Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style | Hacker News Reader

Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

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Along the same lines, it's interesting that not only has Constantin Film apparently stopped issuing DMCA notices on the Untergang (Downfall) parody videos, but some of the older ones that were previously DMCA'ed off of YouTube seem to have come back. Maybe it finally occurred to someone at Constantin how many viewers those unlicensed parodies have attracted to their excellent but otherwise obscure movie over the past few years.

I posted one a couple of years ago, myself. It stayed up for about a year, then was yanked in response to a DMCA complaint from Constantin. About a year after that -- meaning just a few weeks ago -- I started getting notifications of user comments again. The video had magically reappeared on YouTube with no intervention or counterclaim on my part.

Perhaps YouTube has a re-inclusion program?

I doubt it. That would most definitely violate the DMCA.

DMCA counternotices violate the DMCA? See http://www.chillingeffects.org/question.cgi?QuestionID=132

What if the original DMCA complainant noticed negative results form the DMCA and wished to reverse it?

Surely that would be possible.

I recently watched this film on Netflix and it was great! I knew nothing about it before seeing some parodies pop up a few years back.

As explained on The Verge[0], the internet has been essential to the rise of K-pop, and the K-pop industry is not nearly as strict about piracy as the American music industry is.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3516562/k-pop-invades-ame...

Though I'm not really riding on the South Korean wave, I have a huge amount of respect for Korea's music labels (at least when it comes to how they release their content).

If one takes a look at YouTube channels for the South Korean labels, the videos the provide are almost always high quality -- both in terms of actual video quality and content that they release (e.g. LOEN[1] and SMTOWN[2]).

On the other side of the sea, you have Japan. From the US side, it seems that Japanese labels haven't been too generous with releasing their content overseas. Universal Music Japan has been the only big label (IMO) that has been great with releasing content. The other end of the spectrum, you have Sony Music...and they've been pretty quick to bring down videos as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/LOENENT/videos?view=0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/SMTOWN

[3] https://www.youtube.com/user/universalmusicjapan

[4] https://www.youtube.com/user/sonymusicnetwork

> On the other side of the sea, you have Japan. From the US side, it seems that Japanese labels haven't been too generous with releasing their content overseas.

As explained in this article by The Verge[0], the Japanese are still very much tethered to physical media. They regularly rent/buy CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, for reasons discussed in the article, which has kept profits high in the Japanese entertainment industry, compared to the West. Physical album sales have actually risen 11% in Japan in 2012, compared to 2011[1].

This, combined with the Japanese market's size and the almost complete absence of piracy there, has obviated the need for Japanese artists to embrace the internet or market their products abroad. Korea, on the other hand, has a much smaller population, and one for which piracy is a way of life. Korean artists are thus forced to market abroad, and in fact get 80% of their profits from Japan[1].

Among domestic Japanese groups, on the other hand, there has also been a reliance on various gimmicks to boost physical single and album sales. For example, AKB48, a girl pop group with dozens of members (originally 48 of them), holds yearly elections (senbatsu) to determine the order in which the members are ranked. You get one voting code for each physical copy of a particular single/album that you buy. There are crazy fans that will literally buy thousands of copies of a single CD in order to repeatedly vote for their favorite member, so that member wins[2,3].

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-con...

1: http://seoulbeats.com/2012/12/worry-for-the-right-reasons-k-...

2: http://blog.livedoor.jp/kinisoku/archives/3425353.html

3: http://getnews.jp/archives/119107

AKB also built an empire on handshakes - buy the media, get a ticket to give a girl a handshake.

Yeah, one of the things that Akimoto Yasushi (the genius behind AKB48) did was create an idol group with girls that have a more down-to-earth and "accessible" image. They perform daily at a theater in Akihabara (the nerd district in Tokyo), and after the performance you get to meet the girls. And they supposedly have had no plastic surgery, which is supposed to contribute to their accessible image in a country where plastic surgery is quite popular in the entertainment industry (though many have said this is a lie and called them 整形B48/Seikei-B48, a pun on their name using the word for plastic surgery).

Artists and Media companies know that music copyright is impossible to enforce, and they do not build their business around selling of music content. In China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, no one buys CDs, but people spend a ton on consumer goods that are schilled by these artists, and also a ton on concerts to watch them perform live. US record labels need to wake up and figure out how to build real businesses around artists not tied to selling music.

> In China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, no one buys CDs

What are you talking about? This might be true for the other countries, but it is most definitely not true for Japan, as I explained in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4903236

Devil's advocate: where do you draw the line?

MIT did a Gangnam style video, did they pay Psy for the right to do so?

If BMW were to do a Gangnam style video, surely Psy would expect to be paid, right?

Why BMW and why not MIT?

We are in a liminal period where copyright is sometimes enforced, and sometimes not. Social pressure and business inertia causes some people to play by the rules. Risk taking, greed, and ignorance causes other people to not do so. Where this ends up is anyone's guess, but it isn't likely to stay this way for long.

[That said, I'll reiterate my previous comment about record labels who bring hundred-million-dollar suits against their fans: fuck them.]

BMW is a for-profit business. MIT is a non-profit educational institution.

I'll agree that copyright in the digital era is a mess, but the line in this case is fairly clear. Yes, fair use (regarding parodies/satires) is convoluted, but the general rule makes intuitive sense to me: unless your parody is blatantly for-profit/self-advancement, you're covered.

So, what if BMW kicked the BMWCCA a few bills to make a "parody" video of their own?

It's up to judges to decide if they have broken the law and if it's an actual commercial.

You can't just claim an advert is a parody and get away with it, it has to be an actual parody.

A non-profit with $15b in total assets and endowments.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/institute-endowment-figur...

And yet still a non-profit in actuality and intent.

Very true. But if a non-profit with $15b asked to license some of my IP for free I think I'd ask for some cash.

"We are in a liminal period where copyright is sometimes enforced, and sometimes not. Social pressure and business inertia causes some people to play by the rules. Risk taking, greed, and ignorance causes other people to not do so. Where this ends up is anyone's guess, but it isn't likely to stay this way for long."

It's more nuanced than that - modern copyright is not doing what it was supposed to do (http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...).

Parody is considered to be "fair use". Commercials aren't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_and_parody

Actually copyright laws were pretty clear, we just had massive regression due to intense lobbying of greedy entities.

A) If you accept this argument premise, then you violate the assumption that PSY is "ignoring copyright infringement" in the first place. B) Using the music verbatim but changing only the video content to make a parody would probably not hold up as "fair use".

>Using the music verbatim but changing only the video content to make a parody would probably not hold up as "fair use".

Weird Al rerecords the music, but the notes are the same and that is considered fair use. I know that Weird Al ask for permission from artist before releasing any songs, but it's not something he is required to do.

Recording your own performance from the same sheet music and "using the music verbatim" (in which context I meant using the "audio" verbatim, while changing only the "video") are fundamentally different situations.

Both halves are copyrighted, though. Musical works have copyrights that are independent of the copyrights on any particular recording thereof.

Ref: http://www.masurlaw.com/3980/songs-and-records-two-types-of-...

Right; however, with a parody of the sheet music that you recorded yourself you have fair use on the sheet music and no concerns about the recording. If you want to do a parody of the recording from the substantively the same sheet music, you may or may not be able to get by with nothing, but you would almost certainly be ok with a mechanical license, which the studio is required to give you for a known (small) fee.

In comparison, if you want to do a parody of a music video--a work that is considered to be on top of the music piece, as opposed to included with it, and thereby requiring a special "synchronization license" to make--using the original recording (which obviously implies the original sheet music), you are then going to have to negotiate with the studio, and they may simply not have any internal mechanism by which you can license it at all (even if individuals there think it makes sense).

Weird Al "using the same notes" is not fair use. He pays the compulsory license.

Using the music verbatim would not likely be fair use, and the videomaker owes a license fee.

2 Live Crew won their case when they did a raunchy cover of Roy Orbison's "(O) Pretty Woman." I don't think they had to pay licensing fees, nor does Yankovic.

EDIT: I asked about licensing fees, and Wiki[1] says that Coolio accepted royalty payments for "Amish Paradise." So I still wonder how 2 Live Crew settled their suit, and I need to get back to work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_al#Negative

2 live crew sampled the Orbison recording. There is no compulsory license for recorded music. It's a different situation than "using the same notes."

A/Exactly. There wasn't probably a copyright infringement in the first place.

The whole article is a non sequitur anyway. Psy won the Internet fame lottery, you cannot extrapolate anything about copyrights.

Parody commercials (and indeed t.v. shows) are just fine, however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_live

>Parody is considered to be "fair use". Commercials aren't.

How about when parodies generate money? Weird Al made millions doing that.

Did Weird Al pay royalties to the songwriters for covering their songs? By law (in the US at least) you're allowed to cover any song as long as you pay the statutory royalties (or a lesser amount if you can negotiate that)

Many of the parodies I see on the net keep the original song or lyrics. Weird Al keeps most of the original musical sound but not the lyrics.

So how do you parody a music video without changing the song? Does fair use of the music video via parody give you right to use the music behind it intact? (color me confused)

You can make money from a parody and make any parody you want. However, in the case of a music video, the video and the song are separate entities, so to avoid the license question the parody would have to change the music as well. I'm not sure where the line is, but for example, the "Opan Chomsky Style" line in the MIT video would certainly not be enough to make the song a parody. "Mitt Romney Style" would certainly be considered a fair use parody and since the video was also parody, the need to license was avoided.

It would be interesting to know at which point a video soundtrack becomes separately copyrighted video. Does the process and order of creation matter or is a song a separate work by definition? Is it possible to merge video and music rights into one right?

>"Mitt Romney Style" would certainly be considered a fair use parody and since the video was also parody, the need to license was avoided.

This is far from a certainty. In fact, the court could very well rule against College Humor et. al. if Psy and his folks chose to press the issue.

The major issue here is the legal difference between parody vs. satire. In parody, you're using Psy's own work to criticize Psy. In satire, you're using Psy's work to mock someone unrelated (i.e. Gov. Romney).

Excerpting from page 2 of http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectu..., emphasis mine.

"[i]f the new work “has no critical bearing on the substance or style of the original composition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention” [...] the work is less tansformative, and other fair use factors [...], loom larger. [...] [A] parody targets and mimics the original work to make its point, [while] a satire uses the work to criticize something else, and therefore requires justification for the very act of borrowing."

But like everything in the legal system, it's in shades of grey.

"A parody that more loosely targets an original [...] may still be sufficiently aimed at an original work to come within our analysis of parody. If a parody [...] runs the risk of serving as a substitute for the original or licensed derivatives [...] it is more incumbent on one claiming fair use to establish the extent of transformation."

I think there's a strong argument that an English-languge parody on a stremaing video site that gets money for its adroll could be a replacement for the Korean-language (or theoretical officially-licensed English-language) song on a streaming video site that gets money for its adroll.

I, of course, am not a lawer. If I was in the business of using copyrighted works in what is legally defined as satire, I'd be playing it very carefully. Psy has (seemingly) no interest in suing these people, and is probably a safe bet. I'd be a lot more careful about using a Ted Nugent song to support single-payer healthcare.

In the end, the American Bar document (http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectu...) is a really interesting read if you do care about what could qualify as fair use and what might not.

edit: in fact, what the heck, I'll submit it as a story. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4905613)

You're completely right; I remember now a few other cases in which the rights holder prevailed because they were not the target of the parody.

Regardless of fair use, Weird Al gets permission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_al#Reactions_from_origin...

He didn't get permission from Coolio

>I ain't with that…I think that my song was too serious…I really…don't appreciate him desecrating the song like that… his record company asked for my permission, and I said no. But they did it anyway…

http://splitsider.com/2011/12/gangstas-parodist-revisiting-w...

Possibly because Gansta Paradise already is a poor version of Stevie Wonder's Pasttime Paradise? Musicians borrow from each other, always have always will.

"He didn't get permission from Coolio"

He received permission from Coolio's record company.

Why would that make a difference? Laws don't typically include an "unless you make money from it" clause.

Your infringement being of a commercial nature is one of the four tests of Fair Use.

For the record (hah) "Fair use" is only a legal concept in the US. Other jurisdictions sometimes have analogies to Fair use, like the right for journalists to quote parts of a text. But those rights are much more limited. There is also no DMCA which means site owners are responsible for the content users may publish.

"Devil's advocate: where do you draw the line?"

Individual and not-for-profit uses are fair.

http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-for-personal-use-declar...

MIT didn't make a Gangnam style video at all. The Korean Students Association at MIT did and got a bunch of random students to help out. The KSA doesn't have any money; BMW does.

MIT pays a flat ASCAP license fee that covers all its students which probably provides them substantial legal cover for most use.

From the article, some of his money comes from Youtube ads, which I don't think would exist if it weren't for traditional copyright laws. (ie, Youtube wouldn't be giving him a cut of the ad revenue if it weren't for copyright.)

Still... Kudos to him for not using draconian enforcement, yet still making lots of money.

Similarly, he wouldn't get any money from people making commercials without copyright law. They would simply rip it off without asking.

The point is; no one would being paying anything unless it got so popular. And, it was allowd to get so popular because no one pettily went after "small fry" infringers. They let (encouraged probably) it go "viral". Let it be mixed, shared, performed, Let it become part of our culture, almost in The Commons.

And when it was good enough to be shared, massively, they reaped the just rewards.

Right, it's stupid to go after the small fry, but nor is this evidence that copyright in general should be abolished, as some think. The balance is somewhere in the middle.

Hah. Tried opening the Youtube link in Germany. Got "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights." The GEMA situation is completely out of control here -- it often feels like half of Youtube is blocked, including many things that obviously don't infringe.

Install ProxMate or ProxTube to get around this.

Note to self: it's as simple as creating the most popular YouTube video of all time. Done and done. Say you're independent and have a decent hit -- 100,000 views. Earnings: $870.

100,000 views isn't much. I think my silly videos of Sid Meier's Railroads[1][2] have more than that.

These are things I put together in a day and edited in windows movie maker. When youtube offered adding ads I ignored them thinking it would never amount to anything. At $8.7 ECPM I feel absurd having skipped the chance!

For an independent band 1k means vital equipment and capital to sell fan goods. For a "Let's play" gamer it means a better microphone and subsidizes the cost of games.

Many large websites run on rates far lower, and those have to provide their own traffic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgCwYfVkQ8&list=UUQ7Hrh... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUXL-zua9ho&list=UUQ7Hrh...

>These are things I put together in a day and edited in windows movie maker. When youtube offered adding ads I ignored them thinking it would never amount to anything. At $8.7 ECPM I feel absurd having skipped the chance!

Presumably, you would not be able to show ads on those videos because they use IP you don't have the rights to. They're popular (again, presumably) because people search for footage of those copyright games and enjoy the first copyright music track. It's fairly easy to put something together "in a day" that becomes popular when you're not constricted by the rules of copyright and can piggyback on the popularity of existing content. I'm not criticizing - I have a viral video on youtube that's within spitting distance of a million views, but I would never be able to show ads on it because I don't have permission to use the footage or the music.

And yes, it seems that presently most video games companies generally turn a blind eye to people posting footage from their games. But you'd be foolhardy indeed to start to rely on advertising revenue that was built entirely on the goodwill of a diverse group of for-profit companies. There are a host of semi- and fully-professional video game personalities whose livelihood could be shut down overnight if a few companies decided to enforce their copyrights.

The article implies that if you just let anybody infringe on your copyright and play/use your work however they feel, it'll pay off in the long run because you gain exposure.

Seems like a _reasonable_ assumption, but I don't really think that PSY is a good example. They mention he's been hired to do ads for Samsung, etc, but is that really a feasible endgame for the majority of artists? Quite apart from the fact that 0.00001% are going to ever be _asked_ to appear in commercials, how many would actually want to? Not exactly a shining example of artistic integrity, is it?

I feel like they're kind of clutching at straws here, probably because articles like this are so popular with readers - have a browse through the comments to see how much everybody enjoys sticking the boot into the record companies.

Anyway, good for him. It's nice to hear that there are other ways to be successful, I suppose.

As a counterpoint, this letter from songwriter Tom Waits written over 10 years ago is a solid rebuttal to the practice of artists making money from commercials while giving away their copyrights for free. Here it goes - http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/12/its-virus.html

Tom Waits sounds awful close to John Phillip Sousa testament before the US Congress 1906 if you swap talking machines with songs in commercials.

"When I was a boy . . . in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape”"

I really don't see how. Waits is making an appeal to art and integrity, Sousa is decrying the act and presentation of mechanical reproduction.

Wasn't there a lot of "innovation" in jazz in the early days when it was very popular, because no one copyrighted their jazz songs? I remember watching something about this. I might've seen it in one of the Everything is a Remix videos:

http://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-par...

There's a similar case with dance (club) music. eg the "Amen Break":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

A lot of somewhat early jazz (bebop) initially used popular showtunes as the base composition, and then improvised solos off those. But precisely because of not wanting to deal with the copyright on the showtune compositions, jazz players began composing their own music. They used the same chord progressions so that the improvisations stayed the same, but a different melody, so it legally was a different piece of music.

The song industry includes singer-songwriters, and it also includes specialist singers and specialist songwriters. A healthy industry will support people who create music but who do not necessarily perform it in public performances.

A healthy industry will support people who create music but who do not necessarily perform it in public performances.

That's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it, but it doesn't make it true. While I don't want to discourage anyone composing/songwriting, keep in mind that separate singers and songwriters are what gave us Britney Spears, and the sheet music guild is at least as bad as RIAA (charging non-profit performing charities per performance for sheet music they've already paid for).

This isn't a "new way" for artists to make money. This is how one-hit wonders bank off their popular songs. Hasn't changed.

Those $8.1 million did not come from Youtube advertisement: according to the original AP article, only $870,000 did.

https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlcpd0qGl...

This estimate seems to be based on views for all of PSY's channel, i.e. 1.3 billion views. That works out as a $0.7 eCPM, which seems more credible than the $8 floated below in this thread.

"From just those sources, PSY and his camp will rake in at least $8.1 million this year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of publicly available information and industry estimates. But for online music sales in South Korea, he'll earn less than $60,000."

This is the important part of the article. He earns around US$0.00015 per song sold in his own country via online sales. He earns a hell of a lot more via Youtube and iTunes. What gets him up to 8M is other advertizing deals.

Microsoft Windows has already gone in same way. Piracy has actually made Windows so popular and inevitable also. You can not ignore and you can not live without Windows, atleast for now. Here in India, computing is a Windows though the most of the PC are running on pirated Windows. Piracy has it won benefits.

Gangnam Style is a horrible example of "... a shift in how money is being made in the music business". Psy deserves every bit of it but the popularity of that song is a freak incident.

I think same can be said about almost anything vastly popular.

Honestly, who (outside of Korea) would even buy an entire PSY record, though? I don't think album sales are a very big revenue stream for such a novelty act. Single-song downloads, advertisements, and talk show and event appearances are of course where the money is at for him.

Nice to see that he isn't trying to "charge for smells" though.

"Ignoring" might be too strong a word here. Licensing is in play, but they are not going after individual infringers.

making the downloading & sharing songs easier and earning profits from live performances is the way to go for the music industry.

ok , let me enjoy your work for free , you should be lucky i'm sharing it ? let's apply that fact to developers then.

Umm would you also pay to watch my live coding session?

if you are naked with 3 girls pouring some cream on you maybe ^_^ .

Yes, that's where it started. :-)

You're talking to an audience where the average person has a Github account and loves FOSS.

That argument has been used for about 4 decades now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists and yet corporations still contribute huge amounts of code to free and open-source projects. e.g. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012...

I think the current YouTube system is pretty good. YouTube detects you are using copyrighted music, and the copyright owner can choose to block it or allow it but gets the money for the ads. Most of them seem to be choosing the second.

Just wait he rans out of money. Then it will become a copytroll :)

>Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

Really? Why not:

"Psy Makes $8.1 Million DESPITE Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style"

Yep the old correlation is not causation fallacy with the correlation calculated from a single datapoint for extra validity.

Now it may be that permissive distribution was key to the success but it is not shown by this article.

Because your edit implies that Psy's success was solely on the merits of his music video and official marketing, and that infringing parodies were not able to dent that success.

The original (and the one I prefer) implies that Psy's success was due in part of the infringing parodies, because of the network effects created by these parodies.

Or just "Psy makes $8.1 million and has ignored copyright infringements of Gangnam Style" which states the facts without putting a spin on it.

Because that's not the central thrust of the article. He has actually grown his fan base hugely by allowing copying, which is how he got to promote himself in ads, etc. outside of his music video.

Your headline implies that the copying is still bad for him, and without I he would have been even more successful, but in fact that's no the case. If he had cracked down on copyright violations, his video probably wouldn't have gone viral (i.e. celebs saw it on YouTube in copyright violation form, they tweeted it, it went viral).

Or how about "Psy Makes ONLY $8.1 Million..."

Is this a lot of money for the most viewed video in the history of the Internet and the most popular song worldwide?

Yes. See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

I'd say yes. In the bad old days, you only got to number 1 because of payola. Chances of an unsigned Korean artist getting there. 0. He for sure did not fit the boy band/pop star profile.

Now you can go from someone mostly unheard of to a global superstar outside of traditional channels. Now, if you are already someone signed on a big label and have a big name, then 8.1M may not be huge, especially for how popular it was.

>In the bad old days, you only got to number 1 because of payola.

What old days? Dick Clark days? Because thousands of acts have been to the number one in the 80's and 90's without payola, just emerging virally (either as one hit wonders, or as more established artists).

>Chances of an unsigned Korean artist getting there. 0.

That might be in the US. In the UK and Europe there were lots of cross-cultural hits from unexpected sources, including third world and different languages.

Heck, 8 million dollars is what a #1 single would cash in just in England back in the day.

Lets do the math: 800 million views for 8 million dollars; so to make $8.000 you need 800.000 Youtube views... this is in no way an example for other artists; and "Gangman style" is a exception in music popularity grow, like "Asereje", "Macarena", "Smells like teen spirit" or "Mambo #5" (is just that YouTube didn't exist back then).

what's "Smells like teen spirit" doing on that list? Nirvana weren't one hit wonders.

The list seems to be of very popular songs; it just so happens that many of the songs are one-hit wonders.

800mil/8mil=100 views per $ so to make $8, you would need 800 page views

That's $10CPM, which is a very reasonable rate.

Except the $8m figure included iTunes sales too.

Source: TFA.

It seems reasonable but pulling a $10 blended CPM on YouTube on this many views on the same content has probably never happened.

Surely if Psy condones piracy, the RIAA should be going after him with their black helicopters, ricin umbrellas and polonium pills. Wait, I've confused them with the NKVD, haven't I? Ah well, it'll do.

Doesn't seem like much for something so huge

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