Live Generative Art From Music MRQC 1bb (Mid-Quality)

Sometimes, just sometimes, the world seems to get locked into a wierd over-reaction. Here's just one example. I used software that I wrote to generate moving art from a piece of music. The piece of music was 'Darkside (Instrumental)' by Trystero, which is licensed to, and available for adding to videos on, YouTube as part of the 'AudioSwap' feature. Unfortunately, having uploaded the video, the music was detected by YouTube's copyright infringement check, and I got a rather forcefully written email telling me that copyrighted music from AudioSwap had been detected, and that details of my use had been passed to the copyright owners, who were a company called Rumblefish.

The ONLY option that YouTube provide in this type of case is a 'dispute' mechanism. So I disputed it. I said, excuse me, but this music is available via AudioSwap, and so I should be able to use it on a video on YouTube, and I lost. I seem to have lost because the dispute mechanism only seemed to allow me to say 'no, this isn't owned by Rumblefish' when what I actually said was 'yes, this is owned by Rumblefish'. Rumblefish, the licensors, listened to the music, verified it was what I said it was, and allowed me to keep using it, although the YouTube 'punishment' for me seems to be that they can put adverts on the page when the video plays, and the video is now marked with an annotation that says I lost a copyright dispute. (Neither the ads nor the annotation cause me any problem.)

In the meantime, I have now exchanged emails with Rumblefish, who turn out to be very nice, reasonable people, which is exactly what one would expect from a company that makes its living licensing music.

I really and truly can't understand why copyright has become such a strong area of contention that my usage of a licensed track was treated as if I had done something wrong, when I had only used it in the way it was licensed to be used. Rumblefish confirmed that I was okay to use the licensed music in the way it was licensed, by the way. But the detection mechanism does seem to trigger a whole series of actions in the YouTube machine... I'm not blaming YouTube either here, since they are obligated to protect copyright, and I'm assuming that their actions are completely appropriate in a normal case of copyright infringement.

In one of those 'wish I had been a fly on the wall' moments, I would love to know what Rumblefish thought, when they were asked, by YouTube's automated copyright infringement detection system, to listen to a piece of music which I said was licensed by them via AudioSwap, and which they then confirmed was licensed by them! Either they furrowed their collective brows quite a bit, or else they've seen it all before...

So, I'm now the proud posessor of a few emails which seem to be designed to assert something very strongly, when I understood and had already acknowledged that assertion, and I didn't need to be reminded in such a powerful fashion. And here's me trying to do things completely correctly, legally, etc. What sort of emails do you get if you don't care and ignore legality etc? They must be even more strongly written than the ones I got, which I'm now assuming were mild and routine. I just hope I never see such an email, because it must be truly formidable.

As I say, and as I will keep saying, it is a strange world.