When the music stops......

Techdirt still banging the FreeConomic drum, responding to a post on that notes that YouTube is removing copyrighted music from fan videos:

Damon writes in to point out what seems like a strange decision on YouTube's part. In response to at least some complaints from record labels concerning music videos, rather than take down the whole video, as was done in the past, apparently it's just removing the sound, leaving odd, slightly creepy, soundless videos. The end result? Annoyed and confused users having a bad experience.

TechCrunch too wails and bemoans this terrible thing:

Based on Twitters, a lot of people think something is wrong with their computers. Someone (or more likely some committee) at YouTube made the decision that this was the best user experience possible when a song needed to be stripped from the site. That decision was a bad one.

Thankfully the music industry is always there to do something a little more stupid than they did before to entertain us all.

Sorry guys, but a new world order started in October - hadn't you noticed? ( )

Seriously, the speculative capital is rapidly draining out the system, and the new drumbeat is to make actual money. Advertisers won't fund dodgy content, and large, very rich behemoths make great targets for lawsuits from those evil media corporates who actually have the law on their side. One can argue the law is an ass, but right now no one wants to get their ass sued.

This is why YouTube is rapidly changing its strategy by the cunning plan of dropping stuff that might get them sued and adding stuff that Advertisers will fund. Tut.

Personally, I'm a great fan of people taking music and mashing it into new content (that's creative), or playing the song themselves (thats talent) - but I get fed up trying to watch an artist playing a song just to find some eejit has put a photocollage up and labelled it by the song name. It's not clear where YouTube is drawing the line (my understanding is fair use is still respected, and that is probably where the battle can usefully be fought)

Update - CNET notes that users are "opting in" to make the music die in order to keep their videos alive:

Here's what YouTube said on the company's blog: people who post clips with unauthorized music to the site can choose to mute the audio rather than have YouTube remove the entire video.

YouTube has for a while given those who post videos that include unauthorized copyright music an option of swapping that music for songs that have been pre-cleared. If they don't like that option then YouTube gives them a second choice between having the video removed or turning off the sound, the company said.

The return of the Silent Movie era.......still, at least most of them are in colour.