The company’s effort to monetize silence transformed the Auralnauts video: Once just a clever gag, it quickly became a flashpoint in the broader YouTube conflict between freedom of expression and copyright protection.
Under the claim, Warner would receive any future ad revenue the video earns, which has been viewed more than 4 million times. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there. That’s what the Auralnauts discovered earlier this summer when they received word that Warner/Chappell-the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group-had filed a monetization claim on their “ Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube's Content ID System. But another set of viewers-those with the rights to the movie’s soundtrack-tuned in to these sounds of silence and heard something else: the ka-ching of a cash register. Sign up to get Backchannel's weekly newsletter.įans of the YouTube channel Auralnauts, which posted the doctored Star Wars scene in 2014 as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the emotional power of Williams’ score, loved it for that weirdness. Jeremy Hsu is a science and tech journalist based in New York.
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