Read this article today about YouTube’s defense of the lawsuit brought by Viacom and other copyright holders.
One thing that caught my eye was
…lawsuits brought against YouTube by Viacom International Inc., England’s top soccer league — The Football Association Premier League Ltd. — and indie music publisher Bourne Co.
I thought to myself, “Wow, an Indie music publisher is suing YouTube?”. So I decided to do some research.
First, for those of you not really acquainted with the indie music and film scene, there is a certain connotation that goes along with the term indie (short for independant).
Wikipedia defines indie like this:
The term indie is short for “independent” and refers to artistic creations outside the commercial mainstream, without the support of a major record label, major movie studio, or other source of a large budget.
So, I did some research on this so called indie music publisher, Bourne Co.
BOURNE CO., one of the largest independent international music publishers, has since its founding in 1919, never lost its passion for the art of song writing or its deep respect for the creative processes involved in that art
So, they are one of the largest publishers of sheet music in the world. In this context, independant means ‘privately owned’, not ‘outside the commercial mainstream’. It really sounds to me like either the author of the article, Viacom or the AP is trying to spin this and make it sound like indie musicians are against YouTube, and that is just not the case. In reality it’s just a bunch of large companies (Viacom, Bourne Co., Football Association Premier League) angry because YouTube is making money off content they ‘own’. In reality, these publishers should be suing the individuals that actually post the copyrighted content to YouTube, but as the RIAA has shown us, that’s not a great PR move.