Myspace and Copyrights

Now I'm confused! I've been trusting the mp3 tags that say copyrighted: yes/no. Do they have any meaning?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Most likely not.

Lots about Myspace, nothing about Youtube. Sigh.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Youtube has the same issues. Copyright is copyright. Youtube is aggressively policing their uploaded content as well, for the same reasons.

Copyright true, but the ONLY place one can enforce a copyright claim is in Federal court and that is extremely expensive. So companies write letters hoping to scare people. I suggest a copyright revolution; let them sue. Most threats of lawsuits are total B.S. I'd like to bring the whole copyright system down as it's an elitist farce. But since Rupert Murdoch of evil FOX owns Myspace, what did people expect? Fair play? Dream on. It's time for a revolution against people like Murdoch and his fascist empire.

EDITOR'S NOTE: True, it's not likely that the big media companies will go after the little people (but the RIAA has done exactly that in the past) but if they can sue a Myspace or a Youtube with Deep Pockets, it's well worth their while to make such trouble.

I had the copyright message from myspace but it my own music i uploaded since i am a producer. The problem is i got no working link to the educational program in the PM from myspace!! What do i do now? How do i get to this educational program?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Copyright Education Program mentioned by Myspace in their "takedown" notices does not seem to exist. They say "click here" but there is no link to click on. Your best bet is to use the link above to contact Myspace customer support.

Sorry for being a bit lengthy here Bob, but I think it's important.

My band had the same thing happen to them when we uploaded a few of the songs off our newly recorded album. One of the parody songs used a backing track from another artist, and this prompted the infamous myspace copyright message and revoked our ability to add any more songs. We saw the "Copyright Education Program" link at that point, and went through it as instructed. But nothing changed. We still can't upload songs. We even contacted Myspace Customer Support and explained the situation, but they never responded, just as Bob predicted above.

Now here's the interesting part. We sat in the studio with a bunch of audiophiles thinking about how this myspace filter might work. It was obviously not a manual process; myspace displayed this message in a manner of seconds. We ruled out mp3 or other tagging because the original mp3 was imported into ProTools and those tags disappear. We also made sure that there couldn't have been any digital encoding in the backing track that got transferred over. This left us with one conclusion: that the filter signal was actually added as analog encoding. This means a series of tones that are not audible would have to be added to the song and then used as a unique identifier for it.
So to test our theory we used a freeware audio editor to speed up the song by a mere 1%, which would increase the pitch of the whole song, including any inaudible tones. We created a new myspace music profile and tried to upload this version of the song. TA-DA! The filter no longer recognized the tones as copyrighted material and successfully uploaded the song with no issues to date.

Now, I also don't condone posting commercially available songs online, but myspace has definitely sacrificed the usability of their product and made a lot of users unhappy. And those users are the ones generating revenue for myspace through advertising impressions and click-throughs. So, I say spread the word, and hopefully myspace will handle the situation more professionally next time.

Cheers!

I tried posting a video that I had taken with my own camera of my own children (that I had physically given birth to out of my own body) ice skating in their figure skating class performance (fully dressed mind you). They took my video off and accused me of either violating terms and conditions or copy right infringement (they couldn't even tell me which). The only thing I could find 'wrong' with my video (after reading through all the terms and conditions again and again) is the fact that their performance was set to music. I don't care about the music, I just wanted the video of my children figure skating to share with my family and friends, but I'm just a Mom I don't know how to get the stupid music off of the video so it's stuck there.
I tried e-mailing MySpace's customer service (since the link in the e-mail they sent me didn't work) and all I've gotten back are automated responses that don't even address the problem. I read about a similar case on YouTube with a mom just wanting to post a video of her baby/toddler dancing to a song. There are true criminals out there violating copyrights for their own personal/financial gain, why are they going after moms who just want to share their children's activities with their family and friends?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm sure the problem was the music in the background. They have automated scanners that look for that. It's possible to open the video in Windows Movie Maker (or Mac iMovie) and strip out the audio, then save.