Vimeo Sued By Capitol Records Over Lip Dubs

I roared with a belly laugh when I read this headline in bed earlier today. Could Capitol Records truly be this misguided? Do they not realize that if you were to sort Internet brands by those most emblematic of creativity — not piracy — that Vimeo would line up at the top? Lip-dubbing is harmless and perfectly fun, and ultimately will define the aesthetic of an Internet generation. Other than for some petty legal jockeying towards a greater strategy can I imagine why this record company would try to sink such a potentially valuable lifeline — Lip-Dubbing and Vimeo create tremendous relevance and usefulness for their catalog!

If anything better underlines my point it’s an email I received from Sean Nelson, the frontman of the band Harvey Danger, whose song Flagpole Sitta we’ve now infamously lip-dubbed:

That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you’s.

Capitol, you’re a bunch of goof-balls. This lawsuit is the tactical equivalent to pooping on someone’s birthday cake.

I, for one, am willing to boycott Capitol artists unless they reconsider, and I implore other labels to pivot and spur conversations with Vimeo in order to determine a simple process to give people access to copyrighted music for personal video that is satisfactory for all. Preemptive strikes simply won’t do anymore!

Please reblog, or honk, if you agree.

Their business model is dying and they’re doing their best to make it worse. Via Zoya and NY Mag:

The top-selling record of 2000, ‘No Strings Attached’ by *NSYNC, sold 9.93 million copies. The top-selling record this year, Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless,’ is likely to sell a quarter of that. As of this past June, with the closing of Virgin Megastore in Union Square, there is no major record-store chain in New York City.