Dude wheres my video
From Driscollwiki
Title:
Dude, where's my video?
Author: Kevin Driscoll PhD Student Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism University of Southern California
Contents |
Introduction
YouTube is a productive place to begin rethinking the meaning of the term "world music". With its impossibly large library of video clips, YouTube enables access, circulation, and visibility for a large number of regional musics that were previously unheard outside of their local areas. For fans of novel sounds, the variety is dizzying and it may be easy to overlook the degree to which media-sharing on the web also enables a material popularization of conventionally industrial pop musics. In the example presented below, practices rooted in hard rock and heavy metal are sites of direct struggle between the permission culture of a U.S.-centric music industry and the popular culture of a transnational music-making fandom.
Living Room Rock Gods (LRRG)
"What is a Living Room Rock God (LRRG)? Anyone who takes their rockin' seriously, but does so at home. There are thousands of us all over the world. We are the REAL rock stars!", The Living Room Rock Gods Facebook Group, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70142195466
The Living Room Rock Gods (LRRGs) are a group of musicians who produce and share videos of themselves playing along to recordings of their favorite songs (Thelwazaru, 2009). The videos are typically shot in an instructional style with the camera positioned so as to capture the details of their technique (Pauliewanna, 2007). Along with the instructional videos, the LRRGs occasionally collaborate on sophisticated "virtual band" projects in which recordings of several geographically-dispersed musicians are combined to form a single ensemble video (PookLowEnd, 2010). Nearly all of the LRRGs' videos are posted to YouTube.
The LRRGs are predominantly men of a wide age range from European and American countries. Some indicate a background in formal musical training while others are self-taught. Their recordings reveal a preference for hard and progressive rock as well as various forms of heavy metal. The LRRGs employ a variety of media technologies in their practice including multi-track recording equipment, non-linear audio/video editing software, and social-networking services. The LRRG community is manifest across a variety of web platforms including a blog, Facebook group, IRC chat channel, web forum, and numerous YouTube channels and pages. The size of the community is difficult to quantify and seems to vary widely among these spaces. There are 173 registered members on the Facebook group and as many as 800,000 views on some of the more popular YouTube channels.
"A fair use massacre"
The videos posted to YouTube by groups like the LRRG represent a densely interrelated system of making, curating, reading, and remaking that effectively constitutes a "crossroads" of participatory culture. Though it is technically a host for digital video, YouTube serves as a lively platform for many popular music cultures. Audio clips are frequently found on the site with little or no video accompaniment and the on-going debates characteristic of pop music fans play out across countless comment threads. Unfortunately, YouTube's centralized architecture has proven unusually vulnerable to spurious claims of copyright infringement. Of the 440,036 videos tracked by MIT Free Culture's YouTomb project in 2008 and 2009, approximately one-half are no longer on the site (YouTomb, 2009).[1]
YouTube is subject to considerable scrutiny by entertainment industry stakeholders concerned with the unauthorized use of pop media artifacts. To shield itself from liability for its users' infringing activities, YouTube follows the "safe harbor" guidelines introduced by the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)[2] and temporarily suspends access to any video suspected of copyright infringement. In an effort to go "above and beyond" this legal obligation and soothe an anxious industry, YouTube provides major media organizations with special software to automatically identify and claim ownership of potentially infringing user contributions (King, 2007).
Since its introduction in 2007, the automated "Content ID" system has been the subject of considerable controversy. It was cited as a tool of censorship by the McCain/Palin campaign (Potter, 2008), singled out for its "chilling effect" on the exercise of free speech (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008), and criticized for ignoring the Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law (Von Lohmann, 2009). In January of 2009, after the disintegration of a revenue-sharing agreement with YouTube, Warner Music Group ordered the immediate removal of any video containing music from its catalog (Sandoval, 2008). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) dubbed the ensuing sweep a "Fair use massacre" as thousands of videos were removed without human review (Von Lohmann, 2009).
YouTube users responded to the sudden crackdown on remix and reuse in a variety of ways. Some quietly discontinued their use of the site and never posted another video. Others lashed out at YouTube, Google, and the entertainment industry in scathing, expletive-laden testimonial videos (Arrington, 2009). Still others were driven away from YouTube. These departing users often posted farewell messages to their channels entreating subscribers to follow them to a different video hosting site (Zcatz, 2009). For nascent communities organized primarily using YouTube's social infrastructure, however, a DMCA takedown represented the destruction of a potentially critical social node, stranding users and videos in isolation from one other.
Tribute is not theft
The "massacre" struck the Living Room Rock Gods particularly hard. Because the LRRGs strive for accuracy in their playing and high-fidelity in their recordings, they were disproportionately flagged by YouTube's automated Content ID system. In January 2009, the most prolific LRRGs received dozens of DMCA takedown notices. Rather than move to another site, however, the Living Room Rock Gods resisted the "massacre" and campaigned to have their videos reinstated.
Musicians targeted by the Content ID system turned to the LRRG web forum to express their frustration only to discover that many of their peers were having the same experience. The messageboard enabled the LRRG to see him or herself as part of a embattled collective population rather than a single unlucky individual.
Galvanized by this emerging group identity, the LRRGs organized "Tribute Is NOT Theft", a "campaign [to defend their] basic consumer rights" (Pook, personal communication, February 27, 2009). The campaign adapted the tools and techniques of their fan practice to the pursuit of political goals.
Some LRRGs attempted to contact musicians through their "official" YouTube channels while others recorded video testimonials or "open letters" to the rock stars they emulated in their videos. Pauliewanna, a 43-year old drummer living in Canada, addressed Neil Peart, drummer of the progressive rock band, Rush:
"We're just trying to do what we love [...] listen to your music, play it, share it with others, show them how it's done, see how they do it, compare notes [...] our primary reason is to share with other drummers. We just want you [...] to know that this is happening." (Pauliewanna, 2008)
Shortly after the campaign was announced, the web forum became the primary site for organizing the LRRGs. In several lengthy threads, the LRRGs compared notes and assembled a list of labels, artists, and songs to avoid (PookLowEnd, 2009a). As the LRRGs confronted the bureaucracy of the DMCA, they traded information about US copyright law (Zodiak, 2009) and consolidation in the music industry (Mymassivehead, 2009), they critiqued the YouTube Terms of Service (ActionHobo, 2009), suggested technical means for circumventing the automated identification system (PookLowEnd, 2009b)[3], and built a "Fair Use" argument to defend their instructional video practices. PookLowEnd and Zodiak contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation for legal advice and urged other LRRGs to seek similar assistance (Zodiak, 2009). This distributed cognition, peer education, scaffolding, and support enabled users who would have otherwise given up to assert their right to challenge claims of alleged copyright infringement.
Perhaps the most powerful product of the forums was a sense of collective strength and solidarity among the LRRGs. In the months following the campaign, users coached each other through the DMCA "counter-notification" cycle and many of the videos that were initially taken down were reinstated. These successes empowered the LRRGs to resist suspensions and takedowns rather than migrate to another site out of frustration. Munkybarz makes his sense of collective strength plain when he identifies himself as an "LRRG" in a forum post from February 2009:
"I'm not clear on the steps that need to be taken in order to try to get the suspension lifted. Be assured however that there will be no bowing and scraping by this LRRG, and I ain't grovelling." (Munkybarz, 2009)
Though there was nothing overtly political about their activities prior to the "massacre", the LRRGs quickly became activated, organized, and educated. The Tribute Is NOT Theft campaign drew principally on three characteristics of the Living Room Rock Gods. First, the LRRGs had an established collective identity. Self-identification as an "LRRG" empowered members to respond confidently to takedown notices knowing that they were not acting in isolation. Second, the LRRGs had a robust technological infrastructure in place prior to the campaign. Though their social network on YouTube was damaged by the Warner Music Group takedowns, their web forums and Facebook group enabled them to maintain communication and group cohesion. Finally, the LRRGs' fan practices - video-making, blogging, and social-networking - involved generalizable skills that were easily adapted to political action. The same media savvy that they had previously used to create and share music videos could be exploited in the pursuit of their political goals.
The politics of rocking out
"Look at me, getting all political!", wrote PookLowEnd after announcing the Tribute Is NOT Theft campaign in November 2008 (PookLowEnd, 2008). Evidently, to Pook, the LRRG music-making practices were not "political" in and of themselves. But the incredible flexibility and readiness with which they self-organized when their community was threatened suggests otherwise. Is there a relationship between the LRRGs preference for hard rock and their willingness to engage in collective political action?
At first blush, few listeners would describe the recordings made by Living Room Rock Gods as "world music". But tributes to English-language hard rock and heavy metal mainstays like Iron Maiden and Rush belie the fundamentally transnational nature of these "virtual band" collaborations. The Worktones, a self-described "YouTube band" who list "World" as their hometown, feature a Dutch guitar player, a Canadian bass player, and a Dutch drummer residing in Montreal. A non-representative convenience sample of videos currently hosted on YouTube suggests that collaborations among Europeans and North Americans from different countries are the norm, rather than the exception, for LRRG virtual bands.
Two structural conventions of hard rock facilitate online collaboration among the LRRGs. First, common instrumentation enables the LRRGs to quickly assemble small groups with clearly delineated roles to rapidly produce new videos. Second, widespread access to the same library of recordings provides a template for the finished product. Once roles are established and a song is chosen, each member of the virtual band is free to rehearse and record his or her own aspect of the song independent of the other members of the group. The final outcome is the result of syncing and combining the recordings produced by each individual member.
As is true of karaoke and lip-synch, the cover band excorporates a relevant artifact of the pop music industry for the purpose of expressing a popular music culture. In "full band" videos, the original audio is replaced completely by recordings made in the home studios of the virtual band members. The resulting sound is intimately connected to the musicians' private domestic spaces. In political economic terms, the material artifact of the music industry is obliterated by the productive practices of these dedicated music fans.
Tracing the LRRGs from their videos to their user profiles reveals widespread awareness of the persistent threat posed by the unpredictable Content ID system. Many of the profiles include disclaimers citing the fair use clause introduced in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. More prolific and visible musicians like Canadian drummer Pauliewanna list specific artists and songs that they cannot play because of Content ID. Despite living, playing, and recording elsewhere, the LRRGs' music-making practices are constrained by an regulatory regime peculiar to the United States.
The popular music culture of the Living Room Rock Gods provokes a revised understanding of "world music" that takes into account the global circulation of recordings produced by U.S.-based music industries over the last century. As these recordings age, some of them will be literally kept alive through the embodied practices of music-making fans playing pop songs in their homes. Unfortunately, if these fans post recordings of their efforts to the internet, they may find themselves drawn into a struggle over the "ownership" of pop music. That the laws of one nation can arrest the popular music practices of people in another indicates an area of concern for the study of world musics in general.
The resistant efforts of the Living Room Rock Gods were possible in part because of pre-existing technological and social infrastructures. The small size of their community in comparison to the massive scale of Warner Music Group's 2009 takedowns suggests that many YouTube users did not have the support needed to defend themselves. What sorts of "world music" cultures were curtailed by this "massacre" and which survived? What are the aesthetic effects of U.S. copyright policy on newly emerging transnational musics? And to what extent should YouTube be held responsible for the stewardship of the popular artifacts posted by their users?
References
- ↑ It is difficult to estimate the reason that these videos were removed. 9,760 of the videos included in the study (approximately 2%) were explicitly removed because of a copyright claim. This number is misleading, however, because a single copyright claim can affect the status of multiple videos if it results in the suspension of the targeted user's account.
- ↑ Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:1:./temp/~c105e8ffdl:e57590:
- ↑ The LRRGs anticipated some of the technical quirks that would later appear in Scott Smitelli's comprehensive study of YouTube's Content ID system released on April, 2009: http://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/youtube-audio-content-id
References
ActionHobo. (2009) "Youtube says: we don't want to deal with it." Living Room Rock Gods Forum. May 25. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1050
Arrington, M. (2009) "Youtube users lash out at warner music (and google) with protest videos." TechCrunch. January 24. Retrieved from http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/youtube-users-lash-out-at-warner-music-and-google-with-protest-videos/
Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2008) Lenz v. Universal. Retrieved from http://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal
King, D. (2007) "Latest content id tool for youtube." The official google blog. October 15. Retrieved from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/latest-content-id-tool-for-youtube.html
Munkybarz. (2009) Untitled. Living Room Rock Gods Forum. February 28. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?p=6337#6337
Mymassivehead. (2009) "The rezillos just got blocked." Living Room Rock Gods Forum. May 24. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1046
Pauliewanna. (2007) "'Limelight' by rush." YouTube. September 14. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbWTUTdOekY
Pauliewanna. (2008) "An open letter to neil peart and rush." YouTube. December 12. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9IbS2DThwI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKJL--zbyXI
PookLowEnd. (2008) "Tribute is NOT theft campaign". Living Room Rock Gods Forum. November 8. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=611
PookLowEnd. (2009a) "Record labels that WON'T pull your videos (apparently)". Living Room Rock Gods Forum. January 23. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=749
PookLowEnd. (2009b) "UMG Field Day." Living Room Rock Gods Forum. April 30. http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1012
PookLowEnd. (2010) "Pearl Jam's 'Alive' Collaboration." LRRG.net. January 5. Retrieved from http://www.lrrg.net/?p=1670
Potter, T. (2008) Correspondence addressed to YouTube, LLC. October 13. Retrieved from http://www.eff.org/files/McCain%20YouTube%20copyright%20letter%2010.13.08.pdf
Sandoval, G. (2008) "Talks break down; warner music pulls videos from youtube". CNET News. December 20. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127666-93.html
Thelwazaru. (2009) "If you have to ask- rhcp bass & guitar cover (collab)". YouTube. November 28. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9vR4zOKEBc
Von Lohmann, F. (2009) "YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre". Deeplinks. February 3. Retrieved from http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/01/youtubes-january-fair-use-massacre
Youtomb. (2009) Youtomb statistics. As observed on March 9, 2009. http://youtomb.mit.edu/statistics
Zcatz. (2009) "Very important please read". YouTube. January 10. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/v/WnLKU_i6gm0
Zodiak. (2009) "Accounts are being suspended." Living Room Rock Gods Forum. Retrieved from http://lrrgs.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=884
