HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!

In my last posting, "King Kong vs Godzilla," I took up the issue of the Viacom vs YouTube's one-billion dollar law suit. This is an important issue to anyone who, not only enjoys watching creative (expensive to produce) television, but also wants to continue to be able to listen to their favorite music via CDs and iPod devices. Though many people visited my blog, there was only one comment posted to the "Kong" blog. An indication as to how few people really give a damn.

The one comment was from loyal fan, Mike Barer, who wrote, "Your video with Marvin Gaye got pulled. That is unfortunate, but glad I could enjoy it." Many thanks to Mike for taking the time to post his thoughts.

As I do give a damn, here is my comment to Mike:

The reason the Marvin Gaye video got pulled was because it was taken from a Marvin Gaye Documentary and downloaded to YouTube to be viewed illegally for FREE. This is not fair play. The producers of the documentary had paid dearly for the use of the clip and paid all the required license fees to the publishers of the music.

This is nice for the viewers of YouTube, but hard on the producers and the estate of Marvin Gaye, who not only spent many dollars for usage rights, but many hours producing and merchandising the DVD. This is a very expensive process. Why would one pay for view if they can see it free.

I'm sure there isn't one viewer of YouTube clips that would like to go to work each day and not get paid for their time, creativity, and efforts.

Like you, I enjoyed looking at the Lloyd Thaxton Show Marvin Gaye clip myself. Good promotion for my own future DVD, but at the same time, bad for people trying to make a living in the music and DVD business. YouTube and the holders of the copyrights have to get together and figure out a reasonable-cost way to solve this problem.

Stay tuned.