Never Gonna Pay You Anything

He does realize that they use it because they consider it campy and awful, and the people they prank with it just sigh and click away? I'd just keep my mouth shut if I were him. If he's lucky it might inspire a few people to get all nostalgic and go buy an album, though not likely.

"The Rickrolling phenomenon involved internet users sending each other web links that appeared to be relevant to something they were discussing, but were in fact disguised links to the Astley song on YouTube."

Is that it? Wow, that's fairly lame. I feel so ripped off...

(Disclaimer: Tasmania is not the same as the rest of the world, although we do have that internety thingy)

Kristen55

In fact there were over half a dozen covers and remixes released in 2008 (including one by Barry Manilow!). I'm sure that this was entirely unrelated to the Rickrolling phenomenon... just as I'm sure Waterman never got his cut from every one of those recordings.

I think I saw on South Park that there's a place you can go to pick up your money for that.

Okay, here's how it works:

MTV (USA) hasn't paid royalties on the videos they've played for over 20 years. The outcome of the legal decision in the mid-eighties said that music videos, unlike radio broadcasts, are not "performances of the song" but "advertisements for the record." What this means is a complete reversal of anti-payola laws. In this system, the artist and labels can (and should) PAY for the privilege of having their video aired.

The new legal question will be "do we apply the radio model or the video model to performances on the internet?" My guess is that videos will carry on as a free-for-all while the RIAA continues to pursue illegal MP3 users.

The laws are different in Europe, but Google/YouTube is located in the USA. I doubt he'll get much more than complaining done.

Hmmm . . . Reminds me of the InfoSphere in Peter F. Hamilton's novel "Misspent Youth" set in a future England; An Ultra-internet, its key feature is that it actively absorbs and publishes information as soon as it is inscribed on a medium involving digital technology. The upside is that every book ever scanned or even being written via wordprocesser, every movie or item of information broadcast and received by a digital device and every electronic transmission is somewhere on the InfoSphere. Teenagers are more aware of movies form the 1930s than their parents and grandparents, more well read than most literature student sof today, and can call on over two centuries of misic and find the most eclectic mixes for their upgraded iPods.

The downside is that after two years of its operation, no new movies have been produced except amatuer and indie productions, as Movie production houses act only as libraries and suppliers of 'put-yourself-in-the-old-film' software apps, television has become entirely news and weather or reality shows, pharmaceuticals are free ( since they cannot be copyrighted after publication in journals ) but you have to rent the desktop synthesisers that download the instructions to make it from the ingredients you also purchase, and writers no longer write - When one of the characters is introduced to a famed author and comments how much he enjoyed his novels, the author asks for