Thursday, November 22, 2012

The eternal Youtube Game - Stupid Copyright Claims

Time for a little rant again, because there's something which really gets on my nerves. Of cause you remember my AlionLive video about the biketrip to the Baltic Sea, right? And for sure you also remember a posting I wrote on this Blog, about that some people claimed, that the soundtrack, from my Pop-Techno project "Willma Poppen" was their intellectual property. Well, after a short time the claim was withdrawn and everything seemed to be allright.

Well, until I decided to monetarize my videos, which means, to put advertisings in them. When I did that, instantly a new copyright claim was made. "Times Music India" and again "One or more music publishing rights collecting societies" claimed, that there was a musical composition titled "Shakti" in my video. So I rejected that copyright claim again, by "disputing it"... as Youtube calls that process. Nothing happened. While the first copyright claim had been withdrawn in just a few hours, now nothing happened at all. In the video manager, beside the stupid copyright claim, there was a text which said, that "an answer is expected until November 6th 2012". And exactly on that date the copyright claim was withdrawn.

The monetarizing for the video was still inactive. So I clicked the "monetarize"-link again. And guess what happened... I got a message that this time even 3 parties were claiming a copyright on music in my video. This time it should have been a musical composition titled "Pearl's Girl". Meanwhile I found out that it is a song by the band "Underworld". I listened to that song on (now that's funny) Youtube, and could not hear any similarities to ANY song of the Willma Poppen project. The funniest thing about that is, that I found all existing versions of "Underworlds" song "Pearl's Girl" on Youtube on Accounts of which I am sure that they do not have any rights on the song. So, Youtube: Why do you not wipe that crap away in the first place before accusing honest musicians to use copyrighted music?

One more and maybe the most interesting fact is, that each and every song used in the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is used in at least one more video on my AlionLive channel and for none of those other videos a copyright claim has ever been made. A special thing here is the AlionLive Madeira part about a busride from Funchal to Curral das Freiras. It hads allmost exactly the same set of songs by Willma Poppen in it's soundtrack as the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video. This video is monetarized and NEVER has a copyright claim been made by anybody.

So why is it all just happening with the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video? In discussions at forums etc. about that topic some selfmade "professionals" talked about a magic tool by Youtube (Google) which magically scans videos for copyrighted content. Somehow this is impossible, because then that scanner would have found foreign content in the AlionLive Madeira video mentioned above also. Because that didn't happen, the idea regarding the badly calibrated contentscanner seems not to work. Additionally, I listened to each and every song mentioned in the copyright claims and even checked the digital waveform. There is not the slightest similarity between any of them and ANY of the Willma Poppen works.

The answer to the question why all this happens, seems to be connected to the number of views a video has. The "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is the secondmost viewed video on my AlionLive channel and looking at the statistics it has the biggest potential. I don't now which objectives are the reason to deprive me of my ad revenues as long as possible, but this is for sure no propper business behaviour. I would have loved to talk about that issue to any "Youtube Support" but such a support does in fact not exist. What a absolutely unprofessional business is Youtube, that all the times new copyright claims can be made against a business partner, who repeatedly said, that he just uses his own works for his videos. I am able to bring each and every evidence that this is true. I am the only person in the universe who has the original raw material and project files for each and every bit of media which is used for the videos I upload on Youtube. It would be fine if one was able to sue the shit out of those people who allways claim that my works are theirs. But because the process regarding the copyright claims is totally intransparent, one is not even able to contact those idiots who claim copyrights on my genuine works, and ask them, for example, who crapped that giant turd into their so called brains, that they see a similarity between ANY work of the Willma Poppen project and, for example, "Pearls Girl" by "Underworld". By the way: I feel not honored by that comparison at all.

So, one can only hope, that there will be a better, more professional video upload service one day, which values it's creative users a bit more. Nuff said!

So here are again the copyright claims so far... for your amusement:
  • "Victorious", musical composition
    • Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
    • Note: Initially there was a copyright claim here too by the company Rumblefish, which became world famous for claiming a copyright on bird tweeting. Funny, that this claim has totally vanished ;)
  • "Go Getter (David Wiegand Alternate Mix)", musical composition
    • Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
    • CD Baby              
  • "Shanti (Instrumental)", musical composition
    • Copyright claimed by: Times Music India
    • One or more music publishing rights collecting societies           
  • "PEARL'S GIRL", musical composition
    • Copyright claimed by: The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA)
    • One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
    • UMPG Publishing

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Back from Madeira, and now?

Yes, dear friends, I am since 2 days back from Madeira. And with me I brough 16 1/2 hours of raw video material. So, there will be a lot for you to watch on AlionLive soon. If you are on Facebook and are my Facebook friend, you can now watch a quite huge number of nice photos from Madeira there. Of cause I will upload the photos on Google+ too sometimes, but not now.

It will take some time until you can view the video, because i want to create a brandnew intro for "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" and some new fresh music would also be good. Well... you know that ;) I have some new plans regarding to music. The new alionsonny album, I announced for until the end of this year will for sure be released and all the other allready announced things will happen too.

To talk about the new ideas for projects I had in Madeira, there will be a second album of the "Cimelium" project. Again it will be a concept album, this time titled "Madeira". It will have the traditional number of 13 tracks and each of them will be titled after a particular place in Madeira and I'll try to capture the atmosphere / ambient of that place in the song. The music will again be very relaxing and calm, but it will not contain the oriental sounds you know from the "Mesopotamia" album. I plan to release this album at latest in summer 2013.

I also work at new songs for a second album of the Willma Poppen project. After the initial approach of the project failed, because of my inability to produce stupid simple pop-techno in a music industry style, I will take the project on a path of ambitious, sophisticated pop-techno meeting my artistical ambitions. To plan a release date for that album would be, keeping all the stuff on my agenda in mind, not just a bit shady.

And then I have some stuff on my mind, I don't want to tell you about yet, because it is supposed to be a surprise for you. TIPP: When the "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" videos are being released, watch each of them. I sing a particular song in there... ;)

By the way: A short remark on the Cimelium album "Mesopotamia" and the Willma Poppen album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture". I thought that my distributor Routenote would manage it to get both albums out on iTunes, Amazon and eMusic until I return from Madeira. As you can see if you check it, this is not the case. Believe me: I am for sure AT LEAST as unpleased as you about that. I will have to speak some serious words with Mr. Bennett tomorrow. This doesn't work at all that way!

Ok, and now I go back to work to bring you some firstclass entertainment. The show must go on!