A petition has been organised by music manager Irving Azoff, according to Rolling Stone, who says that YouTube provides a “safe harbour” for infringement under the current iteration of the DMCA.
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Taylor Swift attends the “Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology” Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2016 in New York City.
Artists supporting the reform include Taylor Swift, Vince Staples, U2 and Paul McCartney; 19 companies have also signed in support, including the “big three” major labels. As performers and songwriters become more willing to speak out about copyright issues, the famously contentious music business seems to have found an issue it can unite around. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false.
For the signatories, the DMCA – which was passed in 1998 – has allowed “major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry nearly every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish”.
Today, 180 music artists from different genres, of which 19 are music labels representatives, will present a petition and run ads in the Washington DC magazines Politico, The Hill, and Roll Call, asking the USA to reform the DMCA law once again, according to Billboard.
The idea, pushed by many of these artists, that all music online should be paid for, as it once was, is a fantasy that if ever implemented would simply result in hundreds of millions of musical listeners worldwide returning to pirate their favorite artists, complete with an inevitable serious decrease in revenue being made by the industry as a whole.
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Over the last week, YouTube has come under criticism from a number of prominent musicians who say the video platform is profiting off of stolen content. While platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music must license content before it goes up, YouTube has it already, meaning that when it comes to negotiating licenses for official content with the labels, YouTube and Google are in a position to offer less money.
