Does You Tube Violate the RICO Laws?

[mike stenson]

Both rely on the Safe Harbor provision to avoid liability.
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So does every special interest forum, like this one.

[Ole Anderson]

Ole my church buys a license to be able to use the hymns. I don't recall if it's an annual license now or bi-annual. The cost isn't outrageous as I recall. We've never had any issues with the live stream on FB showing the music portion of the service as well.

We have every license available from CCLI and One License. The bots don't know that and there is no provision to let them know. It would be easy enough for FB and YouTube to search for licenses, but that doesn't happen. Frankly most strikes occur a year or even two later so it is not a big deal. Just yesterday we got 4 strikes on classical music our pianist played during announcements in 2021 before the actual service started.

[Mark Wedel]

I had a coworker who makes spin workout videos with music (from current/well known artists). I asked him about it - what he said is that youtube takes care of all the royalties, etc, as long as he isn't monetizing his videos (eg, the ads youtube puts in his stuff pays for those rights)

So that may be how many videos get away with it - youtube is paying the needed royalties. This might also be why those who do monetize their videos (per posts above) are much more careful about it - they want the money, and don't want to be paying for those royalties out of the money they are making.

[Jim Becker]

YouTube's integral library of royalty free music available to creators is "yuge" so that can provide an out for these situations. I used some as well as some royalty free music within iMovie when I was doing the time lapse videos for my shop build.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

It would be impossible to search for licenses. too many private licenses and even wholesale licenses for use. For instance, Lions International has free downloadable programs for it's logos and trademarks etc. The provision is by down loading, you are licensed to put the logos to use but only in connection with legitimate Lions' clubs uses. hats, shirts, etc. even made for profit to sell to Lions members. So there is a license for every one who clicks the terms of use button.

Face book and or My Space, can't recall which, about 15 years ago got into a tiff with a heart broke young man in the DC area. He was dumped by a girl, but wrote a poem and placed it up on her page. It didn't sway her emotions, but somebody recognized the poem as having some worth and published the poem in card or something. Terms of use, he clicked when he signed up for the service, gave property rights in content to the social media company. It was winding it's way on appeals and I do not know what happened. Under copy right law, a copy right attaches at the first public airing or publishing, regardless of registration. But his clicking the button transferred that copy right the second he posted the poem.

I have met some folks who make a small amount based on you tube channels. One guy might get 30K a year. The effort he puts into it doesn't seem worth it, until you realize the notoriety it beings, and people searching out his products to buy. his sales have jumped way up.

I see folks viciously stealing ideas back and forth on You tube. the second one video seems popular, 17 other guys in the business are doing the same thing. (about 6 or 7 years ago, a teenage girl in England, used an electric tea light to make a Christmas tree lantern, she posted a very primitive poorly done video on a face book page about wood turning. Well a year ago or so, such things became a popular item to demonstrate and now there are almost 30 such videos. It is a pity, Caitlan gets no credit.

Copy right laws may seem rather concrete, but there is a wide open area called "Fair Use" which permits a pretty wide exception for sarcasm, humor, etc. Any body remember the National Lampoon with a picture of a Floating Volkswagen in a pond. The caption said, "If Ted Kennedy had been driving a Volkswagon, he'd be President today" It looked like a legit VW magazine ad and the American public was up in arms, VW filed suit, a judge forced the magazine to recall issues and on appeal IIRC, the decision was that the ad was 100% fair use political speech, even if sold for money. The laws have been modified since then, so I don't know any effective changes for that court opinion.

Another license problem. The movie It's A Wonderful Life, went into public domain and TV channels were playing it to the point of nausea, because they thought they did not have to pay any royalties. Well, the movie went into public domain, but the guys who owned the script renewed and financially clobbered all those TV channels with infringement suits. So it is easy to have a piece that is fractionalized, part public and part still under copyright. Another example is a song written in 1784 by a German living in Paris. Called "Plesure De Amor" (sp) One of the most popular classical love songs ever written. A poem from a French novel was adapted to the tune around 1800 and it continued thusly for 160 years. Two movie music writers needed a song for a teen movie about a tropical resort tour guide and his girlfriend. They needed a slow love song for the female lead to sing to their male lead. They resurrected that 1784 tune and 1800 lyrics, translated the french loosely, added a phrase from an early 1800's Alexander Pope essay rearranged a few notes. When the male lead heard the tune, he insisted on singing it in the movie and it became one of his biggest hits. The original tune is public, the alterations, English translation are copy righted, the phrase stolen from Pope's essay is not. (fools rush in) The song, "Wise Men Say" sung by Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii. an example of fractionalized copy right now 63 years.

As for RICO, there is something regarding the intent and policies by the social media companies which separates them from enticing a particular person to violate the law for their enrichment to just letting it all pass in so long as they are not responsible., Sort of like maintaining a flea market where you know stolen items are routinely sold but you have neither resources and possibility to check, vs a pawnshop that specializes in fencing stolen goods and knows all the stuff is stolen. It is an intended substantial part of the pawn shop business to sell stolen items, where it may be part of the flea market business, the owner of the market is just opening to the public and knows illicit behavior will go on along with all the legit behavior.

[Andrew More]

Thanks Perry, good detail on the mess that IP rights have become.

Reminds me of my time working for a Dot Bomb 99-2001. We were basically trying to sell music over the internet, and as you might imagine, really struggling. It wasn't just that Napster was giving everything away for free, it was also that we could not get any of the decent music. There was such a mess of copyright, publishing, mechanics, performance, and song writer rights that it wasn't legally possible to get the music industry to move very quickly. Also they had concerns (still do) about putting out a perfect digital copy. After struggling with this for a few years, the company cut staff 40% with $100 million in the bank, and never really recovered.

Somehow a year or two later Apple music managed to cut this Gordian knot and publish all the music. I still to this day have no idea how they did it, maybe they got congress to pass a law?

[Jim Becker]

Apple, Spotify and others got to do it by compensating the artists/IP owners, something that the early sharing platforms failed to do. While the level of compensation is arguably pennies on the (currency unit) for artists relative to streaming, it's still an income stream for them that didn't happen "back in the day". YouTube has the same licensing/compensation requirements on them.

[Brian Elfert]

My understanding is streaming pays a fraction of a cent per song streamed. I have heard artists say that streaming pays a fraction of what they used to get for each CD, tape, or album sold. That is why they do a lot of concerts and merchandise sales.

[Jim Becker]

That's correct, Brian.

[Pat Germain]

My understanding is streaming pays a fraction of a cent per song streamed. I have heard artists say that streaming pays a fraction of what they used to get for each CD, tape, or album sold. That is why they do a lot of concerts and merchandise sales.

My son is a singer/songwriter. His music is on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and other platforms. MTV featured some of his music in their reality shows several years ago. My son gets a check from ASCAP every year for about $12.00-$24.00.

Streaming platforms like to boast about "Average Royalties" being over $100,000 a year. The reality is that's some heavy averaging. The vast majority of artists make a few dollars a year while Taylor Swift makes millions. That averages out to about $100,000 a year.

Artists are relying more on live shows for revenues. Unfortunately, a lot of fans get angry when concert tickets are $200 and up. They blame the artists, but the fact is artists have nothing to do with ticket prices. Zero. Zip. Nada. Bupkis. Ticket prices are controlled by vendors, like Ticketmaster, venues and labels. Artists must also bow to radio conglomerates like iHeartradio, which used to be Clear Channel. iHeartradio will demand artists to do shows for free. If an artist objects, iHeartradio will say, "OK, I guess we won't be including your latest album tracks in our daily rotation...". This is no different than saying, "That's a nice album you released last month. It would be a shame is something was to happen to it; like nothing!". Yeah, it's basically extorsion.

The fact is, every music artist who signed with an American label has been cheated, scammed, exploited and a lot worse; even huge acts like The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and The Rolling Stones. It's been this way for decades. I remember reading when Jimi Hendrix died, he had a little over $20,000 in the bank and he owed a lot of back taxes. When Jim Croce died, his widow asked the music label about royalties and only got excuses. She spent years fighting them in court and eventually got them to cough up something. Before that, Croce had received pretty much nothing.