A Muted Response

YouTube has, at least for the moment, muted the audio on my Barack Roll video.

[EDIT] Someone pointed out that the audio is not muted when the video is embedded in another site, but only when it is played throught the YouTube site. That strikes me as bizarre.



I've received a number of copyright notifications in the past in relation to different videos. Most (if not all) of these have seemed to be spurious and have been removed by YouTube. The present notification and muting, on the other hand, is on the basis that the videos may use audio content owned or licensed by Sony ATV Publishing, which (assuming Sony has the rights to Never Gonna Give You Up) they definitely do.

I've always considered that the use constitutes a fair use for the purposes of copyright law. I'm not a specialist in intellectual property law, and certainly not the law outside of Australia.

I figure that the video was probably picked up by some audio scanning software, rather than the notification being made specifically. I've made contact with YouTube, and am pretty happy at this stage to live by whatever their determination is, rather than getting involved in formal counter-notification procedures. I've got a fair amount of sympathy for Google in this regard - I understand the complex issues copyright claims give rise to and the practical difficulties in dealing with notifications on a case by case basis.

Would be interested to know what people think.

ps. Further apologies for continued lack of videos. Work in the court has been excellent fun, but also very time consuming.