this video’s relevance may lessen in April, as that is when the contract between YouTube and the other 4 big music label companies will be re-evaluated. We will see if there will be developments in this issue, but one thing is for certain, that amateur users will always be finding new ways of remaking, recreating, and breathing new life into the medium of internet broadcast videos. We can only hope that this guerrilla attitude of users will no longer be necessary when the music industry develops a far better business model than the archaic reactionary one that they are currently exhibiting, and that will be the downfall of an already crippling industry if change does not occur.
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