It's not ethical for a distributor to strong-arm the hands that feed it on a 5 year basis, no matter how small a slice of the pie it may be.
Google has DMCA takedown capabilities. I'd suggest simply hiring a third party to monitor Google and send appropriate take-down notices. Then, on an annual basis, submit the invoice to Google. It's dirty pool, but then again, when has the music industry ever been a transparent and constructive and profitable enterprise for anybody outside of the top 1% of performers/acts/songwriters?
5 years is way to long for a social media platform that iterates almost every 2 weeks to the newest fad/trend/pop song. These contracts should be for 1 year max. Especially since they force to you release all and any of your new work there for free and pay. WAY to long of a time for that kind of control.
In artist-land, it's unethical to not give artists the services they want on the terms they want. Because art is the most important thing in the world.
I know that sounds sarcastic, but it's actually how a lot of artists behave and speak.
To clarify, this has more to do with controlling distribution - most artists want to retain ultimate control over when they can choose to terminate distribution.
To add a firsthand story, I am a part of an online music community, OverClocked Remix (http://ocremix.org ), that had to craft a formal content policy agreement for legal reasons to protect itself in the event a game publisher/rights owner decided to sue the site for hosting rearranged music from one of their games (the site only sells officially licensed music - the rest is free), or if an artist imposed many fickle demands such as 5+ artist handle change requests or a sudden takedown request of a track, which would affect distribution methods such as torrents. The site solicited feedback from the community, and we came to the decision to require a non-exclusive right to distribute with an identifier of our copyright (meta information in ID3v2 tags and the file name), no DRM), while the artists would maintain full rights of their track. Termination of distribution is left at the site's hands.
A few artists balked at this, and expressed strong disagreements based on the view that artists should retain full rights over distribution. They ultimately signed and most, even those who complained, ended up content with it.
> It's not ethical for a distributor to strong-arm the hands that feed it on a 5 year basis, no matter how small a slice of the pie it may be.
In the business world, this is known as negotiation. It's normal and ethical. Here, it's like being in a big store. You can buy the thing on the shelf or not, but you don't get to haggle over the price.
Zoe wants to haggle over the price until it's something convenient for her.
> I'd suggest simply hiring a third party to monitor Google and send appropriate take-down notices.
This is abuse. This will have a chilling effect on free expression.
As far as most anyone is concerned, monitoring YouTube for user-initiated copyright violations to send takedown notices is precisely what the DMCA was intended to be used for.
Agreed. My then-3 year old daughter danced to the tune of Da Funk and I uploaded it. The sound was removed, even though it was in the background. It was Fair Use for sure.
Shame on YouTube, quite seriously - I didn't cost Daft Punk anything!
"Terms are offered. You can accept them or reject them"
Isn't this the exact opposite of a negotiation? By definition, doesn't "negotiation" imply that both parties enter into a discussion in an attempt to reach an agreement.
When you buy a cup of coffee, Starbucks doesn't force you to sign a legal document saying that you will only drink Starbucks coffee for the next five years, or that whenever you buy a cup of coffee from somewhere else you must simultaneously buy a cup from Starbucks. Also, if you refuse to buy the cup of coffee, Starbucks will not post your picture in every branch in the country to prevent you from ever buying a cup of coffee from them again.
In this case the "product" is an automated system for paying royalties on the customer's creative output which Google is making money off the back of, and they haven't so much "dropped" it as changed the terms to compel the customer to agree to a distribution deal with YouTube.
If any other online hosting service (with substantial network or lock-in effects) changed their terms to give themselves rights to host and slap ads on any of your other public output there would be an outcry. Why is this one different?
And google uses search, in turn, to juice their own properties (such as youtube) by pushing them higher in the SERPs. See, eg, the europe antitrust stuff for demonstration.
Zoe's music is the product here, not Google's service; it's Google that's unilaterally demanding she monetize or block it, and trying to prevent her from entering into any exclusive agreements with any other distributor.
Google has DMCA takedown capabilities. I'd suggest simply hiring a third party to monitor Google and send appropriate take-down notices. Then, on an annual basis, submit the invoice to Google. It's dirty pool, but then again, when has the music industry ever been a transparent and constructive and profitable enterprise for anybody outside of the top 1% of performers/acts/songwriters?