SST Records Criticized as 'Copyright Nazis' After YouTube Removals

By NathanJamesBaker's Channel

SST Records, the long-running indie home of bands such as Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth, has created a hubbub after asking YouTube to remove videos posted without permission. The label's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request resulted in the removal of unrelated videos by bands including the Adolescents, X and Lower Class Brats, none of whom have been affiliated with SST. 

Though the incident led at least one YouTube user to create a channel called Fuck SST Records (Copyright Nazis), it appears that the label's request led to the collateral removal of all videos posted by certain YouTube users, according to the site's "three strikes" policy. If the account holder posted more than three SST videos without permission, all videos posted through the account – SST-related or not – came down. 

"It is not a new matter that I am concerned about how my music is presented," SST founder Greg Ginn told the LA Weekly, explaining that he objects to the "monetization" of unlicensed YouTube videos through advertising. Ginn founded the hardcore band Black Flag in 1976 and the record company two years later. 

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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