Here's a thought that's been bouncing around my head of late (and it was raised on one of the recent CBC "Ideas" podcasts as well) - say I want to post a short video, and I'd like to add music to it. The sort of thing I did here for last year's visit to OOP, for instance.

Now, I purposely chose podsafe music - "Effortless" by Josh Woodward is the lead piece. That's a great song, and it works nicely. Let's say I had wanted to use something from my iTunes library that isn't explicitly podsafe though - something I would, in theory, have to pay a royalty to use.

How would I even do that? I'm not a big corporation, and Cincom isn't a media company. What would the process even look like if I wanted to put up the length of music I used in that video?

The record labels are supposedly interested in "protecting intellectual property", and in getting royalties paid to them. The reality is, their over the top tactics pretty much ensure that none of the music they promote will get used at all - the risk of "just using it" is too high, and there's no discernible way for anyone who isn't in the media business to acquire usage rights anyway.

I'm not sure they could have designed a stupider system if they had tried.

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