As you probably have noticed, I take a number of my old records, add still photographs of the record sleeve and label, call that a ‘video’ and upload them to Youtube.

Not surprisingly, sharing old, hard to find music with the world is viewed as a copyright violation by some business entities. About half of the videos I upload are flagged as ‘Matched third party content’. But it’s cool because they don’t do anything – they don’t block the videos or make me take them down. About the only repercussion is that additional ads might appear next to the video and the company that owns the songs gets the money. I am technically violating copyright and Youtube and the publishers (so far) are cool with it so I can’t and won’t complain. This happens 1000s of times a day on Youtube.

But something bizarre happened with my last upload. I uploaded the 3 tracks from the single Can You Feel It by Fingers Inc. Track 1 is the music with a vocal track by Robert Owens. Track 2 is an instrumental version. And Track 3 is an instrumental version mixed with Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.
Tracks 1 and 2 ‘matched third party content’ immediately – again, no hassle towards me so no complaints.
But today track 3 is listed as blocked in Germany due to Sony Music Entertainment.

Soooo, the instrumental is fine – but once you add MLK to it, it’s blocked? Sometimes, trying to understand how copyright law works just makes my head hurt.

While typing this post, I looked on Wikipedia (where everything is factual and true!) and saw that the I Have A Dream speech is not in the public domain but is owned and protected by the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. That still doesn’t explain why Sony blocked this video or why it’s only blocked in Germany (so far). I guess this means that…..it’s making my head hurt some more.