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Is it illegal to post music in a blog?

  1. greensheepwater
    Member

    Is it illegal to post music purchased on itunes in a blog through the audio player? I don't want to steal from anyone but rather to give higher exposure to artists I like, and I would include a link to their website. If a song is posted through the wordpress audio player, will people be able to illegally download it from there? I wanted to make sure that this was ok and I haven't been able to find information elsewhere. Thank you for your help.

    The blog I need help with is greensheepwater.wordpress.com.

  2. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    "If a song is posted through the wordpress audio player, will people be able to illegally download it from there?"

    Not directly, but very easily if you are a tiny bit knowledgeable.

  3. greensheepwater
    Member

    So I assume uploading songs is then illegal? Even if a link to the artist's site is provided? What about youtube music videos? As I said before my intention is increasing artists' exposure, not stealing from them.

  4. raincoaster
    Member

    Uploading songs that you don't have permission to share is illegal, yes. Depending on the country you're in, that probably means purchases on iTunes are illegal to post. Since WP.com blogs are bound by US law, it means yes, it's illegal to post music if you don't specifically have permission to share it.

    With Youtube the situation, because the actual video is hosted by Youtube, not by WordPress.com, so it's the person who uploads it's responsibility. Note that, more and more, big music companies are enabling you to embed YouTubes but then when people try to play them, it's giving a "Go watch it on YOuTube" message and refusing to play. It's getting so bad I'm about to stop using YouTube.

  5. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    @rain: Could you link to such a video? I'd like to see if I can override that.

  6. raincoaster
    Member

    God, look ANYWHERE on my site. They're even taking down mashup videos that contain any copyrighted material. If you can work around this, I'd be eternally grateful.

    Here's one. Try the second video here (the first one is plain old Embedding Disabled, which it wasn't when I posted it).

    http://raincoaster.com/2010/12/12/christmas-programming/

    What's MOST annoying is, there's no indication in advance that this will occur. You have to post it and hope for the best.

  7. greensheepwater
    Member

    Great, thank you so much for your help!

  8. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    @rain: Sorry, I failed! I had found a trick a couple of weeks ago, but it seems YT made changes again. Spent one hour yesterday trying to hack the thing, but no luck.

  9. raincoaster
    Member

    Damn! Thanks for trying anyway.

  10. pienbiscuits
    Member

    I have noticed this trick by the majors on YouTube has been increasing and quite frankly it's been driving me mad.

    I have wanted to put up videos to either illustrate the work of a musician or actor I've admired who'd recently died, or because I liked a clip I found and wanted to share. However, I have been stymied at every turn and I have now taken to putting apologies on my posts for the intransigence of these companies. I'm not even a little fish in a little pond and yet they are treating people like me as criminals. They are worried about copyright infringement and rightly so, but using the anvil to squash a raisin will not stop those who will find ways to get their materials illegally.

    If and when these companies fold, they will wish they had been more generous to people who genuinely wanted to introduce a new audience to their work. And serve them right.

  11. raincoaster
    Member

    Amen to that. We're embedding the content in our blogs to share it. To make their content more popular. The ONLY reason to divert people to YouTube to view the content is to get the ad revenue from the pageviews. It's venal and counterproductive in the extreme.

  12. pienbiscuits
    Member

    Grrrrrr.

  13. ludusnaturae
    Member

    I've never saw such a thing! Meaning the raincoaster example.
    Until now the only similar issue I know is a total "not available".
    Eg: http://ludusnaturae.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/i-don%E2%80%99t-need-your-organization-iii/
    "Watch only on YouTube" is really annoying!

  14. djleekee
    Member

    Essentially I have given up on Youtube now as my account has 2 bad strikes and one more then my account is instantly terminated.

    Therefore I have created another account which I upload the clips to and if its deemed acceptable and will be embeddable and playable elsewhere I THEN decide to upload to my proper account for use elsewhere!

    Also if a video is remvoed due to copyright from the secondary account I upload to Dailymotion.com as they seem to allow near enough anything and they are all embeddable aswell!

  15. pienbiscuits
    Member

    I'd better pay attention to Dailymotion, then. It may become my new source for clips without pain. Thanks for the tip.

  16. raincoaster
    Member

    Yes indeed. I've been looking around as well.

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