Screw you, Sheryl Crow

I realize I haven't posted since the marathon report, and that's mostly because I've been in a pleasant kind of pseudo-hibernation, and even the subsequent posts I had been working on - recapping the season, thinking of next year, random thoughts here and there - were eventually relegated to the meh, I think I'll go see what D's up to pile of abandoned blog posts. So this one doesn't really count in the grand scheme, because I still have those other thoughts to get to.

Today I received an email from YouTube telling me that the video for The Run (part 1) of the Becoming Ironman video (I'd link to it, but it doesn't matter) has been frozen, because of a copyright issue. Because the video uses a song called Chances Are by Sheryl Crow.

First, how'd they find it? Is there some dude at the record company doing YouTube searches for Sheryl Crow songs so he can tell on me?

Second, how stupid. I get it - I get that you have to have rules and keep them for everybody and you can't have exceptions and blah blah blah, except you can and you should. It's like - one of my favorite television shows is Mad Men. Awhile ago fans of the show started keeping Twitter accounts as characters of the show. So, for instance, Don Draper has a Twitter account somewhere out there. At first AMC, who owns Mad Men, made Twitter pull them down. Then AMC's sensible ad agency said - yeah, no actually don't. Those people are called Brand Advocates and they're doing for you what you cannot do for yourselves, better than you'd be able to anyway.

The facts are that hundreds of thousands of people have watched the Becoming Ironman video series. Hundreds of those have commented to me throughout, and of those hundreds not an insignificant number are wondering who does the song for this or that part of the video - including inquiries about Chances Are. So it's likely that people have even purchased this song just because of the free commercial time I gave it. On the one hand - I'm all about the rules. Really. And I made that video for my friends and family who were part of Ironman with me, then put it on YouTube specifically so I could share it with you here on this blog. Whatever life it may have at YouTube was just an unintentional consequence - one I'm of course responsible for, but I'm saying I wasn't out to make any money or infringe on anybody's anything - it's tantamount to somebody slapping It's a Wonderful World on their publicly viewed wedding slideshow video. If somebody put a song of mine on a private video of theirs in the same context with which I use Chances Are, I'd have no problem at all with it. Hell, I think I'd find it pretty cool.

On the other hand, newsflash to the record company with whom I'm actually taking exception (Sheryl Crow does not own or administer the copyright to the song, so my beef isn't really with her), the old model is friggin' dead. Get your shit together already. With all the video, photo slideshow, social media, etc. resources out there that could potentially be using your music, you'd be wise to revise your "absolutely not" policy on things. This is the world you live in now. Give me a friggin' break on throwing the hammer down on me and my tiny little video.

So, there you go, Monday morning rant for you. I have no idea what, if anything, I'll do about this. Sometime I guess I'll out and put new music to the video - as though I didn't specifically choose that one - and repost it so that the experience isn't interrupted like it is now. I wonder if I'll start getting more letters from assholes who don't like that I'm using their music. Who has time for this?

I'm disappointed. Irritated. A little sad.

That is all. We return to regularly scheduled programming soon. Carry on.