Copyright and its Effects on Converging Media: Online Music Videos

Online music videos are everywhere on the internet, in your google search, on your Facebook wall, in blogs, and of course they can be found on YouTube. They are a product of converging media, video and music, located in a digital space that is accessible through your phone, your computer, and even through your tv these days. The issue these videos face is the intertwined relationship of convergence and copyright. 

Over the last 200 years intellectual property has been protected by copyright law for the purpose of seeing that property enter the public domain and used to enhance culture by inspiring new works through derivation. However over these past 200 years we have seen copyright evolve and change with growing media industry reaching a point where copyright no longer lasts for a term of fourteen plus another fourteen years, and instead lasts a lifetime plus seventy. Currently media is run by an oligopoly of the seven dominant media moguls, which include Bertelsmann, Sony, News Corporation, Disney, Viacom, Vivendi and AOL-Time Warner; they use this oligopoly to control the distribution and use of “their” intellectual property (McChesney 2001). With the emergence of digital convergence we are seeing a crack in this control. Consumers have become producers of their own content, such as online music videos, through digital convergent sites like YouTube (Hilderbrand 2007). This puts them in conflict with the oligopoly, which then defends itself using an instrument, that was designed to protect the public, to attack it, that instrument is copyright.

           It is common for us to see our favourite copies of or user-generated music videos disappear or stop functioning on YouTube. This can be a result of the copyright owners requesting its removal in the attempt to regain their diminishing control over the accessibility and distribution of the infringed content (Hilderbrand 2007). One safeguard that many have found refuge in is to cite the DMCA’s fair use clause. Fair use (Fair Dealings in Australia) is a clause included in copyright that enables the use of copyrighted materials in certain circumstances, but is only a legal defence and not a right (Lessig 2008). This means user created music videos that appropriates music, lyrics, and/or visuals from a song or music video can be taken to court and sued for breaching copyright. And while the fair use clause may deter some court cases, it isn’t a guaranteed method and more often then not when presented with going to court and paying the fees or taking down the video, YouTube or the user will remove it.

Theorists like Jenkins (2004) believe that these conflicts over media content fuel the advance of convergence, but that seems optimistic and theorists like McChesney (2001) would argue that the dominant media corporations will try to maintain the status quo, and will use their power and influence to sway the government to increase the power the already huge power and control they have over their intellectual properties. We are still in the early process of digital convergence, but we can already make out some of the paths that might lay ahead of us, some brighter then others. Lessig (2008) and Jenkins (2004) both believe that copyright needs to be less restrictive.

 “The problem comes not, paradoxically, from a lack of control. It comes from too much control. Because the law allows the copyright owner to veto use, the copyright owner must worry about misuse. The solution to that worry is less power. If the owner can’t control the use, then the misuse is not the owner’s responsibility.” (Lessig 2008 pp. 257)

The owners of intellectual propterty are worried about the misuse of their products, because in this age of digital convergence a photo shopped image of Bert from Sesame Street and Bin Laden of Al Qaeda can wind up in the evening news as part of an anit-American protest in the Middle East (Jenkins 2006). Lessig seems to indicate that copyright would benefit both parties more if owners were given less power. Then should a bit of their intellectual property wind up in an online music video, they wouldn’t need to worry about how it’s used. If appropriating materials becomes the norm (which some might consider to already be the case) then when the content is misused, it won’t cast a bad image on the owner, because as a rule the content will be dismissed as appropriative and not as the original. This will allow user generated appropriative online music videos to spread and experiment without impunity and the companies can see it as a form of advertisement and not bad news waiting to happen.

Another concern is that user generated content may present itself as a competitor to the original, thus being a free easy to access alternative to buying the original. This was the original purpose of copyright, to protect intellectual property from copies so that the author and publisher could make a return of profit and thus want to produce more works (Netanel 1996). The issue is that most user-generated music videos are not going to replace originals. One reason is that they lack the glamour and funding that the originals have, by essence user generated content is low quality. Also if video or images are borrowed they don’t necessarily compete, because the original videos are design from start to finish to compliment the music. The original music video is designed to capture our attention over and over again, or it wouldn’t be very marketable. That isn’t the intention of say a remix which burrows images and music to create a unique and new video that is more of a gimmick or is trying to use either the music or the images/video to change the way either is interpreted. One could argue that watching the remix may even create a need to see or hear the original, becoming an agent of advertising instead of piracy.

We are in the process of digital convergence and copyright is right at the centre of it. How copyright evolves will determine what kind of outcome convergence will reach. If copyright becomes more restrictive we will see the disappearance of appropriative user generated music videos created using convergent media, this will be a detriment to our culture and the growth of future convergence because the public will be more restricted in using intellectual properties and experimenting with various forms of converging media. If copyright becomes less restrictive we may see more unique user generated content on the internet and YouTube, thus opening a more liberal path for convergence to take. Our voice and actions will be important in determining what path convergence will take and if our favourite online music videos will survive.

Reference List

Hilderbrand, L. (2007) 'Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright
Converge', Film Quarterly, Vol 61, pp 48-57

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture, New York, New YorkUniversity Press

Jenkins, Henry (2004), 'The cultural logic of media convergence', International Journal of Cultural Studies v1, pp. 33–43

Lessig, L. Remix (2008). The Penguin Press: London. pp.254-259 & pp.266-271.

McChesney, Robert W (2001) “Global Media, Neoliberalism and Imperialism” in Monthly Review, March 2001

Netanel, N. W. ‘Copyright and Democratic Civil Society’ (1996). 106 Yale L. J. 283.

A Fair(y) Use Tale, online video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo, accessed August 31, 12

“Baby Got Back” Sung By The Movies, online video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcapo5ZB_o, accessed August 31, 12

DMCA, pdf, http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf, accessed August 31, 12

Bert and Osama Bin Laden, image, http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=25057, accessed August 31, 12

YouTube, website, http://www.youtube.com, accessed August 31, 12