RIAA and ISPs to police your traffic starting July 12

[d_r]

20. Here is an example

from youtube.

Now, please don't say something like "everything on youtube is copy right free because they check" because that simply wouldn't be true. There are gazillions of copyrighted materials on youtube.

So tell me, is this video copy right free?

It is a "vocaloid" song - it uses the yamaha voice synthesizer. The voice is from "Kaito" a Japanese singer, who's speech was captured at a phonetic level and used to sing a song the original singer never sung. The song was originally by Klaus Nomi, who died of AIDS in 1983, and whose original performances exist as videos of his live performance. It was originally posted to Nico Nico, the japanese video sharing site were music is often mixed.
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Now, is that copyrighted? And who would own the copyright? Yamaha who produced the software that produced it? The Japanese singer whose voice was used? The individual who actually did the programming for the music and video? The estate of Klaus Nomi? The record company that Klaus Nomi was under contract to in the late 1970s? Nico Nico?

I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know if it is copyrighted or not. But the mere inclusion of it on youtube is certainly no guarantee that it is not copyrighted. I wouldn't begin to know how to find out if there is a copy right on that.

And that is on youtube.

Now take something like bit torrent. If I open up transmission, there are plenty of files that are copy right free and plenty that are not. And, no, the copy right free doesn't say right in the torrent name that it is copy right free necessarily, and frankly I think the "assume it isn't free unless it is free" idea isn't a workable one in this world.