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Comment by tsaprailis | Hacker News Reader

There's also the longer (3:28) video with the Paint It Black theme: https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

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https://player.vimeo.com/video/192179727 for sharing just the video

That's really weird choice, who are picking these songs? :) I can't imagine they've licensed the music either... I guess next up is the "Highway to Hell" video

My guess? Elon.

Haha, I find the image of him doing that, and no one daring to try change his mind, hilarious for some reason. I can see it escalating:

"So for our next video let's set up smoke machines on the road here, and then we'll have a camera team in front capturing it coming out of the smoke in slow-motion with "Smoke On the Water" as soundtrack. It's going to be amazeballs!"

"Umm, ok Elon..."

"Put in a lion roar as well"

"I quit."

Elon would have picked Amish Paradise.

It feels like they edited the video and then picked a song that exactly matched the video's length.

Like "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Dark Side of the Moon"?

I think the musical choices are awesome. It's so much better than choices that seem like all the marketing people debated in endless meetings who it might offend and so on. The company has some personality (cult of personality, maybe, but whatever :) )

It's related to Westworld, as I mention in another comment here[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12995428

...so...going on basic understanding of IP rights management...

If I was an investor I'd be super fucking pissed off Tesla is squandering capital on NOT CHEAP sync rights for Rolling Stones songs to be used in their PR materials.

If I was an investor I'd be super fucking pissed off Tesla is ignorant enough about Intellectual Property that they'd use a Rolling Stones song in their PR materials without paying the NOT CHEAP sync rights.

No credits at the end? Yeah, I get the feeling they didn't pay. Before you want to dog pile me for doubting if Tesla did things right, keep in mind this is a company that blows its own deadlines and wants to lock in its IP...well, I've seen a thing or two over the past 20 years of online life and I remember when Microsoft paid out the nose to get the Rolling Stones to license "Start Me Up" for a Windows campaign. The rights holder to some Rolling Stones material broke up The Verve following "Bittersweet Symphony" case.

Yes, I'm an IP asshole, but I'm a lot better at it than most.

I tweeted the Vimeo link to the Rolling Stones so hopefully we'll get to the bottom of whether Tesla paid or not. Why is this of any importance? Because if it was my song they were using I'd pursue the $250,000 per infringement max penalty for being a billion dollar company and shamelessly ripping off an artist. Just because it's the Rolling Stones, who I wish would retire, doesn't change the rules on the books, as much as Elon & some of the culture might wish was the case...

The $250k penalty doesn't apply, because sound recordings made prior to 1972 (like Paint It Black) aren't subject federal copyright law, but to earlier state copyright laws. In this case, that's supposedly California Civil Code, specifically articles §980 and subsequent. At least that's what it seems to me - IANAL.

From your post it sounds like you should short TSLA since you seem to have some sort of pent up pessimistic anger against them.

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