Nine Inch Nails recently release a remix album of Year Zero, titled Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D (or Year Zero Remixed). Trent Reznor has been a supporter for fan mixes or remixes of his band's material and this time he wished to host a remix community website on nin.com to be companion with the remix album. However, it was stopped at last minute due to a lawsuit between Universal Music Group against YouTube (under the Google umbrella) and MySpace. The Universal Music Group thinks, by letting Nine Inch Nails to host the original multitrack master file on their website for fans to download and remix them, would lead to open themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. So Trent Reznor was forced to postpone the remix site until he can figure out an innovative way to do so and avoid the potential violation.
Several
years ago I persuaded my record company to let me begin posting my
master recording files on nin.com, in order to see what kind of
user-generated content would materialize from my music. I had no
agenda... the main reason I did it was because I thought it was cool and
something I would have liked to do if it was available to me. A lot of
really fun stuff started to happen....communities developed, web sites
were created, even traditional radio got in the game and began playing
the fans' mixes. I felt the experiment, despite not having a specific
purpose, was a success. So much so that we're now releasing a remix album
that includes some of this fan-created material as well as the actual
multitrack master files for every song from my latest record, Year Zero.
One
piece was missing to me and that was an official nin.com presence for
aggregating all of the fan-created remixes. Several intrepid fans had
stepped up and done a great job providing a destination for people to
post these, but I felt all along this was a function I should more
directly support. So, upon release of this new remix album, our plan
has been to launch an official site on nin.com that would provide a place for all fan remix material and other interactive fan experiences.
Or so I thought.
On
Saturday morning I became aware of a legal hitch in our plans. My
former record company and current owner of all these master files,
Universal, is currently involved in a lawsuit with other media titans
Google (YouTube) and News Corp (MySpace). Universal is contending that
these sites do not have what is referred to as "safe harbor" under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and therefore are in copyright
violation because users have uploaded music and video content that is
owned by Universal. Universal feels that if they host our remix site,
they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are
sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing
these companies for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix
one of my masters with material Universal doesn't own - a "mash-up", a
sample, whatever - and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor
under the DMCA (according to Universal) and they will be doing exactly
what MySpace and YouTube are doing. This behavior may get hauled out in
court and impact their lawsuit. Because of this they no longer will
host our remix site, and are insisting that Nine Inch Nails host it. In
exchange for this they will continue to let me upload my Universal
masters and make them available to fans, BUT shift the liability of
hosting them to me. Part of the arrangement is having user licenses
that the fans sign (not unlike those on MySpace or You Tube) saying
they will not use unauthorized materials. If they WERE to do such a
thing, everybody sues everybody and the world abruptly ends.
While
I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue
to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is
consistent with what they have done in the past. So... we are
challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to
life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies
piss all over each other’s feet. We have a cool and innovative site
ready to launch but we're currently scratching our heads as to how to
proceed. More to come….
By the way, the potential
implications of a lawsuit like this one go well beyond creating hurdles
for a Nine Inch Nails remix site. Here is an excerpt from technology site Ars Technica regarding a similar lawsuit Viacom has filed against YouTube:
The
DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions aren't just important to video sharing
sites; they're important to almost every sector of Internet-based
business. "Nearly every major Internet company depends on the very
same legal foundation that YouTube is built on," said von Lohmann. "A
legal defeat for YouTube could result in fundamental changes to its
business, potentially even making it commercially impossible to embrace
user-generated content without first 'clearing' every video. In other
words, a decisive victory for Viacom could potentially turn the
Internet into TV, a place where nothing gets on the air until a cadre
of lawyers signs off," he said. "More importantly, a victory for Viacom
could potentially have enormous implications for Yahoo, eBay, Amazon,
MySpace, and many other Internet companies, because they all rely on
the same DMCA Safe Harbors to protect many facets of their businesses,
as well. The stakes are high all around."
