Yesterday, I was doing just the same thing with Justin Hayward and the Moody Blues and came upon some marvelous clips. What struck me though was that YouTube users were the ones posting the video segments and I truly doubt they held the distribution rights to the ones I found. There's a real debate going on right now about licensing of rights to do what millions have already done.

Just because someone videotapes some performance from their television set, doesn't mean they can legally distribute segments of that show on the internet without express permission of the artist or license holder. I recently made a music video for a college class where I "borrowed" video segments I'd found on YouTube and Google video. Since my primary audience was limited just to an educational assignment, I wasn't really concerned about violations of copywrite.

However, when the thing turned out really cool, I found after reading YouTube's policies that I couldn't share my work with the world legally since I'd have had to get written permission from the owners of each of the original clips I used. Simply crediting the source does not get one off the hook.

Now it's pretty obvious to me, after seeing the Moody Blues clips I watched last night, that many don't heed those policies and my guess is that YouTube hasn't got the resources to ensure they're not being violated. Whether that portends a heated legal battle in the future is unsure. I'm split on whether our newfound freedom to share intellectual property is a good or a bad thing. A case can easily be made that it reduces the direct earning power of the artist and producer but another can easily be brought forth that the additional free marketing makes up for it.

Art