Disabled audio on YouTube: The end of Moymoy Palaboy?

Heard today on the radio Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat‘s song Lucky and liked it instantly so upon logging in to the net, I went to YouTube.com to listen to the song again.

I found an uploaded music video but was surprised that there was no sound. Apparently, YouTube has disabled the audio because of copyright concerns. The notice reads:

This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled.

Although I visit YouTube almost everyday, this is the first time I’ve seen a video with disabled audio. Actually, though, it’s been more than a month since YouTube implemented this rule. Their blog entry on January 14 has the explanation:

Previously, when a music label or other rights owner issued a copyright claim to block audio, the video was automatically taken down. Uploaders had two choices: dispute the claim (in the case of fair use, for example) or use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music. Now we’ve added an additional choice. Instead of automatically removing the video from YouTube, we give users the option to modify the video by removing the music subject to the copyright claim and post the new version, and many of them are taking that option.

YouTube has long been struggling with copyright issues. In the past, several record companies and media outlets have threatened to sue them if they don’t act against the proliferation of copyrighted content on their website. Previously, YouTube merely took down videos found to have copyright issues.

But this recent move to disable audio is a bit weird, because what good is a video if you can’t hear anything from it? What good is a spoof, remix or sing-along video if the audio is gone?

For Bubble Gang fans, the more important question is: how can the lip-synching duo Moymoy Palaboy continue to create funny videos if YouTube will disable copyrighted audio on their videos?

Good for them, though, they got into the scene early. Because surely, Moymoy Palaboy could have not attained this level of stardom if YouTube from the start disallowed users from using copyrighted content on their videos.

Is it the end for Moymoy Palaboy? Probably not. That’s because GMA 7 is currently backing them up, even making them recording artists. But from now on, however, GMA will be shouldering all costs of every copyrighted audio that Moymoy Palaboy will use on their videos.

If GMA won’t do it, then the duo cannot simply go back to using whatever music they can find for their videos. In such a case, their videos will most probably end up like this Jason Mraz-Colbie Caillat Lucky video that was not lucky enough to have audio.

Or if they have not run out of luck yet, their video can probably be like this Britney Spears’ original Lucky video which, for some reason, is still lucky that YouTube has not disabled the audio.

Topic keywords for this post:

• This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG The audio has been disabled