Labels Stifle Viral Marketing With Push To End Fan Videos
YouTube and other video sharing sites are sprinkled liberally with teens using songs as the background to silly stunts, dances and even parodies of "official" videos. Recently, a skit by comedian Judson Laipply which caricatures dance routines and music since the 50s has been 
watched over 18 million times. Many view this as free viral marketing, but others in the industry see it a a threat.
"At a May meeting of the Recording Industry Association of America, Universal Music Group pushed for an aggressive stance against amateur videos using commercial songs," the Wall Street Journal recently reported. Most of the sites like YouTube will pull a video if they get complaints from the label or publisher. But one has to wonder who benefits from this kind censorship and whether fan backlash will follow.
Resources: YouTube, WSJ, Washington Post, Digital Music News
I think I may have said this before but everyone should check out a paper by Sam Ford on Audience participation in media. Its particularrly relavent to this discussion because one of its first points is that media companies need to stop suing everyone and find ways to participate with fans instead of trying to stop everything they do (that doesnt involve a credit card and vegging out). I would link to the paper but its not on their site. Email me for a copy and pass it along to anyone at a label you know because they really need to read it and anything else that might help them extract their heads from their a*@es.
Siddig, Mail digital version to HypeBot and maybe they will put it up for you. Otherwise send one to me and see if it will get through the spam filter.