Moderation in all things

I had to upload my music video I did for MSP10 this semester to YouTube again since I got an email saying "This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Cal IV Entertainment, LLC claiming that this material is infringing:" I checked on that company and it's the agency that represents Faith Hill. They must've been upset that I used her song in my animation.



The thing is that YouTube is so scattershot in how they enforce those notifications, since I saw the actual music video with Faith Hill in it still on there and several others with that song in it. They only delete certain ones with certain tags and only on the day they get the notification from the company that doesn't like it. It's not like it does much good to stop anything.

It's not that I object to Faith Hill or Cal IV to making money of the song, but it's a bit fanatical to try and squeeze every nickel out of it that way. It's not exactly the same purpose or performance if I used it in a different way than they recorded and sold it as. If you're going to go to that extreme, than you should pay the people that came up with the words she used in the vocabulary or the notes she used for the melody since none of that was original either. After all Breathe is an 8 year old song, it's already won 3 Grammy awards and been #1 on the charts so I think they've already made all the money they're going to off of it a while ago. Trying to be tightfisted about any further use of it comes off as kinda of greedy and not appreciating any new exposure for it.

I'd like to get paid for my work too, but I'm not so narrow minded as to think that I was the only one to think of the idea and no one else has the right to do anything like it. If someone took parts of my videos and changed them sufficiently to use for something else I wouldn't be surprised they claimed as their own as long as their was value added to it.