Padd Solutions

YouTube's has been engaged in some legally bemusing behavior, and I don’t mean its entire business model. In response to notice and take down requests for a video, rather than take down the whole video as in the past, in a twist, it's just removing the sound. What is left is a haunted video of sorts: a sonically barren, creepy picture show. In fact, further adding to the strange brew, Youtube is apparently providing the posting user the choice to have the audio removed as opposed to the entire video. And most of the music now being muted is from Warner, since Warner recently backed out of a licensing deal with Youtube. Hence, this could be viewed as an opportunity to silence Warner for the most part, while proving some ground for the user creativity through a later mashup of some kind. This is an awkward proposition at best.

Apparently, the memo has to go round all the executives’ desks that this tug of war between Youtube, Copyright, and users is bound to hurt everyone. In one case a Twilight fan posted a mashup that from her perspective was only improving the movie’s visibility (and to a very good extent, she is right), only to find it muted. And the collective outrage of the fans may actually be the loaded part of the gun Youtube is staring down.