by Ellen Seidler | Law, Music, Tech
Google Trying to Force Indie Record Labels into Submission
(Updated June 17, 2014)
This post was originally published in late May, but with news breaking that Google is pushing ahead on its plan to block indie labels from its new music service I’m reposting. Here’s the latest from The Guardian:
Adele, Arctic Monkeys and Jack White could disappear from YouTube “in a matter of days” after the Google video service confirmed it was dropping content from independent labels that have not signed up for its upcoming subscription music service…
…The company’s head of content and business operations, Robert Kyncl,told the Financial Times that the service – previously rumoured to be called YouTube Music Pass – will launch more widely later in the year.
His confirmation that YouTube will block videos from labels that do not sign licensing deals for the new premium tier will be hugely controversial among indie labels, with trade body WIN already filing a complaint to the European Commission about its negotiating strategy.
Here’s my original post from May 24th, 2014:
Excuse me while I choke back the bile rising in my gut. Our pal Google, the worldwide protector of free speech on the web, is showing its true colors as it reportedly goes toe to toe with indie record labels in negotiations over its new streaming music service. According to the New York Times, representatives from Google/YouTube are trying to strong arm the labels into crying “uncle” by blackmailing them into submission over contract terms:
Negotiations between independents and YouTube, which is owned by Google, have dragged on for months. But according to several people with direct knowledge of the talks, the indies’ decision to speak out was driven by a recent warning that if labels failed to agree to YouTube’s licensing terms, music on the indies’ official YouTube channels would be blocked. In addition, those labels would be unable to collect advertising revenue from user-uploaded videos that included their music.
The Worldwide Independent Network published a statement on their website taking Google to task:
YouTube is expected to launch a new music streaming service. The service has apparently negotiated separate agreements with the three major labels – Sony, Warner and Universal – but according to WIN’s trade association colleagues has yet to reach any substantive agreement with their members.
At a time when independent music companies are increasing their global market share WIN has raised major concerns about YouTube’s recent policy of approaching independent labels directly with a template contract and an explicit threat that their content will be blocked on the platform if it is not signed.
According to WIN members, the contracts currently on offer to independent labels from YouTube are on highly unfavourable, and non-negotiable terms, and undervalue existing rates in the marketplace from existing music streaming partners such as Spotify, Rdio, Deezerand others.
WIN has held extensive talks with YouTube at their instigation over the last 24 hours to try and resolve this issue but no progress has been made. WIN’s request for YouTube to rescind the termination letters sent to its members has not as yet been agreed to.
Google representatives have repeatedly pulled out the “free speech” card as rationale for allowing Google to run rough shod over artist’s rights (human rights) online and its lobbyists often employ the “protect free speech” argument as a sacred sword to move politicians and the public to its side during policy debates regarding its online business practices. That dearly held corporate concept seems to have gone out the window during these discussions demonstrating that ultimately, it’s not a matter of principle for Google, but profits.
Every time an artist sends a DMCA takedown request for any Google-hosted content (YouTube, Blogger, Search, Drive, etc) they are warned that a copy of the notice will be sent to the “Chilling Effects” website which, according to its “about” page, exists in order to, “support lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats.”
Please note that a copy of each legal notice we receive is sent to a third-party which may publish and annotate it (with your personal information removed). As such, the content submitted in this form will be forwarded to Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org) for publication. You can see an example of such a publication athttp://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=861. For products like Google Web Search, a link to your published notice will be displayed in Google’s search results in place of the removed content.
I wonder if the folks at Chilling Effects would consider whether YouTube’s negotiating tactics are having a “chilling effects” on indie musicians?
More irony can be found on Google’s own policy blog the company touts how it “promotes free speech on the internet.”
Google’s commitment to freedom of expression is at the core of everything we do — whether it’s independent media organizations using YouTube to express themselves in Venezuela, or citizen journalists using Blogger to chronicle Myanmar’s crackdown last year on Buddhist monk protests. Unfortunately, many governments around the world impose limits on their citizens’ freedom of speech, and that often leads them to block or limit access to our tools and services.
Hypocrisy seems too gentle a term in characterizing Google’s current stance with indie labels on YouTube. Agree to our terms or we’ll block your work? Seems their “commitment to freedom of expression” doesn’t count if you refuse to add profits to their piggy bank.
by Ellen Seidler | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Piracy, Publishing
The Future of the News Industry at Stake
Caroline Little, President & CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, wrote an thoughtful op-ed this week asking that Congress consider the economic needs of newspapers in any discussions about copyright reform. In sharing her editorial the Copyright Alliance website noted its significance:
The investment that the newspaper industry makes in journalism, made possible by copyright protection and licensing agreements, contributes significantly to having a vibrant democracy where the public can make informed decisions.
Copyright detractors constantly portray copyright and copyright owners as enemies of the public interest and as obstacles to the public’s access to information. Although news aggregators claim to enhance public access to information, their contribution to the production of top quality content is virtually null. Caroline Little’s words are a refreshing reminder that the interests of content creators and the public are intertwined rather than opposed.
Ms. Little’s editorial emphasizes that in the future, in order to maintain a robust news industry, we must be vigilant in protecting it.
…journalism plays a vital role in local communities and in our nation’s democracy. But it also costs money: Newspapers continue to invest more than $5 billion a year in journalism, far more than any other medium in the United States. Newspapers deliver news and information when and where readers want it, in print, digital and mobile platforms.
To do that, we must have fair copyright laws to enable newspapers to receive fair compensation in support of this journalism.
This year, the House Judiciary Committee, the Commerce Department, the Copyright Office and others are looking at potential changes to the Copyright Act. The newspaper industry applauds these efforts to ensure that copyright law is best suited for the digital age. We hope that any changes to the Copyright Act will continue to ensure that content creators — including those who invest in journalism — receive fair compensation.
Ms. Little’s editorial focuses on the threat posted by for-profit aggregator sites that, “exist solely to aggregate content from the websites of original publishers for the sole purpose of selling this content to business users at a considerable profit.” Clearly the news business is not exempt from the type of content theft/monetization schemes that have long afflicted music, and more recently movies. As with the music and film industry, this piracy undermines legitimate journalism’s ability to publish and thrive online. As Ms. Little notes:
Newspapers’ concern in this area is not the personal use of newspaper-generated content but rather its use by businesses that benefit financially through the unlicensed monetization of that content. By taking newspaper content without paying for it, these companies undercut the fundamental economic model that supports journalism that is so important to our communities.
Ironically, the same day I read Ms. Little’s editorial, I came across a clear example of the piracy publishing scourge that she’s writing about. I happened to be searching for news on the season 2 premiere of Netflix’s hit show, “Orange is the New Black,” scheduled for next month. I clicked on a link and was taken to a story posted on freenewspos.com , “Orange Is the New Black’ Season Two Is More Bingeworthy Than the First – The Daily Beast.”
At first glance, I thought it legit. After all, the news website The Daily Beast was mentioned in the headline. I read the story and clicked on the Facebook link to post it on my Vox Indie Facebook page. Only then did I realize it was a pirated site for print when the post promoted the freenewspos.com rather than the article. I did a double-take and discovered that the operators of freenewspos.com had copied the entire Daily Beast story and posted it, word for word, to their site. As is typical in piracy for profit schemes, advertising appears adjacent to the piece. The site operators earn income by stealing the work of journalist Kevin Fallon from the Daily Beast.
Adding insult to injury, it’s a Google-sponsored AdSense ad that adorns this pirate page so Google’s making money at the expense of The Daily Beast too. Of course Google has long been in the business of enabling and profiting off pirated content, and now I can add online journalism to the list of industries that suffer from Google’s ad network profiteering. These screen captures showing the original Daily Beast story and its pirated counterpart.
Also note the disclaimer at the bottom of the pirated version, “Disclaimer statement: The point of this article or rights belongs to the authors and publishers. We take no responsibility for the content of this article and legitimacy.” The domain is hidden behind a company called Moniker Privacy Services.
When you click the “who we are link” a page pops up in Italian. Drilling down into a translation of the “Terms of Service” one finds this:
…you want to publish or print into your website, blog, forum, RSS feed or in any other publication, an article taken from our website, you must follow these rules: Respect the author’s copyright by publishing the entire article without making any changes. [emphasis added] Include all the information present in the author’s box at end of article.Do not change both the title and the content of the article. Leave all links in the article with their syntax. Insert at end of article republished claims on our website with active link: Article taken from: freenewspos.com not republish our article in sites that contain illegal or mp3 files, information for hackers, bad language, violent content glorifying racism or contain pornography, child abuse or exploitation of children, adults or animals, or any other activity deemed illegal or contrary to applicable Italian laws. Do not republish our article via unsolicited email, spamming, or pop up ads. Never sell any article taken from freenewspos.com fees not ask to read an article taken from our website.
Seems that it’s OK to pirate another’s content as long as you link to the original? Not exactly how copyright law is supposed to work, but hey, in our online environment it seems as though making up things as one goes along is fine and dandy. As Ms. Little points out, “The most convenient way to request permission to copy and distribute material is by contacting the publisher of the content. In addition, clearinghouses exist that provide an easy way for business users of content to obtain redistribution rights.” This site never mentions asking the author for permission.
There’s also a somewhat Freudian typo in the site’s FAQ section as well an ironic (English) acronym in use. I believe it should read, “How do I use POS?” but instead it reads:
How do I sue POS?
The application operates in a complete automatic fashion. A reader is able to obtain subscription and read information without the need to log in. If you provide your E-mail, you will be able to access the POS management application,
where all notifications from POS and news can be viewed in full (POS does not send you spam or advertisements). Other advanced functions will also be available.
POS will not place any restrictions on how you use the application.However, your use and development of the application must not infringe the reputation of POS,nor cause any damage to any of its facilities. You must ensure third party rights are protected.instead of POS, as POS does not hold any copyrights of services provided by the aforementioned third party.
POS does not place any restriction on the contents or the way your articles are published,whether you are a reader or a writer. But, POS will not be held liable for any third party claims against the accuracy or the legality of any contents published.
You are not allowed to publish or paste any material involving defamation, racism, pornography, violence and any contents forbidden by laws of your country or those that POS considers or has been reported to be inappropriate. POS has the right to delete the above mentioned material or contents without notification to its publisher.
I dare say POS is a POS, but I digress. The fact is that respecting copyright ultimately means respecting creators’ rights to determine how their works are used. Companies like Google, and this (POS) pirate publishing site, practice their own alternative view of copyright–take what’s not yours and monetize it (illegally) until someone finds out.
When I checked out the site’s Twitter feed is was full of Tweets advertising “free” movies online. Not surprisingly it’s more scam than substance, as each Tweet linked to a freenewspos.com post with a bunch of keywords or summary for a popular movie title–simply more SEO churn for ad dollars. One Tweet listed links to a post that, in turn, linked to a YouTube page which, in turn, linked to another off-site ad forwarded from a Google-hosted Blogger, Blogspot.com site. Google seems to seems to be entwined in this site’s nefarious activities every which way.
When I attempted to actually login and create a user account in order to see how the site worked, the page came up blank on multiple browsers. Maybe it works for users in Italy? Regardless, it seems pretty clear that freenewspos.com is a site built on a business model dependent on attracting traffic and ad revenue by promoting content that is stolen and, often times, make believe. Perhaps not much can be done to prevent this site from operating, but surely Google could do better in choosing business partners?
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Politics, Tech
The fledgling news site vox.com’s (no relation to this site) purported “simple” mission, according to its founder Ezra Klein, is to “explain the news,” as he noted on his Facebook page:
Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Our mission is simple: Explain the news. Politics, public policy, world affairs, pop culture, science, business, food, sports, and everything else that matters are part of our editorial ambit.
Our goal is to move people from curiosity to understanding:
Given its stated mission, one has to wonder then, if giving voice to right-wing anti-copyright talking points, under the guise of journalism, fulfills this goal?
This morning as I enjoyed my morning coffee I came across a piece on Vox by former Washington Post columnist Timothy B. Lee. Since I’ve written about Mr. Lee’s columns in the past (when he touted the sham study by a Mercatus-backed website piracydata.org) I was a bit skeptical when I read his headline, “How Google money is helping turn the political right against strong copyrights.”
In writing about Mr. Lee last October, I took issue with a Washington Post column that trumpeted piracydata.org’s* dubious findings that blamed distributors, not online thieves, for the growth of online piracy. I noted at the time that Mr. Lee’s piece should be taken with a huge grain of salt given his (undisclosed) ties to an anti-copyright think tank.
Too bad their original graphic (and data) contained errors–a fact belatedly pointed out by the Washington Post’s Timothy B. Lee in his story which featured the provocative headline, “Here’s why Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems.” Lee updated his piece (and changed his headline):
Correction: The original data supplied to us by PiracyData.org was inaccurate. It showed 1 movie available for rental and 4 available for purchase. In fact, 3 are available for rental and 6 are available for purchase. We regret the error…
It’s a shame Lee didn’t also disclose his former ties to the libertarian Cato Institute and Google.
At the time, I wasn’t the only one to cast doubt on Mr. Lee’s journalism. In a piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review, “A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post,” Ryan Chittum questioned Mr. Lee’s reporting:
There are many problems with Timothy B. Lee’s Washington Post blog post on Hollywood’s supposed culpability for the theft of its own movies, beginning with the morally unserious jujitsu deployed in arguing that Hollywood is culpable for the theft of its own movies. The Mercatus- and Cato-connected editor of the Washington Post tech blog that aims “to be indispensable to telecom lobbyists and IT professionals alike, while also being compelling and provocative to the average iPhone-toting commuter” also had a major correction that undermines the entire premise of the piece and reveals its one-sided reporting.
Fast forward to today’s story. Mr. Lee, now writing for Vox, has given us a piece that once again manages to deftly advance anti-copyright memes. At first blush the title is disarming in that seems to take Google to task for its growing lobbying clout, yet if one actually reads the work it’s actually a clear effort to amplify the talking points recently spouted by notorious anti-copyright shill Derek Khanna in a recent Business Insider piece, “It’s Time To Confront the Anti-Copyright Lobby.” Khanna argued that, “We know the costs of continuing extremist copyright policies completely removed from the Constitution’s original public meaning; the American people deserve better then politicians selling out to Hollywood.”
According to Mr. Lee, this right-wing “shift” against copyright “seems overdue.”
Conservatives have long loathed Hollywood for the liberal values promoted in its movies and for the tendency of Hollywood celebrities to make campaign contributions to Democrats. That might be why Republicans broke ranks more quickly than Democrats in opposing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012.
There are also genuinely conservative arguments for reining in the excesses of the copyright system. A recurring theme in both Khanna and Bell’s writing is that today’s laws are far more generous to copyright holders than those that existed in the early years of the republic. Bell and Khanna emphasize that the Founding Fathers viewed copyright as more a government-granted monopoly than a form of property rights.
Mr. Lee is certainly free to write about the debate over copyright legislation, and he appears to have learned the lesson that it’s important to disclose his affiliations with anti-copyright organizations (or risk be outed by the CJR) as he included this caveat in paragraph 3 of his piece.
And, to be clear, I’m not an impartial observer to this debate, having written about copyright issues for both Cato and Mercatus.
However, given his close ties political interests with a stake in the very topic he examines, readers should digest his piece with the skepticism is deserves and appreciate why he insists on characterizing Hollywood’s ongoing efforts to protect its creative products as a “copyright agenda.”
Lee reveals his hand when he concludes with a summation that, while not as biting, clearly mirrors the sentiments expressed by Mr. Khanna:
And internet companies like Google will only become more important to the American economy in the coming years, so Hollywood’s copyright agenda is going to increasingly face bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.
In taking a not-so-veiled swipe at movie industry concerns, Mr. Lee also conveniently fails to mention that independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors etc. share Hollywood’s “copyright agenda.” This omission reveals another reason his superficial analysis remains suspect. When he writes about copyright, whether in the Washington Post or Vox, Lee’s predictable, myopic and simplistic condemnations of big Hollywood seem knee-jerk in nature.
Why is it that when writing about copyright reform writers/bloggers like Mr. Lee never seem to acknowledge, nor explore, the fact that “big” Hollywood employs thousands of little people and what the vitality of movie manufacturing means to them? They also routinely fail to include the perspectives of a vast number of small creators in the United States whose livelihoods depend on copyright. Why not admit that there are interests besides Hollywood that have skin in the game?
Surely there is room for discussion over revisiting copyright terms, etc. but given that the mindset of insiders like Khanna and Lee–who continue to author pieces that paint discussions regarding copyright reform in broad brushstrokes of black versus white–there’s little chance of that happening. By ignoring the very existence of (most) creators who depend on copyright, such posts become nothing more than a megaphone for memes generated by the very “think” tanks under scrutiny. If Vox editors are serious about “explaining the news” why not publish a piece that covers both sides of the debate–deconstructing the shades of gray that exist–and that all too often, are forgotten in today’s so-called journalism? Help the public “understand” that copyright is a complex issue that deserves to be clarified–not clouded by oblique reportage.
*BTW, it’s interesting to note that piracydata.org’s website hasn’t been updated since late November (2103). I guess now that it’s served it’s PR purpose the site’s “dataset” has gone into hibernation.
