Last week everyone was talking about a certain video posted on YouTube. Email forwards, radio hosts, TV stations and social networking sites were hot on the tail of this rapidly spreading piece of user-created content. In about a week, nearly nine million people watched a five-minute amateur wedding video called “JK Wedding Entrance Dance.” It was just that. Instead of conforming to the more traditional song, the dozen or so people in the bridal party did the unexpected and broke out the dance moves to Chris Brown’s “Forever.” If you haven’t seen it yet, spend a few minutes below and get up to speed with the rest of the country.
It was a novel video, but the thing that struck me most was the music. Chris Brown, “Forever,” in it’s entirety. As of late, YouTube has been increasingly concerned about keeping copyrighted music out of the videos on its site, introducing an automatic detection system that scans the music in uploaded videos. And with the recent downloaded music scares, that’s probably a good thing. So how is it, you might ask, that a video can survive over 9 million views (now more than 15 million) when it has an unlicensed soundtrack with one of the most popular songs of the year? Let’s analyze this a bit more.
About six months ago, artist Chris Brown had a problem when a few aspects of his personal life likely jeopardized his fan base. You can read more about it if you’re interested. Perhaps Brown’s craving to revitalize his image has left him (or his agents and lawyers) open to bending the rules a little bit concerning copyright infringement. Amazingly, the video has remained untouched by YouTube, or any representatives of the recording label, quite a feat nowadays for something other than an official music video. It seems as if everything thats’ been crammed down our throats related to copyright for the last decade can be changed as long as the original content owner profits from it. To be honest, it makes me a little nervous about our legal system’s whims, especially as a content producer myself.
EDIT: The couple has set up a website devoted to the video, trying to raise money for a charitable cause. The charity, The Sheila Wellstone Institute stands for ending domestic violence in communities. Honorable, and naturally it ties in to Chris Brown's incident. A bit of a dig on an artist who helped them become web-famous.
U.S. copyright law basically defines fair use as using content for critical, satirical, news or educational purposes, but requires the material to be “reasonably brief” and attributed to its rightful owner. That’s how shows like The Simpsons and internet blogs such as this one get away with using the material. As far as I can tell, the wedding video doesn’t fall under fair use. Even worse though are the freeloaders who copy the video to their own YouTube account, hoping to drive viewers towards their own goals and financial gain. Like this one. Shame. Shame.
Oddly enough, I saw a message from the original uploader of the video to the uploader of one of the copies. It read: “I am the owner of this video and if you do not remove it I will take legal action.” Huh, really?
I don’t want to come across as being critical of the couple and their families who did the dancing wedding video–I thought it was cute, imaginative, and progressive in nature. Not to mention it was never fully intended for a mass audience. I simply want to draw attention to the methods being used to market a song and it’s artist in a far different and unexpected way than was obviously first imagined, and the ways in which laws are being made and interpreted in a rapidly changing mediated environment. Apparently, if you become popular enough, copyright infringement is just fine.
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