Universal Music says that it will pull its song catalog from TikTok tomorrow at midnight, as the companies are unable to reach a deal on rights. Huge implications.

I hate Tik Tok and also hate copyright disputes but can't help but smile when these big corporations have arguments over money and people start taking sides, like Tik Tok or Universal cares about any of their customers.

I’m on side “Let them fight”.
- Let them cook each other
- Let them almost kill each other, then whoever is dragging themselves away from the fight go over and American History X their entire business.
  
  I can dream....
- that's how i am when the big media companies and the cable/satellite companies fight over fees and retransmission rights.
Why would having a personal interest or maybe a legal opinion rely at all on whether the companies care for you?
- Who said you can't have an opinion? You can write a paper on the case for all I care just don't pretend corporations are our friends, or god forbid feel sorry for Tik Tok.
- Why... wouldn't it? Why wouldnt that affect your personal interest?

I'll take, "Things That Won't Affect Me at All" for $400, Alex.

But the implications are HUUUUUUuuuuuuuu-guh.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  HUUUUUUuuuuuuuu-guh
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- I knew what that was going to be before I clicked on it and I did it anyway. I only have myself to blame.

Universal music owns the rights to Remember (walking in the sand) by the Shangri-las.

Oh no.

Oh no no no no no.

If somebody can scrap that annoying song from the internet it would be win for humanity
- The song is amazing, it’s the horrible sped up lyrics that are awful.
If only they also owned the rights to the annoying AI voice they use too.
- God I thought I was the only one who fucking can't stand that voice. Whenever I complain about it everyone else is just so nonchalant.
Those oh no's made me remember "Oh no you didn't" from Mercenaries 2. Had to listen to it.

Unrelated, but in wanted to complain about being reminded of the song. And now I want a Mercs 3...

this is everything awful about the modern internet. i hate that they can just go and retroactively destroy creations like this. imagine if someone lost the rights to a song and they forced you to send the cassette back

I don't use TikTok, do creators buy music fron TikTok to put in videos?
- No, the music overlay music offered in the app is licensed and can be added. Creators who are performing covers, I believe, generally have the license held by TikTok or have their videos muted/taken offline. Special arrangements are made for intentional or encouraged content . That is a guess, but things like Megan Trainor’s “Gucci” where she is both the original artist and a participant would be a case like this. I would think Grace Kelly and sing alongs on arrangement-bound copyright material like Pentatonix doing public domain carols (or even Roger’s and Hammerstein) are negotiated licensing if outside of their pre-negotiated license.
- No, they just put it as background music in their videos, but didn't actually pay for it. I would guess it constitutes fair use?
Copyright and ip laws are so fucked in favor of rent-seeking megacorps who hold their hands out expectantly for shit someone else created decades ago.
Imagine comparing free social media to a physical copy of media that you purchased.

Are you high?
- It's a fair analogy about the erosion of ownership
- Maybe folks are gonna start learning that just because they made content for a service, doesn't mean that they control it.

Does it mean that all of existing tiktoks with universal's music will now be silent or is it only going to affect new videos?

God it would be great for a huge back catalog of tiktok videos to just be lame tweens dancing in silence.
It impacts all videos. People are going to get a shock tomorrow when they realize they don't own any of those videos they took when they can no longer download them back with sound.

I know eh?

Huge implications

What, for brain-dead teenagers?

Boo-fuckin-hoo

Wouldn't all those cringe lip syncs count as fair use under parody?

Probably not, the internet seems to think that fair use is much broader than it actually is in practice. The use of copyright materials to produce a work which relies entirely on those materials is not covered when no editorial value is created by the second work. Lipsyncing isn’t parody, essentially.
- A lot of people on the internet don't realize how much content is plain copyright infringement that simply doesn't get pursued. Memes, fanart, edits, covers, so forth.
  
  Personally I think that should be reason to rethink how IP law is written, if the average person doesn't find so many uses infringing and they have become part of the typical cultural habits. But that hasn't happened.
You could make that argument, but the users would need to get the unedited songs from a legitimate source first. Tiktok wouldn't be able to provide them directly without infringing copyright.
I hope not for the sake of society

Good, Tiktok has tiktokified enough brains by now.

Let the brains restore and get used to longer form content.

Yeah!

swipes through Lemmy shitposts for the next three hours as my last two brain cells cry out in pain
- I know, i know...getting rid of tiktok isn't going to rid us of the consequences.
  
  But TikTok definitely seemed to be a whole step on the ladder, so it should have some result i would think.
  
  In a perfect world the internet would become just a tool instead of a species wide addiction.

UM is almost the sole reason why copyright claims on youtube are such a hellscape, so I'll gladly enjoy seeing them fight TikTok on this.

I don't understand. Isn't TikTok a video making platform? What catalogue...?

TikTok was originally an app called Musically where people would lip-sync over songs. Music was/is the core of the app so copyrighting songs would cut down the majority of their content.
- There are estimates of this impacting between a few hundred million to a billion videos...

Controversial take but...

Yes, tiktok has several serious glaring issues as a platform but being such an absolutely huge platform, it has been (for a while now) much more than teen dance app. It's a platform that under represented and minority groups have found an audience to share their voice. The are legit journalists, artists, celebrities, organizations, dank memers, etc using the platform for good.

Obv it would be great if it wasn't all on tiktok (isn't there a federated equivalent?) but seeing people rejoice wherever something bad happens to the platform just lacks... nuance I guess. I know it's hard to compare social media platforms, but from what I can tell it's one of the less controlling, censor heavy platforms. And it's not owned by Elon Musk lol

definitely. it's a uniquely bad and insidious platform, but at the same time there's still good and important content on there you'd never see anywhere else. people are too quick to dismiss it because they haven't tried to tailor the algorithm to what they want properly and assume it's all shitty dance videos
- Yeah the algorithm imo is a blessing and a curse. You can find your niche and get really good content relevant to you that's not the shitty dance videos. But of course their algorithm is so great that it keeps you in that bubble and keeps you watching for too long.
  
  And if we compare to YouTube shorts... I've found that place to be a hell hole. Facebook videos, Snapchat, all the other platforms have less people and a worse algorithm that pushes those kinds of annoying dance videos or (YouTube especially) right wing, misogynist, crap that I downvote, report, and select "don't recommend" dozens of times without any change.
  
  Anyways 😅 rant over. We should all get off the Internet more and touch grass tbf

this is everything awful about the modern internet. i hate that they can just go and retroactively destroy creations like this. imagine if someone lost the rights to a song and they forced you to send your cassette back