The Daily Swarm

Ars Technica:

EMI is upset about “official music videos, live concert footage, videos consisting entirely of individuals ‘lip-synching’ musical compositions (also known as ‘lip dubs,’ a phrase coined by Vimeo and a practice encouraged by Vimeo and its staff), and videos featuring prominent musical soundtracks.”

Vimeo will take down clips with infringing audio after receiving a DMCA notice from EMI, but the label complains that Vimeo won’t even take down other clips that feature the exact same song, and it won’t preemptively filter out videos that contain full audio tracks. YouTube does such filtering, and Vimeo does it for video, but refuses to take “simple measures” to protect music.

NewTeeVee’s (otherwise worthwhile) description of the case makes it sound like this is an issue about lip dubs in particular—videos in which some random person films themselves lip synching to a favorite song. But EMI‘s actual concern is with all the full-song verbatim audio available on Vimeo. EMI isn’t going after mash-ups, and is careful to say that it is “not seeking to stifle creativity or preclude members of the public from creating original, lawful audiovisual works.” But it does want to stop usage of “the entire musical work deliberately and carefully synchronized into the video.”

EMI even says that Vimeo allows uploads of “videos that consist of nothing more than a ‘record player’ playing a commercial recording.”

Gawker:

Big Music is harshing hip, tech-savvy narcissists’ mellows: Record label EMI is suing Vimeo for encouraging lip dubs, wherein flipcam-possessing twenty-somethings make video of themselves dancing around and lip-syncing to their iPods.

Vimeo—the twee-est and Brooklyn-est of video sharing sites—is home to such channels as Lip Dub Stars, where the blurb explains the genesis of this venerable new form:

“The term ‘lip dub’ was coined by Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo. The videos are filmed with the song dubbed over the footage during editing, which lends theatrical heft and volume to what would otherwise be a routine lip-sync.”