SAVE the PRINCESS!

An all too familiar quest, I know.  Yet I implore you, my knights and my countrymen to rise once more to that most ancient and noble of quests. Save the Princess from the evil king(s).

Today's princess is, The Venetian Princess.  "The female Weird Al", "YouTube's #1 Most Subscribed Female"...and this is the plea from her tower:

Copied from Facebook:

Venetian Princess: Three of my videos have been claimed as copyright infringement by Sony Publishing. "Accident Prone" was completely removed from YouTube, while "Just A Zombie" and "Outerspace" are now monetized by Sony. Meaning they are making money off of my hard work.

As you guys know, the US Law protects parodies under fair use. But most of my videos are not even the same music, Steve and I re-write generic songs. Especially "Outerspace"- that's a whole original song on it's own. A completely different musical composition from Poker Face. So I here I sit, pondering what to do with my YouTube videos, and what my future on YouTube will now look like. As most of you have noticed, I've taken a bit of a break to step away from YouTube within the last few months. I've been focusing on family and "real life." AND planning new content with new ideas for videos I anticipated premiering in September. Now I don't know what I can do. It seems that my rights have been taken away from me.

YouTube is my life, it is how I make a living. Now a big time corporation is actually taking money away from me- that could have gone to my mortgage. Like they really need it. The songs are original and they simply have no right to monetize my work. That being said, I don't know where the future lies for me in terms of youtube. But I do know that above all of this, you guys brought me to the success level I was able to get to. So even if I never make a video ever again, I want you guys to know I appreciate all of the wonderful support you all have given me. I could not have asked for anything more. YOU guys mean the world to me. Whether it's on YouTube or some other platform, I hope to share my passion of making videos with you again in some form or another.

Bye bye for now
♥ Jodie

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I am very interested what the U.S. Copyright Office & Google are going to do about this.

What does this mean for Google & YouTube?

What does this mean for you and I, my knights and my countrymen?! Let us find out! Let us take up the quest to use whatever news powers we have to raise this to the eyes of the network, to all YouTube users & to the world.

WHAT A MONTH! I AM EPIC FAIL!

Sorry I have been off the radar!  Not a moment could be spared this month for anything but the two projects I wanted to get done. Participating in YouTube/Ridley Scott/Scott McDonalds: Life in a Day project and entering a submission in the YouTube/Guggenheim Biennial event.

For the Guggenheim Biennial event (this story ends tragically by the way) I spent twenty six days working on 'Permanent'. An attempt at 'basic' animation in flash video and an attempt to capture the core ideas behind the 'The Lost Book of Enki' ( a pre-diluvial tale) by scholar/Sumerian tablet translator/author, Zecharia Sitchin.

     I kept, Disney's "The Illusion of Life' beside me ever moment and though I had read it dozens of times over the years none of it was actually meaningful until I started to try and animate. At that point every word in the book was important and I hung on every word as well as watching the live motion version on YouTube.

   I have nothing but respect for animators and was barely able to scratch the surface of techniques like: Squash, stretch, overlapping action, timing, weight, mass, staging, layouts, story development, character design, coloring, effects and above all...Sequential Art.

    So I spent every waking moment I could working on 'Permanent' and on July 31'st, I missed the submission deadline!

    I 'assumed' I would have until midnight on July 31st and it seems the deadline was 'noon' on July 31st.   I have submitted the video anyway and written Guggenheim for mercy and to at least watch it at this point.
   So yeah.  Tragic ending on a fantastic month of learning animation and trying to find my inner Walt Disney.

I need to make a new tee-shirt.   "I AM  EPIC FAIL!"

Life in a Day.  In an attempt to see what this computer could do I participated in 'LIFE IN A DAY" a historic YouTube/Ridley Scott/Scott McDonald project.  I had never done anything like it, nor had I ever worked with video clips to make a project before.   I almost killed my computer trying to encode the final video in HD at 1080p.  I can't say it is anything spactacular at all...but I did it.

So, dear friends.   Quite the busy month for me.

I hope you enjoy PERMANENT and I hope I do not cause you any permanent pain.  If you find yourself disturbed after watching it please consult your clergy, nearest biblical scholar or the Vatican.   I am not trying to be offensive or in the wrong on this take of bibilcal/mythology/history.

--BEST!
Tony Tuthill