April 23, 2016

I'm razzed for defending Prince's intellectual property and then embedding a Lonnie Mack video imprinted with the words "For Preview Only."

Madison Man says:
I'm appreciating that this post — complete with pirated video 'For Preview Only' — sits atop one complaining about appropriating Prince's name/symbol for any cause.
I react:
I assume that Lonnie Mack wanted the media getting his reputation out there (and so did the estate of Stevie Ray Vaughn). They could get it taken down. It's up, so I think the spread of the music is wanted, and if I heard otherwise I'd take it down. I assume I'm doing Lonnie Mack's reputation a... favor. If I'm wrong about that, I would want to take it down. I know, with respect to Prince, that he did not want it. He had a different approach to his reputation, closely guarded. So I'm not being incoherent or inconsistent.
And then:
Anyway, what does "preview only" mean? We're previewing it... whatever that means. How do you "preview" something? When you're viewing it, you're viewing it. How are you somehow viewing it before viewing it?

I know. There's a George Carlin routine about this. Wish we could preview it.
Ah! Yes (language warning):

16 comments:

David Begley said...

Intellectual property war!

Curious George said...

"I know, with respect to Prince, that he did not want it. He had a different approach to his reputation, closely guarded."

He told you this?

MadisonMan said...

I don't *know* if it's a pirated video, but the story is a lot better if it is.

I think 'For Preview Only' means it's not meant to be broadcast in that form over the air (on TV) because it's not great video/audio quality. (I didn't watch the video to know if that's actually the case).

Can you tell I've spent a lifetime as a youngest sibling, needling my older siblings? That's an annoying facet of my personality that I have to tamp down at work sometimes.

MayBee said...

I'm guessing the "For Preview Only" is the equivalent of the screener copies of movies that go out to SAG members and people in the industry so they can write about a movie and vote for it for awards without seeing it in the theatre. They aren't to be copied or distributed, and they are marked to discourage pirating.

Denever said...

You don't understand the word "preview"? If the preview shows the whole thing in its entirety, then, yes, it's silly. But when you see a preview in a movie theatre or on TV, the word makes sense -- it means "a very short piece of the movie that we're showing you in advance of the release of the full work."
I could also explain some of Carlin's examples, too (but will refrain). Humor that depends on deliberately misunderstanding what is fairly obvious has never struck me as clever. Coming from a guy like Carlin, who could be terrifically clever at times, it's especially disappointing.

traditionalguy said...

No chance Carlin gets more presidential.

Phil 314 said...

Carlin had a great sense of word play

but since "The 7 words you can't say" he was wedded to vulgarity (which always got a laugh.)

and there was always that seething anger just below the surface. I don't believe he liked life.

Ann Althouse said...

I love the Carlin critiques of language. I guess you either have a taste for it or not.

It's irrelevant whether you can figure out what is supposed to be meant. You can understand it, but you're pointing out what's redundant or absurd or pompous about it.

Ann Althouse said...

"and there was always that seething anger just below the surface"

But he made those clownish faces... there was always a cuteness to that, offsetting the pissoffedness.

Ann Althouse said...

And the anger was funny because he was angry at things that you shouldn't get that angry about, that other people were not bothering to get mad at. Many comedians use that trick, so it's all in the way you do it.

MayBee said...

Carlin at the end of his career seemed like an angry old man. The cuteness went away. That has tainted my opinion of all of his work now.

traditionalguy said...

Carlin started the attack on the politically correct use of everyday words. If your use of words cannot be ruled, then you cannot be ruled.

William said...

Just as a matter of curiousity has the flotation device seat ever been used in actual practice. It seems like a pointless invention, like putting a seat belt on a bicycle.....I liked Carlin's observations about these safety devices, and his notation that they were soaked with beer farts adds to the poignance of their futility.

ken in tx said...

Carlin was denied re-enlistment in the Air Force. I don't remember why. He was an avionics specialist on B-52s at Barksdale AFB. I think he resented it, and generalized his resentment toward any authority. He was occasionally funny, but not very happy. It showed.

Valentine Smith said...

Jeez the only comedian that wasn't a miserable bastard was Seinfeld. And Seinfeld played the postmodern premillenial Everyman, a narcissistic sociopath like a WC Fields sans the alcoholic leaps and jitters.

I've known dozens of Carlins (the ilk not the genius) Bronx and Brooklyn Irish who'd flay the bystander and passerby in seconds flat left them too stunned to respond except with fists or a bottle across the crown. It made for very entertaining nights at the corner ginmill.

Farmer said...

"I assume that Lonnie Mack wanted the media getting his reputation out there (and so did the estate of Stevie Ray Vaughn). They could get it taken down. It's up, so I think the spread of the music is wanted, and if I heard otherwise I'd take it down."

Re YouTube, t's pretty difficult for a musician or small publisher to issue takedowns on their own without signing a restrictive agreement with YouTube (one that requires that none of their work gets previewed anywhere else first, for instance). If you've sold your publishing to a larger company or work with an administrator that has access to the back-end web controls, it's easier, but if you're not in that position, you end up playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. Google "take down stay down" for more information. Issuing a single takedown is easy enough. Continuing to issue them, multiple times, day after day, for life, is a slight pain in the ass.

That says nothing about the ad money that's generated from the videos, none of which goes to the publisher, artist or record label unless, again, one of them signs with YouTube. Don't want to sign? Then YouTube makes all the money off your illegally uploaded content and invites you to go ahead and try to do something about it.

In short, it's nowhere near as easy to take illegally uploaded music down from YouTube (and keep it down) as you think. And that's by design.