17 ms·

Facebook prohibits music or music listening experience on Live

170 points by craigmcnamara 6y ago

craigmcnamara 6y ago
Their updated terms seem to imply copyrighted music, but it comes off as banning any and all music including original content.
- vonseel 6y ago
  Use of music for commercial or non-personal purposes in particular is prohibited unless you have obtained appropriate licenses. Unauthorized content may be removed If you post content that contains music owned by someone else, your content may be blocked, or may be reviewed by the applicable rights owner and removed if your use of that music is not properly authorized. Seems fair enough to me.
  - anaganisk 6y ago
    A famous record label sent its lawyers to us, because we used some song to dance at a party an uploaded it on youtube. How that is fair?
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      Advocate for changes to the law.
      - moron4hire 6y ago
        A lot of people have been doing that for a long time. It's not working.
        zucker42 6y ago
        Most people don't understand the issue. What actions people generally find acceptable are very different from the actions permitted under copyright law, but most people don't understand that.
    - neka 6y ago
      Do you mean you disputed a UGC claim?
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    >You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience This seems to even apply to things that you fully own the rights to.
- avhon1 6y ago
  Especially this part towards the end: > You may not be able to post or access videos containing music in every country of the world > > We want you to be able to share videos with your family and friends wherever they are, but any music in your video, if it is allowed at all, may not be available in all countries of the world. That part about "music in your video, if it is allowed at all" really feels like it's setting up a scenario where you just aren't allowed to have music in your FB videos at all.
zucker42 6y ago
Our overly restrictive copyright law does a lot of unnecessary damage to our culture and our society. Instead of adapting to technological change, many music companies seem intent on protecting their revenue by limiting the expression of others, and the ability to remix content. I wonder if there are exceptions for properly licensed music. It is certainly so hard to license most music that such exceptions are practically useless, though.
- TekMol 6y ago
  Is it possible for a musician to publish their music in a way so that everybody else can do with it whatever they like? If so, are there already websites that deal with only this type of music? Like there is pexels.com for images?
  - wincy 6y ago
    I remember working for a startup and finding open source music to use in our promotional videos. So I suppose it’s a thing.
  - thepangolino 6y ago
    Look up Creative Commons licences. Some allow for commercial use. Jamendo is (was?) a fairly popular website for that.
  - outsidejoke 6y ago
    There's some Funkwhale [1] communities that might be close to what you're looking for I haven't found what I'm looking for but I want to share my music like software, source code and all, easily modifiable and reusable I miss what.cd originals, what were those called? It was really inspiring to see people sharing their own music like that Bandcamp has this feeling in spirit with their donation based option SoundCloud had that spirit before Go Splice is cool but seems specific and not very open Not music but, LibrVox[2] has something special going Won't all music coming out today eventually be in the public domain? [1] https://fediverse.party/en/funkwhale https://fediverse.party/en/funkwhale [2] https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/
Thorrez 6y ago
> We want you to be able to enjoy videos posted by family and friends. However, if you use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience for yourself or for others, your videos will be blocked and your page, profile or group may be deleted. This includes Live. That sounds like all music videos are banned (not just live stuff).
throwaway189262 6y ago
Copyright law needs major reform. Technology has hit the point where you have to make a concerted effort to avoid infringing by accident. Every time a security camera picks up music, it's copyright infringement. When your camera records virtually anything man-made, copyright infringement. Probably 90% of photos are infringing copyright. It's totally nuts now that recording devices are everywhere. Copyright on images and audio are just unrealistic. Abolish them, the artists make most of their money in other ways anyway
- goodside 6y ago
  What kind of security camera “picks up” music unintentionally? In the US at least, you can’t leave surveillance microphones recording in public areas, or anywhere that people might have a conversation without knowing it’s being recorded. That’s illegal in every state, regardless of copyright.
  - fingerlocks 6y ago
    Home security & Dash cams. The latter especially struggles with YouTube takedowns due to ambient car music.
    - goodside 6y ago
      To have those running as a security camera recording audio is legally perilous anyway. You’d have to inform car passengers or house guests that you have a microphone running if there’s any chance they might converse without you. The trouble you’d get into for surreptitious recording is a lot worse than a YouTube takedown. And in the ambient music scenario the accidental recording of music isn’t a problem — it’s always been fine to record live music, radio, TV, etc. for your own enjoyment. It’s the non-accidental uploading to YouTube that’s the problem. Copyright doesn’t interfere with using it as a security camera, with or without audio.
      - throwaway189262 6y ago
        Recording audio of passengers and house guests is absolutely fine in most states. I had a dash cam recording audio the entire time I was driving rideshare, many drivers do. And it's not legal to bypass copy protection post DMCA for recording. So in most cases it's not legal to make recordings
bustin 6y ago
Perhaps in the future you can avoid surveillance by playing Top 50 music at all times?
- hashtagmarkup 6y ago
  Perhaps you aren't aware that the surveillance has already been deemed illegal, and no one cares.
- sellyme 6y ago
  Surely we've had enough examples of governments blatantly disregarding copyright law in election advertisements to establish that this is one of those "rules for thee but not for me" situations.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Depends on how deeply record companies get their claws into broad tools. The government may not always have the competence to roll their own.
undoware 6y ago
reminds me of this Onion: "CHICAGO—Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website." https://entertainment.theonion.com/pitchfork-gives-music-6-8-1819569318 https://entertainment.theonion.com/pitchfork-gives-music-6-8... I cannot wait to find out what common human behaviours are regulated online next, after all, if you don't like it, you can just actually sorry there is only online now
aikah 6y ago
> You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience So basically if you are a DJ you cannot broadcast a mix session on Facebook or even broadcast a live performance of your own music under threat of being removed from Facebook. Facebook might not want to have to deal with copyright management like Youtube does.
- comprev 6y ago
  Many DJs switched to Twitch
lmedinas 6y ago
I wonder how long it will take for such measures to reach Twitch and Youtube. I remember some weeks ago some streamers started to get threats from DCMA over playing music on stream, i think some of them even got their clips and videos removed due to copyright claim. I think this is purely music companies decisions, even the artists are not aware of this.
- zucker42 6y ago
  The restrictions are already on Twitch and YouTube, for the most part.
- inerte 6y ago
  A lot of artists (or their managers) are! I’ve been watching some YouTube videos from Ricky Beato and he talks about “blockers”, and within the same label you have different artists that block or don’t.
- polytely 6y ago
  Twitch already mutes parts of VOD's (past streams that are archived) when they detect copyrighted music. There is a loophole though, you can stream video-game music all you want because detecting those would mean they have to remove 90% of the videos on the website.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  There was a scare on Twitch a couple months ago where a few big streamers got dinged for infringements (along with another big gossip streamer saying he had sources that claimed there's companies with the tech to copyright strike every offending streamer on Twitch right now if they wanted to), but since then nothing has happened. Plenty of people play copyrighted music, and Twitch continues to mute it in the VODs.
fletchowns 6y ago
Rick Beato had a great video on Youtube blockers recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z7a-vh5OzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z7a-vh5OzU
- tomtompl 6y ago
  I expected to go there just to see that the video is blocked
aboringusername 6y ago
I mean what's the end goal here? Any video that contains music is just auto blocked? Hopefully as more regular people are impacted each person becomes an advocate for change. I think we need AI and rules so strict you can't even upload a video at all because you're breaking some rule somewhere. Maybe we can even have AI on this website that says your words are breaking copyright and you're not allowed to publish them. Only then will we see a real push for changen I feel.
- zadokshi 6y ago
  Nah, the real goal is music companies want money. Bags and bags of money Facebook clearly doesn’t want to pay.
gamblor956 6y ago
Prohibited.... Unless you have the appropriate licenses for the music. Much ado about nothing. Did anyone ever bother to read the post?
- avhon1 6y ago
  Firstly, how do I prove to Facebook that I have an appropriate license, or that one isn't required (for example, music in the public domain)? Second, it is legal (in the United States) to perform or play music, even copyrighted music, at personal, private, non-commercial events. These events can be in-person or online. As an example: it is legal ("fair use") for someone in my family to strum a popular, copyrighted tune on their guitar during a family gathering. Another example: it is also legal for us to listen to music that only one family member owns a legal copy of -- this happens any time someone puts on a CD during Christmas. These perfectly legal, normal, un-bureaucratic activities seem to be prohibited by Facebook's new rules. During COVID-19, online experiences have replaced many experiences that people would otherwise have had in-person. Facebook's rules seems to be unnecessarily restrictive, which is especially disappointing during this time when many experiences people would be having face-to-face are now taking place on its platform, or on competitors' who may imitate Facebook's policies.
  - classified 6y ago
    FB is not serving their users, they hedge against being rated as a publisher.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > Second, it is legal (in the United States) to perform or play music, even copyrighted music, at personal, private, non-commercial events. These events can be in-person or online. But it is legal for you and Facebook to enter into an agreement to sublicense that content for Facebook's commercial use? You may get the benefit of Fair Use, but the same may not be the case for Facebook, who also must have a valid right to distribute the content.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
firloop 6y ago
Many gaming streamers on Twitch play music (at least at a low volume) while they stream. A blanket ban like this doesn't make me think that Facebook is going to get a significant part of Twitch's market anytime soon despite their "Facebook Gaming" initiative.
- kirillzubovsky 6y ago
  FYI, they just got a big chunk of users from Mixer, a Microsoft-funded Twitch competitor that shut down.
neiman 6y ago
There are a few problems in copyright laws: - bad incentives (cf, "mickey mouse law"), - one rule for all areas (music, movies, books, graphics) instead of different rules for different areas, - not being fit to digital era. This item emphasize the last one quite strongly, and it's only going to get worse.
sneak 6y ago
It’s rare that Facebook itself accelerates the thing that desperately needs to happen: people must, en masse, stop donating free content to massive censorship platforms. This is a good step, counterintuitively.
- zadokshi 6y ago
  Yep, it’s one step towards the death of Facebook. I am also quite pleased about this.
mola 6y ago
Just so a few hundred of people can be ultra billionaires we use so much force and violence against any creative endavours that may jeporedize the wealth of these few individuals.
dkobia 6y ago
It has been an especially tough time for DJs who as you can imagine are severely affected by Covid19. A game of copyright whack-a-mole has been going on across other platforms for a few years now (SoundCloud, MixCloud, etc.), exacerbated now by a move to live streaming over the last few months. Live streaming has been a great way to avoid getting tagged for copyright infringement vs a pre-recorded upload which can automatically be scanned for violations, so it is easy to see why this was a problem for Facebook. They basically brute forced a solution to avoid legal responsibility. Via SoundClouds guidelines: "The best way to avoid copyright infringement is to ensure that you don't use anything created by someone else. Simple as that.". It has just been hard to find an equitable balance between original music creators and mix creators. "Fair Use" is such a gray area here and is barely defensible.
- ehnto 6y ago
  The web has been quite unempathetic when it comes to DJs and the music culture that surrounds it. The key difference between mix DJs and other types of music is that the culture around mixing is made by and for DJ sets. The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place. A blanket ban on music means even cooperative parties can't belong. Same goes for platforms with automated copyright checking. Enough music makers get caught up in labels that don't get this either, that you'll almost always have three or four tracks striked out of your recording making it pointless to upload. There has never been any money in live online DJing, it's done for fun and the love of it. So it just feels like petty fun policing.
  - Veen 6y ago
    > The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place. Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it.
    - petetnt 6y ago
      > Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it. Vast majority of musicians have no clue about licensing or copyrights or/and do not care, be it permissive public ones or strict ones.
BrianOnHN 6y ago
Facebook: "let's distract them with music copyright non-sense while we utterly fail politically." Edit: since this was downvoted, I hope someone can explain this: "why now?" What other motivation does FB have to address this, right now?
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Has anyone created an AI annealing tool that can take a basic beat and create a randomized but good-sounding sampling for real-time DJing?
khalilravanna 6y ago
The record industry lashing out against DJs strikes me as a particularly braindead reaction. They’re shutting down free promotion of their music. I don’t listen to DJs because I want to illegally listen to one song, I listen to find new music and then go off and buy it.
- envy2 6y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding the economic reality of the modern music business for labels. They make their money off streams, not people "buying" music; they have no real incentive to let people stream music for free as a 'promotion.' Bands make their money off merch, and to a lesser extent, live shows.
  - khalilravanna 6y ago
    I also stream the music. The point is a mix is not a medium for listening to one song. It’s a medium for listening to a set of songs mixed together. Sometimes you only get 1 or 2 minutes of a 8/9 minute non-Radio-Edit of a track. To be fair, playing devil’s advocate I do know some people who only listen to streams of DJs. I guess the question is what’s the breakdown of people who do that. My guess is it’s a very small margin. And even if it were more sizable, are those people really gonna go off and go buy individual Drum And Bass tracks or whatever off Beatport? I would doubt it. The end result is it feels like they cannibalizing or cauterizing off a potential market and generating more bad will.
Juliate 6y ago
What about whistling, singing or performing music live? Where is the line? I mean, are the people enacting such policies even real person living a real life?
- grishka 6y ago
  They're the same people who purposely ruin their products with advertising, pervasive tracking, and hostile UX. Then they claim they're doing their users a favor. By "helping businesses reach their audiences". Because that's clearly what people use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media services for, right? Social media companies are waaay out of touch with the real world.
PaulHoule 6y ago
Radio hams are not allowed to retransmit music, even that is as simple as having music in the background when you key the mike. I never heard anyone try this on the east coast but around Southern CA and San Diego I heard it all the time on 2 meters. There is the exception that you CAN retransmit music from the space shuttle or space station however.
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
Clickbait title. Please change to "Facebook Music Guidelines," or something that isn't editorialized to make it sound like Facebook is against music. At most, this guideline says not to stream other people's music to the internet without a license, which is very reasonable, given that artists want to get paid and wouldn't want you to play their songs on air for 2 billion people to enjoy for free. Otherwise, it quite literally states the opposite - please do play your music for your friends, so long as it is yours.
- bluntfang 6y ago
  >Otherwise, it quite literally states the opposite - please do play your music for your friends, so long as it is yours. where do you read that? Cuz when I read the BOLDED statement >You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience Your take is not my take.
aantix 6y ago
I thought Facebook had reached a deal a couple years back with the music publishers so that they wouldn't have to do this? https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17100454/facebook-warner-music-deal-songs-user-videos-instagram https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17100454/facebook-warner-m...
andjd 6y ago
Shameless plug: For anyone out there looking for live listening music experiences, I work on Stationhead, a social radio app. We're built on top of Spotify and Apple Music, so all the music is not only 100% legal and licensed, the artists actually get paid when you play or listen to your music. Download for iOS (Android coming soon): http://share.stationhead.com/hn http://share.stationhead.com/hn
zupreme 6y ago
So...as it reads, per my understanding, Facebook reserves the right to ban my account if I pick up my guitar while on live and play even an original melody. Am I the only one who sees this as a new gatekeeper preventing the organic rise of new musical talent? There are alot of young artists in the music industry who first got widely noticed by building a social media following around their singing or other musical talents. It seems that this is a way to close that door.
- dheera 6y ago
  Not only that, but Facebook actively downranks you if you post a link to Youtube instead of using Facebook video. This is unethical and I wish more people would make noise about it.
smkellat 6y ago
Well, that does help explain why one of the local high schools had their livestream abruptly terminate 22 times when they tried to stream their band’s senior night concert. It does seem to be a clear TOS violation by the school even though the school was trying to work within Ohio coronavirus guidelines. I guess the effort to build something using OpenBroadcaster has increased urgency now.
cronix 6y ago
This will be a huge problem for people on the ground reporting on news events like protests/riots. Often, people in the crowd are using portable bluetooth speakers and playing commercial music. There are FB accounts (and youtube, twitch, etc) that have several thousand people watching these protests/riots every night, and often make it to mainstream news outlets. There should be a fair use exemption for live newsworthy events where the music isn't the focus. The music is just in the background and not the main point or even a secondary point. It's inconsequential and you can't even hear it clearly.
okareaman 6y ago
Facebook will mute anything that contains music it recognizes that has a copyright. It's annoying and stupid because YouTube is much more liberal about it as most people know. I always post video with music on YouTube and share a link.
- dheera 6y ago
  Not only that, but Facebook actively downranks you if you post a link to Youtube instead of using Facebook video. This is unethical and I wish more people would make noise about it. Facebook once did the mute thing on my OWN recording of a classical Beethoven piece (long out of copyright) and it was infuriating. I would have used Youtube to avoid the problem except Facebook downranks Youtube videos I post and doesn't show them to most of my friends.
api 6y ago
Good. I'd hate to see Facebook get big in the music world in any way.
IronWolve 6y ago
My favorite is when reporters are out in the field reporting and someone drives by with their car radio on, and the entire clip gets taken down due to copyright. Streamers listening to music is a common thing while talking, gaming, etc. Something needs to change.
andrewflnr 6y ago
It's not even clear from their wording if you can play original music live. Did they not even think of that possibility?
- ajouna1685 6y ago
  I think they are trying to envision every possible scenario. For example, and unknown singer could upload an original song to Facebook, sell the rights to the song, become famous, and have a billion views on Facebook. The owners of the song could then be owed performance royalties from Facebook, according to the current laws that apply to internet streaming.
doh 6y ago
I know many believe that this is mess is the result of the existing Copyright laws but I disagree. We are in times of change, where Wild Wild West is getting rules and enforcement. It's a painful situation for most, because the rules are ambiguous, made up on spot and change often. I believe the true solution is through use of scalable and precise technology, brining high transparency and removing ambiguity. I built my whole company around this idea [0], so I'm definitely biased. I know that many might disagree with me on this, but shattering copyright is not going to do us, the society, any favors. If you, as I, believe that automation is going exceedingly take over more of our responsibilities, IP (intellectual property) [read creativity] is the only thing left to us as humans. While many believe copyright is about extortion of money, I believe it's about proper attribution. This is the founding principle behind Creative Commons which believes that credits needs to be given to the creators. If they choose to make money of their creation, that's their right and should be followed. I do believe that with transparent rules and removed ambiguity the UGC market will thrive beyond what we seen so far. You can see glimpses of what's possible through platforms like TikTok or Triller that do acquire licenses and are in process of paying creators portion of the revenue. This was one of the most important innovations of YouTube that spurred a whole new market and paved the way for many new platforms. Imagine that you, as a creator, could know instantly which content of other people can you use under what conditions. If you disagree with them, you just don't use it and choose something else. Especially in music, this gives you a freedom of selection. There is 80M songs. There will be always enough to choose from, even if the major righpshodlers would withhold their catalogues. I believe that if the rules are know, are stable and unambiguous, then the market will be much stronger and healthier for everyone. [0] https://pex.com/attribution-engine/ https://pex.com/attribution-engine/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ajouna1685 6y ago
Facebook is concerned about possibly having to pay licensing fees to music publishers and rights owners. The new policy is a disclaimer, attempting to release Facebook from any responsibility for infringement. It's however unlikely that Facebook would be judged to be in the clear if it's determined that they are benefiting from uploaded content. Most likely they will balance the threat of paying fees against the hurt to the appeal of their product caused by their own restrictions, and that will determine the level of enforcement.
fuzzfactor 6y ago
I know this hurts people's feelings, but Facebook wasn't supposed to be important or entertaining anyway.

170 points by craigmcnamara 6y ago

Their updated terms seem to imply copyrighted music, but it comes off as banning any and all music including original content.

vonseel 6y ago
Use of music for commercial or non-personal purposes in particular is prohibited unless you have obtained appropriate licenses. Unauthorized content may be removed If you post content that contains music owned by someone else, your content may be blocked, or may be reviewed by the applicable rights owner and removed if your use of that music is not properly authorized. Seems fair enough to me.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  A famous record label sent its lawyers to us, because we used some song to dance at a party an uploaded it on youtube. How that is fair?
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Advocate for changes to the law.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      A lot of people have been doing that for a long time. It's not working.
      - zucker42 6y ago
        Most people don't understand the issue. What actions people generally find acceptable are very different from the actions permitted under copyright law, but most people don't understand that.
  - neka 6y ago
    Do you mean you disputed a UGC claim?
- Thorrez 6y ago
  >You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience This seems to even apply to things that you fully own the rights to.
avhon1 6y ago
Especially this part towards the end: > You may not be able to post or access videos containing music in every country of the world > > We want you to be able to share videos with your family and friends wherever they are, but any music in your video, if it is allowed at all, may not be available in all countries of the world. That part about "music in your video, if it is allowed at all" really feels like it's setting up a scenario where you just aren't allowed to have music in your FB videos at all.

zucker42 6y ago

Our overly restrictive copyright law does a lot of unnecessary damage to our culture and our society. Instead of adapting to technological change, many music companies seem intent on protecting their revenue by limiting the expression of others, and the ability to remix content. I wonder if there are exceptions for properly licensed music. It is certainly so hard to license most music that such exceptions are practically useless, though.

TekMol 6y ago
Is it possible for a musician to publish their music in a way so that everybody else can do with it whatever they like? If so, are there already websites that deal with only this type of music? Like there is pexels.com for images?
- wincy 6y ago
  I remember working for a startup and finding open source music to use in our promotional videos. So I suppose it’s a thing.
- thepangolino 6y ago
  Look up Creative Commons licences. Some allow for commercial use. Jamendo is (was?) a fairly popular website for that.
- outsidejoke 6y ago
  There's some Funkwhale [1] communities that might be close to what you're looking for I haven't found what I'm looking for but I want to share my music like software, source code and all, easily modifiable and reusable I miss what.cd originals, what were those called? It was really inspiring to see people sharing their own music like that Bandcamp has this feeling in spirit with their donation based option SoundCloud had that spirit before Go Splice is cool but seems specific and not very open Not music but, LibrVox[2] has something special going Won't all music coming out today eventually be in the public domain? [1] https://fediverse.party/en/funkwhale https://fediverse.party/en/funkwhale [2] https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/

Thorrez 6y ago

> We want you to be able to enjoy videos posted by family and friends. However, if you use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience for yourself or for others, your videos will be blocked and your page, profile or group may be deleted. This includes Live. That sounds like all music videos are banned (not just live stuff).

throwaway189262 6y ago

Copyright law needs major reform. Technology has hit the point where you have to make a concerted effort to avoid infringing by accident. Every time a security camera picks up music, it's copyright infringement. When your camera records virtually anything man-made, copyright infringement. Probably 90% of photos are infringing copyright. It's totally nuts now that recording devices are everywhere. Copyright on images and audio are just unrealistic. Abolish them, the artists make most of their money in other ways anyway

goodside 6y ago
What kind of security camera “picks up” music unintentionally? In the US at least, you can’t leave surveillance microphones recording in public areas, or anywhere that people might have a conversation without knowing it’s being recorded. That’s illegal in every state, regardless of copyright.
- fingerlocks 6y ago
  Home security & Dash cams. The latter especially struggles with YouTube takedowns due to ambient car music.
  - goodside 6y ago
    To have those running as a security camera recording audio is legally perilous anyway. You’d have to inform car passengers or house guests that you have a microphone running if there’s any chance they might converse without you. The trouble you’d get into for surreptitious recording is a lot worse than a YouTube takedown. And in the ambient music scenario the accidental recording of music isn’t a problem — it’s always been fine to record live music, radio, TV, etc. for your own enjoyment. It’s the non-accidental uploading to YouTube that’s the problem. Copyright doesn’t interfere with using it as a security camera, with or without audio.
    - throwaway189262 6y ago
      Recording audio of passengers and house guests is absolutely fine in most states. I had a dash cam recording audio the entire time I was driving rideshare, many drivers do. And it's not legal to bypass copy protection post DMCA for recording. So in most cases it's not legal to make recordings

bustin 6y ago

Perhaps in the future you can avoid surveillance by playing Top 50 music at all times?

hashtagmarkup 6y ago
Perhaps you aren't aware that the surveillance has already been deemed illegal, and no one cares.
sellyme 6y ago
Surely we've had enough examples of governments blatantly disregarding copyright law in election advertisements to establish that this is one of those "rules for thee but not for me" situations.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Depends on how deeply record companies get their claws into broad tools. The government may not always have the competence to roll their own.

undoware 6y ago

reminds me of this Onion: "CHICAGO—Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website." https://entertainment.theonion.com/pitchfork-gives-music-6-8-1819569318 https://entertainment.theonion.com/pitchfork-gives-music-6-8... I cannot wait to find out what common human behaviours are regulated online next, after all, if you don't like it, you can just actually sorry there is only online now

aikah 6y ago

> You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience So basically if you are a DJ you cannot broadcast a mix session on Facebook or even broadcast a live performance of your own music under threat of being removed from Facebook. Facebook might not want to have to deal with copyright management like Youtube does.

comprev 6y ago
Many DJs switched to Twitch

lmedinas 6y ago

I wonder how long it will take for such measures to reach Twitch and Youtube. I remember some weeks ago some streamers started to get threats from DCMA over playing music on stream, i think some of them even got their clips and videos removed due to copyright claim. I think this is purely music companies decisions, even the artists are not aware of this.

zucker42 6y ago
The restrictions are already on Twitch and YouTube, for the most part.
inerte 6y ago
A lot of artists (or their managers) are! I’ve been watching some YouTube videos from Ricky Beato and he talks about “blockers”, and within the same label you have different artists that block or don’t.
polytely 6y ago
Twitch already mutes parts of VOD's (past streams that are archived) when they detect copyrighted music. There is a loophole though, you can stream video-game music all you want because detecting those would mean they have to remove 90% of the videos on the website.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
There was a scare on Twitch a couple months ago where a few big streamers got dinged for infringements (along with another big gossip streamer saying he had sources that claimed there's companies with the tech to copyright strike every offending streamer on Twitch right now if they wanted to), but since then nothing has happened. Plenty of people play copyrighted music, and Twitch continues to mute it in the VODs.

fletchowns 6y ago

Rick Beato had a great video on Youtube blockers recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z7a-vh5OzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z7a-vh5OzU

tomtompl 6y ago
I expected to go there just to see that the video is blocked

aboringusername 6y ago

I mean what's the end goal here? Any video that contains music is just auto blocked? Hopefully as more regular people are impacted each person becomes an advocate for change. I think we need AI and rules so strict you can't even upload a video at all because you're breaking some rule somewhere. Maybe we can even have AI on this website that says your words are breaking copyright and you're not allowed to publish them. Only then will we see a real push for changen I feel.

zadokshi 6y ago
Nah, the real goal is music companies want money. Bags and bags of money Facebook clearly doesn’t want to pay.

gamblor956 6y ago

Prohibited.... Unless you have the appropriate licenses for the music. Much ado about nothing. Did anyone ever bother to read the post?

avhon1 6y ago
Firstly, how do I prove to Facebook that I have an appropriate license, or that one isn't required (for example, music in the public domain)? Second, it is legal (in the United States) to perform or play music, even copyrighted music, at personal, private, non-commercial events. These events can be in-person or online. As an example: it is legal ("fair use") for someone in my family to strum a popular, copyrighted tune on their guitar during a family gathering. Another example: it is also legal for us to listen to music that only one family member owns a legal copy of -- this happens any time someone puts on a CD during Christmas. These perfectly legal, normal, un-bureaucratic activities seem to be prohibited by Facebook's new rules. During COVID-19, online experiences have replaced many experiences that people would otherwise have had in-person. Facebook's rules seems to be unnecessarily restrictive, which is especially disappointing during this time when many experiences people would be having face-to-face are now taking place on its platform, or on competitors' who may imitate Facebook's policies.
- classified 6y ago
  FB is not serving their users, they hedge against being rated as a publisher.
- kube-system 6y ago
  > Second, it is legal (in the United States) to perform or play music, even copyrighted music, at personal, private, non-commercial events. These events can be in-person or online. But it is legal for you and Facebook to enter into an agreement to sublicense that content for Facebook's commercial use? You may get the benefit of Fair Use, but the same may not be the case for Facebook, who also must have a valid right to distribute the content.
  - gamblor956 6y ago

firloop 6y ago

Many gaming streamers on Twitch play music (at least at a low volume) while they stream. A blanket ban like this doesn't make me think that Facebook is going to get a significant part of Twitch's market anytime soon despite their "Facebook Gaming" initiative.

kirillzubovsky 6y ago
FYI, they just got a big chunk of users from Mixer, a Microsoft-funded Twitch competitor that shut down.

neiman 6y ago

There are a few problems in copyright laws: - bad incentives (cf, "mickey mouse law"), - one rule for all areas (music, movies, books, graphics) instead of different rules for different areas, - not being fit to digital era. This item emphasize the last one quite strongly, and it's only going to get worse.

sneak 6y ago

It’s rare that Facebook itself accelerates the thing that desperately needs to happen: people must, en masse, stop donating free content to massive censorship platforms. This is a good step, counterintuitively.

zadokshi 6y ago
Yep, it’s one step towards the death of Facebook. I am also quite pleased about this.

mola 6y ago

Just so a few hundred of people can be ultra billionaires we use so much force and violence against any creative endavours that may jeporedize the wealth of these few individuals.

dkobia 6y ago

It has been an especially tough time for DJs who as you can imagine are severely affected by Covid19. A game of copyright whack-a-mole has been going on across other platforms for a few years now (SoundCloud, MixCloud, etc.), exacerbated now by a move to live streaming over the last few months. Live streaming has been a great way to avoid getting tagged for copyright infringement vs a pre-recorded upload which can automatically be scanned for violations, so it is easy to see why this was a problem for Facebook. They basically brute forced a solution to avoid legal responsibility. Via SoundClouds guidelines: "The best way to avoid copyright infringement is to ensure that you don't use anything created by someone else. Simple as that.". It has just been hard to find an equitable balance between original music creators and mix creators. "Fair Use" is such a gray area here and is barely defensible.

ehnto 6y ago
The web has been quite unempathetic when it comes to DJs and the music culture that surrounds it. The key difference between mix DJs and other types of music is that the culture around mixing is made by and for DJ sets. The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place. A blanket ban on music means even cooperative parties can't belong. Same goes for platforms with automated copyright checking. Enough music makers get caught up in labels that don't get this either, that you'll almost always have three or four tracks striked out of your recording making it pointless to upload. There has never been any money in live online DJing, it's done for fun and the love of it. So it just feels like petty fun policing.
- Veen 6y ago
  > The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place. Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it.
  - petetnt 6y ago
    > Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it. Vast majority of musicians have no clue about licensing or copyrights or/and do not care, be it permissive public ones or strict ones.

BrianOnHN 6y ago

Facebook: "let's distract them with music copyright non-sense while we utterly fail politically." Edit: since this was downvoted, I hope someone can explain this: "why now?" What other motivation does FB have to address this, right now?

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Has anyone created an AI annealing tool that can take a basic beat and create a randomized but good-sounding sampling for real-time DJing?

khalilravanna 6y ago

The record industry lashing out against DJs strikes me as a particularly braindead reaction. They’re shutting down free promotion of their music. I don’t listen to DJs because I want to illegally listen to one song, I listen to find new music and then go off and buy it.

envy2 6y ago
I think you're misunderstanding the economic reality of the modern music business for labels. They make their money off streams, not people "buying" music; they have no real incentive to let people stream music for free as a 'promotion.' Bands make their money off merch, and to a lesser extent, live shows.
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  I also stream the music. The point is a mix is not a medium for listening to one song. It’s a medium for listening to a set of songs mixed together. Sometimes you only get 1 or 2 minutes of a 8/9 minute non-Radio-Edit of a track. To be fair, playing devil’s advocate I do know some people who only listen to streams of DJs. I guess the question is what’s the breakdown of people who do that. My guess is it’s a very small margin. And even if it were more sizable, are those people really gonna go off and go buy individual Drum And Bass tracks or whatever off Beatport? I would doubt it. The end result is it feels like they cannibalizing or cauterizing off a potential market and generating more bad will.

Juliate 6y ago

What about whistling, singing or performing music live? Where is the line? I mean, are the people enacting such policies even real person living a real life?

grishka 6y ago
They're the same people who purposely ruin their products with advertising, pervasive tracking, and hostile UX. Then they claim they're doing their users a favor. By "helping businesses reach their audiences". Because that's clearly what people use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media services for, right? Social media companies are waaay out of touch with the real world.

PaulHoule 6y ago

Radio hams are not allowed to retransmit music, even that is as simple as having music in the background when you key the mike. I never heard anyone try this on the east coast but around Southern CA and San Diego I heard it all the time on 2 meters. There is the exception that you CAN retransmit music from the space shuttle or space station however.

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

Clickbait title. Please change to "Facebook Music Guidelines," or something that isn't editorialized to make it sound like Facebook is against music. At most, this guideline says not to stream other people's music to the internet without a license, which is very reasonable, given that artists want to get paid and wouldn't want you to play their songs on air for 2 billion people to enjoy for free. Otherwise, it quite literally states the opposite - please do play your music for your friends, so long as it is yours.

bluntfang 6y ago
>Otherwise, it quite literally states the opposite - please do play your music for your friends, so long as it is yours. where do you read that? Cuz when I read the BOLDED statement >You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience Your take is not my take.

aantix 6y ago

I thought Facebook had reached a deal a couple years back with the music publishers so that they wouldn't have to do this? https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17100454/facebook-warner-music-deal-songs-user-videos-instagram https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17100454/facebook-warner-m...

andjd 6y ago

Shameless plug: For anyone out there looking for live listening music experiences, I work on Stationhead, a social radio app. We're built on top of Spotify and Apple Music, so all the music is not only 100% legal and licensed, the artists actually get paid when you play or listen to your music. Download for iOS (Android coming soon): http://share.stationhead.com/hn http://share.stationhead.com/hn

zupreme 6y ago

So...as it reads, per my understanding, Facebook reserves the right to ban my account if I pick up my guitar while on live and play even an original melody. Am I the only one who sees this as a new gatekeeper preventing the organic rise of new musical talent? There are alot of young artists in the music industry who first got widely noticed by building a social media following around their singing or other musical talents. It seems that this is a way to close that door.

dheera 6y ago
Not only that, but Facebook actively downranks you if you post a link to Youtube instead of using Facebook video. This is unethical and I wish more people would make noise about it.

smkellat 6y ago

Well, that does help explain why one of the local high schools had their livestream abruptly terminate 22 times when they tried to stream their band’s senior night concert. It does seem to be a clear TOS violation by the school even though the school was trying to work within Ohio coronavirus guidelines. I guess the effort to build something using OpenBroadcaster has increased urgency now.

cronix 6y ago

This will be a huge problem for people on the ground reporting on news events like protests/riots. Often, people in the crowd are using portable bluetooth speakers and playing commercial music. There are FB accounts (and youtube, twitch, etc) that have several thousand people watching these protests/riots every night, and often make it to mainstream news outlets. There should be a fair use exemption for live newsworthy events where the music isn't the focus. The music is just in the background and not the main point or even a secondary point. It's inconsequential and you can't even hear it clearly.

okareaman 6y ago

Facebook will mute anything that contains music it recognizes that has a copyright. It's annoying and stupid because YouTube is much more liberal about it as most people know. I always post video with music on YouTube and share a link.

dheera 6y ago
Not only that, but Facebook actively downranks you if you post a link to Youtube instead of using Facebook video. This is unethical and I wish more people would make noise about it. Facebook once did the mute thing on my OWN recording of a classical Beethoven piece (long out of copyright) and it was infuriating. I would have used Youtube to avoid the problem except Facebook downranks Youtube videos I post and doesn't show them to most of my friends.

api 6y ago

Good. I'd hate to see Facebook get big in the music world in any way.

IronWolve 6y ago

My favorite is when reporters are out in the field reporting and someone drives by with their car radio on, and the entire clip gets taken down due to copyright. Streamers listening to music is a common thing while talking, gaming, etc. Something needs to change.

andrewflnr 6y ago

It's not even clear from their wording if you can play original music live. Did they not even think of that possibility?

ajouna1685 6y ago
I think they are trying to envision every possible scenario. For example, and unknown singer could upload an original song to Facebook, sell the rights to the song, become famous, and have a billion views on Facebook. The owners of the song could then be owed performance royalties from Facebook, according to the current laws that apply to internet streaming.

doh 6y ago

I know many believe that this is mess is the result of the existing Copyright laws but I disagree. We are in times of change, where Wild Wild West is getting rules and enforcement. It's a painful situation for most, because the rules are ambiguous, made up on spot and change often. I believe the true solution is through use of scalable and precise technology, brining high transparency and removing ambiguity. I built my whole company around this idea [0], so I'm definitely biased. I know that many might disagree with me on this, but shattering copyright is not going to do us, the society, any favors. If you, as I, believe that automation is going exceedingly take over more of our responsibilities, IP (intellectual property) [read creativity] is the only thing left to us as humans. While many believe copyright is about extortion of money, I believe it's about proper attribution. This is the founding principle behind Creative Commons which believes that credits needs to be given to the creators. If they choose to make money of their creation, that's their right and should be followed. I do believe that with transparent rules and removed ambiguity the UGC market will thrive beyond what we seen so far. You can see glimpses of what's possible through platforms like TikTok or Triller that do acquire licenses and are in process of paying creators portion of the revenue. This was one of the most important innovations of YouTube that spurred a whole new market and paved the way for many new platforms. Imagine that you, as a creator, could know instantly which content of other people can you use under what conditions. If you disagree with them, you just don't use it and choose something else. Especially in music, this gives you a freedom of selection. There is 80M songs. There will be always enough to choose from, even if the major righpshodlers would withhold their catalogues. I believe that if the rules are know, are stable and unambiguous, then the market will be much stronger and healthier for everyone. [0] https://pex.com/attribution-engine/ https://pex.com/attribution-engine/

deleted 6y ago

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ajouna1685 6y ago

Facebook is concerned about possibly having to pay licensing fees to music publishers and rights owners. The new policy is a disclaimer, attempting to release Facebook from any responsibility for infringement. It's however unlikely that Facebook would be judged to be in the clear if it's determined that they are benefiting from uploaded content. Most likely they will balance the threat of paying fees against the hurt to the appeal of their product caused by their own restrictions, and that will determine the level of enforcement.

fuzzfactor 6y ago

I know this hurts people's feelings, but Facebook wasn't supposed to be important or entertaining anyway.