The article mentions that people singing popular songs on YouTube are being censored as well. Who exactly is benefiting from this? Would I be any less likely to purchase the real song because I heard a teenager's lame cover on YouTube?
I think we need to have a good look at fair use and what it means in this day and age.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=VNA48yhYnncC&pg=PA80... [2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
Under YouTube's scheme, the copyright holder merely hands over a set of audio "signatures" and all works matching them are muted -- even if they may turn out to be fair use. The copyright holder never identifies infringing works directly, and there is presumably no chance to challenge the decision. That's not how the DMCA is supposed to work.
While YouTube's scheme is probably catching mostly copyright violations, it's kind of scary that they have equated "algorithmic signature matches" with "copyright violations". The reason "fair use" is such a gray area is because it's really hard to define what is free speech and what is a copyright violation. Handing the decision to an algorithm isn't a good solution.
That's true. It's also true that there isn't a "Happy Birthday" exception either. Have you paid royalties each and every time you've sung it?
I think it's fair to say that the copyright system needs a major revision.
While I respect the EFF in a lot of ways, there has never been a "remix snippets of our shared mass media culture" exception to copyright.
An equally fair way to phrase the phenomenon is "include high or perfect fidelity copies of copyrighted work in derivative works", which is activity that our copyright regime is not exactly neutral about. I mean, there are credible arguments to be made that the DMCA has been abused in some cases. Then there's the argument that you should be able to take the entirety of a song to back a video you made, and this is OK because the video is yours. (The EFF regarding the machinima videos.)
As a positive statement of US copyright law rather than a normative statement, that is infringement (absent permission, etc).
If you want to fight for creating a "you're so popular you have cultural impact which makes you fair game for derivative works" exemption, be my guest, but I'm not weeping overly hard for losing something I know I never had.