Quick Point on Piracy:
The anti-piracy bills SOPA/PIPA in early 2012 was an attempt to fix piracy. Big name websites like Wikipedia, Google, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube all protested these bills (check out this article for a refresher on the internet wide blackout) because it was not only blocking piracy, it was destroying creativity, free knowledge for around the world, and promoting censorship. We are still in the process of finding a happy balance between blocking piracy but keeping creativity and fair use.
Example of Copyright Problem:
My curation tool is YouTube. We did talk a lot in class about the problems with YouTube's terms and conditions, as well as its appeal process. So I'm going to focus on a different side of copyright issues with YouTube that isn't necessarily YouTube-the-company's fault.
When we upload songs/movies/movie extras/etc not our own, we are taking away chances for the original content to be paid for. To break it down: artists who use streaming sites for their music get paid for it. The Beggars Group (record company Adele uses) said in a statement by founder and chairman Martin Mills that in 2012, "22% of the label group's digital revenues came from streaming - and that the majority of its artists earn more from track streams than track downloads." That sounds great. Here's the issue: when YouTubers use songs to create lyric videos or powerpoints to a certain song, the potential money that would go to the artist for their song is taken away by free listening that doesn't go back to the artists. Plus there are websites designed to rip the MP3 off videos to download onto the computer for free. The same goes for video content. By watching extras online, or watching full videos in parts on YouTube, the money that would be spent purchasing the content isn't spent at all because people can watch it for free as many times as they want (until YouTube copyright programs flag it, but with 100 hours of video content uploaded every minute, it's hard to keep up).
Here's an artist talking about how free music online has its benefits as well as downfalls:
I remember getting into a discussion with my roommate a couple years ago about how it wasn't fair for artists who make thousands of dollars to squabble over $1.99 song that's being put up on a YouTube video. Maybe if only a few people watched the video and only a handful downloaded the content illegally it would seem like a petty thing to argue about. But. It is still an artists content that they deserve payment for, no matter how rich. And when you have an estimated 82% of people on the internet downloading at least one file illegally, 24% watching streaming movies online, and 32% downloading films still in cinema, that's a lot of money not going to the owner (source may not be reliable, and I couldn't find any decent statistics on illegal downloading in US, but still - several thousand people download content illegally and that's still a lot of money).
Here's another thing though that I've just started reading about though: CD Baby. Apparently when someone uses a copyrighted song in their own video, the song's owner can use CD Baby to ID the song, place an ad on the video, and direct money from views to the owner. So why people aren't using this more often (or maybe it isn't really effective - haven't gotten to do much research on this yet) I don't know. And it still doesn't solve the problem with video content. But anyway. That's my two cents and what I've been able to research so far.
Other articles for further reading on YouTube/copyright topics:
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