Taylor Swift and Sir Paul McCartney urge DMCA reform

Taylor Swift has faced down Apple and Spotify. She pulled her catalog from Spotify in November 2014.

YouTube, who has over one billion users in 88 countries, said in a statement that the “voices of the artists are being heard” and that they are working through “details”. “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently”. YouTube does pay to stream music uploaded by fans, but the artists and labels claim that YouTube (and other free steaming services) are generating huge profits from the music without compensating them fairly for it. The petition now has at least 180 signatures, including those 19 from music industry companies.

The musicians hope to catch the attention of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office, which is reviewing the DMCA. YouTube argues that there are key and fundamental differences in their consumer proposition that justify their business model as not comparable with what the record labels call “fully licensed” services.

The music industry is ramping up its campaign against YouTube.

Those within the music industry have been vocal about their criticism of YouTube.

But under the DMCA, YouTube has no incentive to take the video down unless the studio or the artist tells the site to do so. “In my years as a manager I haven’t seen such a serious threat to artists”.

Azoff tweeted an image of the ad with its note to Congress and the names of the artists on board.

“Major labels are reportedly unhappy with the way negotiations with those governing the DMCA and YouTube have gone, accusing the DMCA of giving the streaming service unfair leverage”.

Google, predictably, is not of the opinion it’s doing anything wrong in terms of the D.M.C.A.

The news comes just a week after YouTube rejected comments made by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who claims the company is “built on the backs of free, stolen content”.

“We have recommended to artists across the globe that they support the labels in their quest to review value-gap legislation on safe harbors both in Europe and the United States of America”, reads a letter sent today (June 22) to the EC from the Paris-based International Artist Organisation (IAO) – a non-for-profit trade body representing artist organizations in 10 European countries, including the UK’s Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and the French music artists guild (GAM).