[Tango-L] YouTube includes surprises

[Carol Shepherd]

Janis Kenyon wrote:

> Ricardo
> (at 83) is still working in his electrical repair shop in San Telmo to pay
> the bills.
> 

Unfortunately, not surprising.  Appropriating someone's performance or 
their privacy without consent (by recording it and making money off it, 
or giving it away for free, or in the YouTube case, using it to drive 
traffic to a website intended to make money) is a time-honored form of 
exploitation in the U.S.

It calls to mind all those great black musicians in the first half of 
the 20th century who sold their recording rights for pennies and died in 
poverty while the promoters built lucrative music industry businesses 
off their backs.

I wish I had a dollar to give to Frankie Manning for every 
twentysomething lindy hopper who posts videos of his early film footage 
on YouTube, on the principle that "his dance is now part of our cultural 
heritage and it belongs to us now" and it is "critical to distribute it 
as widely as possible among us because we are the ones trying to study 
and preserve this art form."

Or rather, I wish I could make every one of them give Frankie a dollar 
out of their weekly latte budget.  Frankie's lucky, he's over 90 and 
back into dancing lindy hop and making money off it after five decades 
as a postal worker, but he's got bills to pay too.

-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw PLC
Ann Arbor MI USA
734 668 4646 v  734 786 1241 f
http://arborlaw.com

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