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Former Grateful Dead muso sues YouTube

Claims 'unspecified amount' in copyright spat

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A mandolin player who once recorded with The Grateful Dead has joined the growing queue looking to give YouTube a legal shoeing.

According to AP, David "Dawg" Grisman filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco on 10 May, and is seeking "an unspecified amount" for illegal postings of his videos.

Grisman and business partner Craig Miller, who together run the Acoustic Disc studio in San Rafael, say the action is aimed at "helping independent musicians whose music is distributed without authorisation by YouTube's owner, Google Inc".

Their lawsuit specifically states that YouTube and Google "deliberately refuse to take meaningful steps to deter the rampant infringing activity readily apparent on YouTube".

Miller explained to AP: "We are looking out for ourselves and all the other people like us - musicians and independent publishers."

Those among you who may recall The Grateful Dead's fairly relaxed attitude to bootleg tapes of its shows should note Miller's explanation that there's "a difference between fan bootlegs and the global distribution of Google". He concluded: "No one's looking out for the little guy." ®

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Latest Comments

as a member of the 60s generation

hopefully, younger people have more sense than to make heroes of their musicians as we did with ours.

I'll just say that two members of the Grateful Dead are now members of the Bohemian Club in California. The average member is a white, male corporate Fortune 1000 CEO, and I suspect their meetings are kept secret from the public for good reason.

While I'm not sure about Jerry Garcia, the enthusiasm with which the rest of Dead sold out is appalling, though their waiting until they could get the best possible price does suggest that they have far more sense than those "dirty hippies" were reputed to have.

Today's story is just another example of the Dead going from countercultural icons to eager embrace of the worst of the corporate values their music was created to attack.

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Anonymous Coward

Three little words

deadshow dot com

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Anonymous Coward

Grave-Spinning 1-A

Without prejudice..(for all you ambulance-chasers out there!)

All those Grateful Dead concerts I never went to...OK>....the ONE or TWO which I did attend, were rife with tape recorders and video reproduction systems (8mm film cameras!) that Jerry INSISTED were OK by him....are now going in the crapper as this newest assault over DRM's and ARM's (Analog Rights Management, my coinage) gets going.

I know Jerry would be sad to say the least...to even think that his fervent wish - nay, COMMAND to save the band's creative moments on media de jour would go unheeded now....even be considered criminal!

Sounds like David "Dawg" Grisman got hooked into this by some slick Hollywood miscreant malaprop (read: Blood-sucking leech, shyster-attorney) from the RIAA, the bastard child of the MPAA.

Go get 'em, ambulance chaser! (Again, without prejudice)

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