Musicians are asking important questions about YouTube's copyright problems

On Tuesday, September 4, we reported on the issues faced by Irish musician Laura Mulcahy, who was dealing with a bureaucratic nightmare after an error from YouTube led to her career's worth of music being assigned to a completely different account from her own.

Despite going through the established processes on YouTube to fix this problem, and despite calling on the company publicly to take action, the situation has not been fixed. The only solution offered to Laura was to wipe all of her content, which would mean having to restart her entire channel from scratch. (Try asking an artist on a big label if they'd be prepared to do that and see how it goes down).

Not for the first time, it has raised a very serious problem faced by musicians around the world. In this age of streaming, artists and creators are reliant on these services in order to share their content, but there is still no established body to ensure that - when problems arise - their hard work is secured, accessible to them, and that they have full ownership of it.

That's all before mentioning the paltry sums of money that artists receive for people viewing their work.

After three more days of no response from YouTube, we asked Laura and other Irish musicians (who wished not to be named) what questions they'd like YouTube to answer in relation to copyright problems. Here are some of the responses:

- Considering that creators and content makers are the main contributors to YouTube - without whom the site would not function - why is there not an effective system in place where they can deal with queries/complaints?

- It is not within the remit of organisations like IMRO, RAAP and the Arts Council to help on these issues (although all these organisations have offered support to individuals). Is YouTube prepared to take responsibility for their creators? If not, would they have any opposition the establishment of a representative national body to support these musicians and their intellectual property online?

- Without these creators, who willingly use the service, YouTube would have nothing to market. Are they aware of how little artists receive for people viewing their content? If so, what do they intend to do about this?

- The only solution offered to Laura for YouTube's breach of her intellectual property was for her to fix this issue herself. Is YouTube prepared to say that this is the acceptable to solution for their own errors?