RobK

Almost all people have a hard time with change. Genesis was genius. Phil reinvented his own genius in a whole new genre in the 80s. You can bet that mofo made some serious bank. One goes where one is called.

The RRHoF is like the MTV music awards… who cares?

I will choose a bathysphere… I will choose free will.

No, but someone would've made some passion project out of pocket for a few grand, streamed it freely to raise attention, proved that they can do less for more, and then been able to crowdfund the funds to do something bigger. It's been done, and the dinosaur middlemen power-brokers hate it. The old fashioned model doesn't work in the digital age. It stands in the way of fair and open competition. It makes art about profit. It need to me phased out, and digital piracy is doing that legwork. This is not what you said before. You said artwork should be "commissioned" and "the work" be paid for upfront so the end product is not a commodity and FREE for everyone. But OK, I'm a big enough guy to give you a mulligan on that one. Now you're saying people should invest their OWN money on some kind of demo to "…proved that they can do less for more". To whom? The big industry you just took down? The government? Jesus? "The people?" Whatever… there's nothing stopping ANYBODY from doing this right now, not a single thing. So as you yourself said "it's been done", please cite one single FULL-LENGTH, crowd-sourced, COMPLETED, feature film that can compete with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in scope, cgi, location shoots, compositing and desirable casting… oh, and somebody besides Google has to have heard of it.

How do you expect them to make money? I suppose you feel the same way about photography. I'm a photographer and people lifting my images without paying for them led me to not post anything on line anymore. I feel that people need to respect the artist and the laws. The fundamental model needs to change. Artwork needs to be commissioned. Someone should be paying for work up front, the final product should generally not be the commodity to be sold, the work should be. If that's the way it worked, no one would work as a musician. There wouldn't be any money in it. The product hasn't changed. Just the way it's delivered. Besides that, in general, people don't respect things near as much if it's free. C'mon Mr. JD, it's time to evolve into the digital age. "SOMEONE" should have just reached into their own pocket, pulled out $306 MILLION dollars, and "commissioned" Star Wars The Force Awakens... then the rest of us could see it for free. Christ, it's a pretty simple concept man.

Posting covers, amateur footage and old bootlegs does not fall under "fair use". "Fair Use" primarily covers commentary/criticism (like a news report or a review) and parodies (like Weird Al Yankovic… although he always tries to get permission he sometimes does not, but he doesn't need it). It does NOT cover "well I feel it's unfair because I want to do it" although you could try and litigate if you have the resources. There is definitely wiggle room in interpretation.

Give me some time to process that article. What an A-list celeb already making millions of dollars considers to be fair doesn't necessarily transfer, or filter down to those of us ALSO working full-time in the industry but living basically paycheck to paycheck.

I definitely think it's just them being vigilant regarding their newly acquired property. Actually you no longer need big industry clout. I'm not famous by ANY means and all my stuff was basically recorded in a bedroom. I have three albums and a single out and YouTube has flagged ME for copyright infringement for posting MY OWN songs! I simply contested it and said "uuuhhhh hey… I AM HIM" (and jumped through some other minor hoops to clear it). So I know the company I published through and assigned to monitor my own paltry, pathetically small musical rights is doing their job.

It's definitely NOT legal for bands to record and release cover songs, lyrics or not. It falls under a derivative work (you can't take someone else's song, artwork, photo etc, change something, and then call it your work). It is also NOT legal for them to perform the songs live. Example, if a club/venue employs bands that play covers, the VENUE must have some kind of royalty agreement and be paying BMI/ASCAP and the like their fee. Just because people do it all the time and get away with it doesn't make it legal. When you see a band like Foo Fighters or Dream Theater etc cover songs live, I guarantee you they either have their ducks in a row, pay a fine, or just don't care and hope they get away with it (not so much now in the iPhone age). I was the bassist for a band called Betty's Not a Vitamin back in 2005 and we did an Alt-Rock/Americana remake of Kenny Rogers' "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (you can hear a clip on the iTunes if interested). We were going to press 5000 CDs initially and we had to pay $2500 to the Harry Fox agency (they handle song licensing for most of the big artists - https://www.harryfox.com/) in order to officially release the song on our album. This $2500 ONLY covered those 5000 CDs. When we ended up pressing another 10K, we had to pay again. Now most deals include hard copies (CDs, records, etc) and a certain amount of digital downloads as sales (iTunes mostly). Once you burn through them, you pay for more and on and on. Auto-detection on Youtube (per your example) does not need to think it's the original, it just needs match it to someone else work. When I uploaded my band's cover of The Spirit of Radio a few weeks ago (and we certainly don't sound exactly like RUSH LOL) it was detected in like 30 minutes as copyright infringement, but Ole allowed it if they could put ads on it and make money (and share a tiny bit with me). If you check your ticket materials you are prohibited from recording/filming. By purchasing and using the ticket you agreed to be bound by that. That fact that you DID it and nobody stopped you at the venue is irrelevant. You violated the contract. So that's how they can pull those down. Yeah, you can keep re-uploading it until you get banned (3 unresolved violations does it these days I think), or keep creating new channels and uploading them again... I see it all the time. For now, the chances of legal repercussions are quite low… for now.

I was concerned myself when I heard about the sale because I've performed a few RUSH covers on my YouTube channel and while flagged, Anthem allowed it with profit-shared ads. Now it's changed to : You're monetizing this video and sharing revenue with the copyright owner. OleMediaManagement Monetized by copyright owner However, I must agree with takedowns of DVD ripped content or any other "officially" released RUSH material. People uploading published concert footage and or "lyric videos" with the actual released music tracks is just theft. It's the definition of copyright infringement. They may also be coming down harder on more recent audience video uploads (such as R40) because there's still a significant chunk of money for them to make there? "in the end" :) …they're within they're rights to have it ALL taken down, people uploading covers, all of it. They could also be suing us. I'm remaining thankful for what I'm allowed. We're all so used to passing around other people's intellectual property that it's desensitized us to the value it may or may not have for those who created it… and that it's THEY, not us, who have the final word.

I always thought it was Dray-m Tay-ah-truh. LOL no...

Was thinking same.

I always thought Zep ripped off the ending of Stairway from Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower". I mean even the solo Jimmy Page plays is very similar.

There are… other, b… bah…baaaaaahhhhhh… what now? That's just crazy talk.

I think it's simply that he now has a second chance at a family and happiness in that regard and I'm sure he's aware there are fewer days ahead than behind. Can't blame the guy after what happened to his first wife and daughter.