One of my biggest ‘fears’ evolves around the minefield which is Copyright and You Tube videos. It is my desire to really get moving with posting more videos online but of course the difficulty stems when I haven’t got the orchestra or band sitting in my back yard ready to record an exclusive sample to use on my videos. I have gone down the route of downloading LMMS in the hope that I would casually have a couple of hours to create my own musical arrangement. But that went out the window when little man began to walk, talk and destroy.

So like most You tubers I have to rely on acknowledging other artists’ work when I upload a video together with a link to iTunes etc so that the listener can download the artists’ song and it is clear that I do not own the song at all. I have always been under the understanding that one cannot obtain revenue from advertising on your uploaded video if whatever you upload is not completely your own.

Interestingly, I do occasionally view videos on You tube where some users do link (quite rightly) to a third party’s song but…. they have generated an income from placing ads on their video (even though some of the content is not their own).

Well it would seem that this bubble has burst with the following lawsuit:

Michelle Phan – a fantastic young entrepreneur and fellow You Tuber has been sued by Ultra records under what the record company have described as alleged copyright infringements in her videos. I’ve linked to the news article here.

I really do hope that an agreement can be reached as this case would have implications to ordinary folk who want to showcase their talents but who do not have the revenue to hire/pay for copyrighted material to add a musical emphasis on their videos.

I will be watching this closely to see what the outcome is….