The Revolution will Not be Televised on YouTube

stim_tv_gooThis was bound to happen sooner or later, but now it’s here. YouTube has been “muting” videos that use music by Warner Music Group, and sometimes making them completely unavailable.

This shit happened to me last week:

“Your video, Worldwide Revolts!, may have audio content from The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron (b. 1949) that is owned or licensed by WMG.”

My video was almost 11 minutes long but only used 1 minute of Gil Scott-Heron’s song, put to a montage made by a Scottish design firm. As punishment for using this song the entire video was muted. This process is automated and done by computer. Now you are going to tell me that YouTube has the technology to recognize songs but doesn’t have the tech to mute certain portions of the clip?

In the end that is not the issue. The issue is that YouTube is violating our right to fair use and free speech. Yes this is their website, but we are in a mutually beneficial relationship. We give YouTube videos and they give us bandwidth. They should be respectful  enough to have actual human beings making decisions about fair use and save us the trouble and anguish of having our video censored and making us go through a dispute process.

So, I’m trying a little experiment. I lip synced “The Revolution will Not be Televised” and uploaded it to YouTube to see if it would get muted again.  As expected YouTube rejected it, this time, only this time YouTube will not even publish it.

Dear stimulator,

Your video, The Revolution Will Not Be TeleVised on YouTube, may have content that is owned or licensed by WMG.No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

As a protest to YouTube’s “muting” policy, download this video and upload it on your YouTube account. If thousands of users upload this, maybe YouTube will actually hire actual humans to verify fair use claims and save us the embarrasment of being “muted”. How’s that for a stimulus package?

Update Feb 12, 2009  10:13 PM – YouTube User michaelrobbins777 uploaded the video that I uploaded and YouTube rejected and it’s live. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z09hmJqymY4
I wonder how accurate YouTube’s system is or if they are just targeting me. I mean it’s the exact same video I uploaded.

Well the answer is, not very accurate at all. YouTube user tapangalovesyou posted the same fuckin video and hers went live but it’s muted. Check it – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfZ1uqRWkE .
So that’s 3 possible outcomes Google’s superior content ID technology provides with the same video uploaded. Hilarious.

Update Feb 15, 2009 – Remix Ninja Jonathan McIntosh sent me a link of this kid who found a workaround to get the vids playing again. Watch this video on how to do it. It fuckin works. It’s still fucked that YouTube does not make this info easily available.

Related Items:

From Miro’s Blog

13 Responses to “The Revolution will Not be Televised on YouTube”


Leave a Reply