Monday, July 15, 2013

Coloraturafan says goodbye


I'll have to go through and see what is missing now.

I have an editorial comment on this subject. Coloraturafan has been removed from YouTube due to copyright violations. Obviously, if you buy a commercial video, bring it home and upload it to YouTube, that is illegal. Emphasis on the word commercial. If you capture something from a stream, is that illegal? Who knows?

If you are strictly literal, absolutely everything that you didn't film with your own camera and then post to YouTube is illegal. And even that might be illegal if you are filming someone or something that is otherwise covered. In these two sentences we have covered all the classical music on YouTube.  If you film yourself, you're good. Would I want a film of myself?  Probably not.  I notice there's an old woman who films her blog.

YouTube allows samples, supposedly. I am unaware that coloraturafan posted anything but samples. Recently I know he posted items from the Il Trovatore stream from Munich.  I know this because I linked to a couple of them. When asked, he took them down. The usual reason organizations ask that a film be removed is because they decide to make a commercial video of it. If they decide not to, they let it go.  I won't cite specific instances.  How is someone to know this before the fact? And why should someone be punished for something they can't know?

I think the world of classical music needs all the exposure it can get.

9 comments:

Rob said...

I was taken down by U-tyoob back in the fall, too. I enjoyed sharing clips, and when they cut me off, they also deleted the files I DO own the rights to. I actually wrote a post about it, but decided not to post it at the time.

You asked, “how is someone to know?” We can’t unless we assume, like they say, that anything you didn’t personally film with your own camera (and isn’t of other people you don’t know performing) is illegal. Another blogger advised that it varies. Sometimes video clips are OK, and some audios are not.

I got taken down by a lethal combination of the Bavarian State Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic; both organizations fiercely guard their mechanical rights. I argued to YT that I was happy to remove anything they asked me to. And they insisted that all decisions were final.

Coloraturafan is right that Google is very hard to convince to give a second chance. Also, my blog is on blogspot which, guess what, is also Google. So I gave up the fight rather quickly.

I agree with you about the exposure that classical music, and particularly opera needs. And for most folks, the presence of an opera video on YT will not necessarily keep them from buying a DVD. On the contrary, I’ve purchased several DVDs after watching chopped up versions of them there. Incidentally, Thomas Hampson agrees with you too. He calls classical music a "right" and has commented that he’d rather the music have the exposure, than to chase down people for copyright infringement: http://regieornotregie.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-accessible-thomas-hampson-classical.html

Dr.B said...

Thank you for your comment. I think this whole search for violators is completely misguided.

marie said...

Thank you for everything you did ... We need more people like you.

Dr.B said...

It appears we can establish a rule. Don't post films that originate with the Bavarian State Opera.

Dr.B said...

This is aggravating my natural paranoia.

Rob said...

P.S. Just this evening, I noticed that four of my six BSO blog posts had reverted to drafts, including a very nice review I wrote of Der Fliegene Hollander. Now, I get clumsy sometimes, but it seems very interesting and more than coincidental that all four of those "went away" at the same time. hmmmm...

Rob said...

P.P.S. Paranoia retraction: I just remembered that I misspelled Bayerische the first time I posted about the BSO, so the tags were wrong. So I changed the tags the other day to make them right. I must have hit "save" instead of "publish" after I updated the tags... Oops. But still, they (the BSO) are tough!

Dr.B said...

One of my all time favorite posts was the comparison of various people singing the main aria from I Puritani. Almost all the examples are gone now.

mamascarlatti said...

Sorry that your YT has been removed, Rob. I've always enjoyed your clips. The thing that really annoys me is the the Bayarische state opera refuses to release their broadcasts on DVD. So I have to try and get up at 5 am for live streams and hope that the opera finishes before I have to get kids to sport or go to work. It's so dog in the manger of them. BTW iOpera.s' vimeo has also been removed since they posted the WHOLE of Trovatore.