For latest example of shortsighted corporate folly by the record industry, see this story in NY Times by Damian Kulash from OK Go!

“In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song “Here It Goes Again.” We shot it at my sister’s house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission…. It was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents…. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.

“Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites… A few years ago, reeling from plummeting record sales, record companies went after YouTube, demanding payment for streams of their material. They saw videos, suddenly, as potential sources of revenue. YouTube agreed to pay the record companies a tiny amount for each stream, but — here’s the crux of the problem — they pay only when the videos are viewed on YouTube’s own site.”

You can read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20kulash.html

But  possibly only until 2011. Ironically, that’s when the New York Times plans to put a paywall around its online content and prevent other sites from linking to it or quoting from it. Maybe this will pioneer a way of rescuing the global newspaper industry, according to one school of thought. Or maybe, goes the opposite view, Rupert Murdoch just doesn’t “get” the internet. Time will tell.

As a band, OK Go  clearly do “get” it: see their open invitation to download the raw greenscreen footage from their  video for WTF?, remix as much or little of it as you like and load it back onto YouTube. See http://www.okgo.net or click on image below

That’s the way to do it!