James Lileks

Internet copyright criminal:

YouTube had detected that I was using a 30-year old performance now owned by Sony, and thus I was VIOLATING EVERYTHING HELD SACRED or words to that effect. One had to marvel at a system that could detect such things, especially since the impression one gets from reading YouTube comments is that the service is aimed at a unique species of chimp that is making the transition from flinging its feces as a means of expressing disagreement to typing words which occasionally add up to an actual sentence.

It’s possible someone would have watched the video, and thought: Interesting piece, this Mahler thing. Even though I have heard but two minutes I believe I have grasped the totality of the work, and will refrain from seeking out the entire movement. Surely more could only add up to less. And thus Sony would be deprived of 23 cents in royalty.

Well, I didn’t own the copyright, and while I could claim Fair Use under the guise of using Mahler’s early use of his own Judaic heritage to score slo-mo goose-stepping spark plugs as means of examining the composer’s nominal acceptance of Christianity to ward off the anti-semitism of fin de siecle Vienna, ahhh, to hell with it.

And yes, before you ask, I am indeed behind on my Lileks.

One thought on “James Lileks”

  1. I just cleared my cache and reloaded TM, only to get last week’s version of the front page (last post being the one about prisonss as jihad factories). This isn’t the first time TM has done this to me in the last few days and it leaves me wondering whether even when I see this post, am I not seeing more recent content?

    Anyone else running into this behavior?

Comments are closed.