YouTube might lead in online video streams, but the Google-owned provider is not feeling the love this week, that’s for sure. It’s suffering smackdowns from the nation of China, Warner Brothers, high school Christmas pageant participants, ABBA and no less a rock-and-roll personage than Neil Young. Yikes.
First off, China has been throttling the video-sharing Web site since Monday, with all access to the site ceasing on Wednesday. Chinese users, which represent quite a large number of eyeballs, are receiving an error message that reads: "Network Timeout. The server at youtube.com is taking too long to respond." D’oh!
The Chinese government did not offer a reason for the ban, but it’s likely it has to do with footage posted toYouTube by a Tibetan nationalist group that shows Tibetans being kicked and beaten, apparently by Chinese police officers. China has accused the Tibetans of deceiving the international community with the “doctored” videos.
Such censorship has precedent: China blocked YouTube in March of last year during Tibetan riots to prevent video footage from being seen.
Meanwhile, it was the day the music died: Warner Music Group – which already pulled all licensed video clips from the site back in January – has requested YouTube take down or mute personal videos posted by people doing their own renditions of various WMG-owned songs. “YouTube generates revenues from content posted by fans, which typically requires licenses from rights holders,” said Will Tanous, a spokesperson for WMG.
But a high school girl doing “Winter Wonderland” in a homemade video has become a highly publicized example of a yanked clip, sparking public outrage that the seemingly populist site would do such a thing. WMG, meanwhile, has so far escaped mainstream scrutiny for the amateur video cleansing.
Artists, meanwhile, are upset that their music is disappearing from the site, but blame YouTube for not wanting to pay the necessary licensing fees to make it available. YouTube now finds itself in a legal battle with a consortium of U.K. songwriters and composers that includes Robbie Williams, ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and Gang Of Four's Andy Gill. They’ve launched Fairplayforcreators.com.
"Google and YouTube pretend they are providing a public service," Gill told New Music Express. "They are not, they are huge money making machines who make incredible fortunes for their owners at the expense of songwriters who get paid no royalty.
"The vast majority of [our] members earn less than a few thousand pounds a year,” he added. “It is a totally unfair situation."
A statement on the Web site reads: “Fair Play for Creators believes that fans should have access to the music they love, and that the work of music creators should be paid for by the online businesses who benefit from its use.”
Then there’s Neil Young. Ever since negotiations between WMG (his label) and YouTube failed to reach consensus earlier this year, he’s been out there fighting the good fight, just as if YouTube were Kent State all over again.
“YouTube has a responsibility to respect the artists it facilitates and resist punishing them to make a business point,” wrote Young in his blog. “It is time for industry-wide standards of artist compensation on the Web.”
YouTube spokesman Chris Dale has responded: “YouTube connects music, musicians, and fans. We have deals with all of the other major record labels and with musicians, songwriters and other independent creative producers. It is the record labels’ responsibility to represent and pay their artists.”