So I have a YouTube channel under the username pRincejTmJJ & had over 17 videos of me playing piano pertaining to Prince's music. At first my videos were either getting muted or "blocked in certain countries" or matched third party content. But then I recieved a copyright strike against my account for allegedley "infringing copyright" for my video "Nothing Compares 2 U Piano Live". On your video manager, thiers a display of your videos and thiers an available option for the videos that have recieved a copyright strike, in which you can appeal the case, but would then have to get into court & legal financial issues. In this option, thiers the user who filed the claim against you contact information, specifically thier email. Since I recieved the copyright strike from "Controversy Music", I presumed it was a previous YouTube channel, as I knew of one of the same title that once had videos and audio pertaining to Prince's music, but was then taken down. After having the accesibility to thier contact information, I took the liberty to write this person a lenghty aggressive, quite argumentative email.

Hello,

I am pRincejTmJJ. & your Controversy Music. The now non-exsisting YouTube account that has filed a claim against me for allegedley infringinging copyright on my video "Nothing Compares 2 U", which is a video of me interpreting the song on piano according to the version he performed when he did it live. All I can say is Wow. & All I want to know is why. What could've possibly motivated you to file a claim on a musician whos motives were to share this piece of art with the world, when you yourself even had videos that pertained to the Prince's music as well? Do you honestly have nothing better to do then want to jeopardize a complete strangers lifer behind your computer screen? Is it because I hadn't had my channel taken down and yours was? Well let me lay you down witth some facts, I only had a few videos of Prince's music. Go and check any of the other videos I have. I have everything ranging from Alicia Keys to New Edition. Don't worry, I allready deciphered your counter arguement. Prince himself even said on his interview on George Lopez "My problem is when the industry covers the music". "There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission. And that doesn't exist in any other art form, be it books, movies -- There's only one version of 'Law & Order.' There's several versions of 'Kiss' and 'Purple Rain." Well what about when he tours and covers "Don't Stop Til You Get'Enough" by Michael Jackson during his "21 Nite Stand"? Or when he covered "The Best Of You" by The Foo Fighters at the Superbowl? Or when he covered "Fallin" by Alicia Keys during his "20ten" tour? My intention was not to ever infringe copyright on this mans music. However, my intentions were to display the genius of his melody construction as well as motivate people to learn an instrument and learn how to actually play music, and ideology that Prince has adovated and protested for for so long, especially during his promotion of "Musicology". If covering a song is infringement of copyright, then it should be considered illegal. & If it is so, then millions of other users even besides myselfs would vanish from YouTube and becoming a musician would be nearly impossible. But it's not. I don't know whether you are the record company that Prince was a part of, or if your the channel that uploaded videos pertaining to his music and perfromances. But if you filed a claim to just have my entire channel removed, because I was getting away with the Prince videos I posted, you have issues. These were videos that were gaining me hundreds and thousands of views, and were obviously being appreciated by viewers worldwide. I can understand if I completely recorded a song through a studio and uploaded it, but these were just amateur videos recorded utilizing Prince sheet music. Sheet music that Prince himself has obviously permitted to be published. & Why would he permit it to be published? So that people could learn how to read music and play it. An entire goal I was attempting to achieve on YouTube. If he didn't want people to play it, he would not have permited to do so. If you have any respect for what I do, you'll remove this ridiculous claim and let me be.

After doing a Google search, turns out this was Prince's personal manager and lawyer. I never recieved a response and then ended up recieving a second strike against my account for "allegedly" infringing copyright again on my video "Starfish and Coffee Piano". One more strike and my YouTube channel will vanish. I then had to delete all of my videos pertaining to Prince's music.

Welcome to the truth of the anglo-saxon rentseekers.

It's been happening for years - deal with it.

Or kill the system.

[img:$uid]http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g216/rebecca8273/emoticon/reaction.gif[/img:$uid]

The problem is bigger than youtube.

errant said:

Good. There's way too much of that kind of bullshit on youtube anyway.

oh my gosh! u r way 2 funny I can't stop laughing

Graycap needs youtube, that's where he gets his conspiracies.

Whine to Youtube.

Other musical artists lawyers have Youtube do the same thing, so it's not only Prince's lawyer's that do it.

name some, pleeezzzz!?!?!

Even if so, none seem to be bigger arseholes than P's!

[Edited 4/12/13 18:23pm]

I had a clip taken down that was me singing about prince being an asshole for sueing fans

NouveauDance said:

It's been happening for years - deal with it.

luv4u said:

Whine to Youtube.

errant said:

Good. There's way too much of that kind of bullshit on youtube anyway.

PJTMJJ- Sorry for the less than warm welcome for your first post. While responses like these help contribute to the pristine reputation of these forums, please realize that not everybody here will act like this. And while it may not be anybody's duty to hand-hold here, and while some veterans will scoff at this type of first post, there are plenty of people here who won't jump at any chance to rip on another person.

That being said, yeah, that can be shitty. There are a number of people who have had vids taken down for similar reason. Even former bandmates have had their videos taken down too.

There's quite a few stories on the forums where you can read about them. There's actually quite a lot of cool bits of information you can find on here. So I hope you stick around.

and to think one was a moderator

OnlyNDaUsa said:

I had a clip taken down that was me singing about prince being an asshole for sueing fans

LOL. Serious? Send it to me!! Hahahah:-D

NouveauDance said:

It's been happening for years - deal with it.

Yeah no shit. Except I'm an actual musician.

The system is so broken that they see you as a threat.

A threat to their income stream.

Fair use is no longer a valid reason.

It's just one of the things that scream that the system is failing beyond repair.

PJTMJJ said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

I had a clip taken down that was me singing about prince being an asshole for sueing fans

LOL. Serious? Send it to me!! Hahahah:-D

i was trying to find it... i have yet to... i should have it on a SD card somewhere....

I can put it online.

From the original post:

PJTMJJ said:
These were videos that were gaining me hundreds and thousands of views, and were obviously being appreciated by viewers worldwide.

This might be the reason why your videos got taken down. Otherwise they might not have caught their attention.

It's a shitty situation, I admit. When you think about how music has gotten passed from generation to generation limiting it in this manner doesn't make much sense. I doubt Prince is going to lose any income generated by the sales of the SOTT album by having someone playing a song from it on a piano.

I've never had a problem with Prince taking down unauthorised cover versions of his music. He does us all a huge favor. I know I don't want to hear somebody practicing piano with Nothing Compares To You. Amateur musician's click-jack a lot of bands on Youtube. It's also an emerging problem on Itunes.

funksterr said:

I've never had a problem with Prince taking down unauthorised cover versions of his music. He does us all a huge favor. I know I don't want to hear somebody practicing piano with Nothing Compares To You. Amateur musician's click-jack a lot of bands on Youtube. It's also an emerging problem on Itunes.

then do not listen

Exactly right. I can understand if I was getting paid, which YouTube offers as an option once your videos start gaining thousands of views. But I wasn't. I didn't sign up for that option

udo said:

The system is so broken that they see you as a threat.

A threat to their income stream.

Fair use is no longer a valid reason.

It's just one of the things that scream that the system is failing beyond repair.

It's just not okay when hehe himself can utilize the concept of covering, yet other people cannot. the only exception to this could be the valid permission of coveirng "How Come U Don't Call Me" by Alicia Keys, who I'm sure was granted the request because she is a woman pianist. But even Kevin Smith asked if he could utilize "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" for his film and Prince said no. Then made Kevin stay a week of documenting fans discussing the lyrica content of his album as well as himself, and didn't even recieve any compensation or gratitude. It's not about being amaetuer, it's about developing a craft. A craft in which can only be developed with the aspect of learning someone elses song. The first song Prince himself learned on piano was the theme to "Batman".

funksterr said:

I've never had a problem with Prince taking down unauthorised cover versions of his music. He does us all a huge favor. I know I don't want to hear somebody practicing piano with Nothing Compares To You. Amateur musician's click-jack a lot of bands on Youtube. It's also an emerging problem on Itunes.

It's just not okay when hehe himself can utilize the concept of covering, yet other people cannot. the only exception to this could be the valid permission of coveirng "How Come U Don't Call Me" by Alicia Keys, who I'm sure was granted the request because she is a woman pianist. But even Kevin Smith asked if he could utilize "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" for his film and Prince said no. Then made Kevin stay a week of documenting fans discussing the lyrica content of his album as well as himself, and didn't even recieve any compensation or gratitude

trax said:

you have to pay prince to play his music. betta recognize. Prince is the only one in this that can play otha peoples shit. pay him and you may play him

anyone can cover a song. as long as the royalties are paid. did you pay any royalties? probably not, since you didn't make any money off of your Prince covers.

but then again, Prince has probably run into this himself, and is probably the reason why Crimson & Clover was replaced on the download version of LotusFlow3r with The Morning After. He probably didn't want the hassle of calculating what the percentage of the $77 membershihp would be for that one song to be paid to Tommy James.

still hoping Billy Cobham sends a take-down notice for "BoomStratus"

Royalties?

For a practice run you put online to gain feedback on how to improve?

And how much of the original must be there to apply?

What about derivative works that cover versions obviously are as they seldom are an exact replica of the original?

Here the hairy parts start that separate the greedy from the reasonable.

PJTMJJ said:

It's just not okay when hehe himself can utilize the concept of covering, yet other people cannot. the only exception to this could be the valid permission of coveirng "How Come U Don't Call Me" by Alicia Keys, who I'm sure was granted the request because she is a woman pianist. But even Kevin Smith asked if he could utilize "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" for his film and Prince said no. Then made Kevin stay a week of documenting fans discussing the lyrica content of his album as well as himself, and didn't even recieve any compensation or gratitude

trax said:

you have to pay prince to play his music. betta recognize. Prince is the only one in this that can play otha peoples shit. pay him and you may play him

I'm sure prince pays hte appriate fees to play other people's music.

Prince's music has been covered without his granting permission. The very song you mentioned "Nothing Compares to U" is a prime example. The diffference between that cover and yours was the appropriate fees were paid to use his work.

You stated the problem in the title of the thread. It's Prince's music, not yours. You posting your cover of Prince's music on youtube amounts to a public performance.