Musings Inspired by OneTrueMedia

One of the interesting limitations of OneTrueMedia is that you can create a montage for free...and you can "share" up to 30 seconds for free, too.


But if you want to share longer work, you have to subscribe to the service ($40 a year). Alternatively, OneTrueMedia offers free music you can use - but if you look closely, you'll notice that most of the songs aren't by the original artists. 

OneTrueMedia also provides detailed directions on uploading your own music, but says little about copyright infringement (the site warns users that music purchased on iTunes is subject to DRM protection). The site says nothing about photos. I didn't upload video, so I don't know whether there are additional warnings for video, but I suspect there aren't.


This site seems like a perfect example of two things I have been noticing a lot - and which I think might be related. First, there are a ton of free tools on the web, but increasingly the free tools are little more than teasers designed to get you to purchase access to a full suite of online services. And designers cleverly mix "premium" features into the free stuff so that users are already invested in a project before they are asked to buy anything.


At the same time that creators of online tools are becoming increasingly savvy about monetizing their services, owners of music, photo, and video content are struggling to figure out how to maintain control over (and a financial stake in) their products. Services like OneTrueMedia (which, by the way, sounds more like a creepy cult every time I type it) have nothing to lose by allowing users to upload media. If a user infringes copyright, OneTrueMedia can claim ignorance and innocence. They reap the benefit (subscriptions) without any risk.

From a consumer's perspective, it's hard to accept that you've paid for media (music, movies, etc) but you can't use it freely. I know I find myself rolling my eyes, even though I definitely believe artists have a right to benefit from their own creativity. I've already paid them; why can't I use what I paid for?


I think part of the solution can be found in Apple's latest product, the iCloud. Users don't have to upload anything. iTunes simply scans their music library and "knows" what they already own. The music is available to them wherever they go, as long as Apple has a copy of it.


From a user's standpoint, this makes sense. I don't care if I'm listening to my digital media; I just want to have access to the music I bought. Of course, Apple won't have copies of my rare tracks, but honestly, isn't that kind of the point of owning "rare" stuff? 


I think this is the next step in the right direction: allowing people to buy media once, and then use it freely. But it's still a relatively small step. I think the next step is to stop hounding individuals about copyright restrictions and start making it a whole lot easier for them to comply with the law.


Back in the "old days" (aka, the 90's <sigh>) Fair Use made a lot more sense. That's because it was hard to reproduce media - especially movies and music - without seriously degrading the quality. Bootleg tapes (audio and video) existed, of course, but it took time to make them, and the quality was almost always far inferior to the original material. Even in the early days of file sharing, serious copyright infringement took more time and effort than most people had available.

But today, anyone can easily rip a CD, select a track, and upload it to an online service like OneTrueMedia. Ripping DVDs isn't that much harder. It takes almost no time at all to create a slideshow incorporating copyrighted music, images, and video, and post it all over the web (YouTube, Facebook, Blogger...the list goes on and on). What's more all this "borrowing" doesn't cause the material to degrade much, if at all. 


The music and movie industries have already proven their ability to tag digital media with "protective code" to prevent it from being copied. Why not try another approach? Tag media with identifying codes (I think such codes are already there, actually) and bill service providers (not consumers) whenever media is incorporated into a new project. 

Service providers like OneTrueMedia can decide how to pass this cost on to users. Maybe uploading music would be one of those features reserved for premium subscribers. Maybe uploading music tagged with an identifying code (ie, copyrighted material) would trigger the "premium service" charges, while uploading untagged (ie, original) material would not result in such charges. It would be up to the copyright holder to collect from the service providers. All the end user knows is that s/he gets to use the media as s/he wants. 

The process would be easy to automate, and it would be in the copyright holders' best interests to create the necessary infrastructure to identify media and collect payment from service providers. 


I remember thinking that Fair Use was outdated, cumbersome, and due for an overhaul when I wrote my first memo about it...that was in 2001. Ten years later, my opinion hasn't changed, but the available online tools have changed. They've improved and become more widespread. It makes sense for copyright holders to tap into these new tools as a profitable revenue stream rather than trying (and failing) to police how every consumer uses the media in his/her library.