Why I Can’t Embed That

Universal’s lawyers sent a letter that started with the most absurd sentence: It has been determined that on an internet-connected computer an unauthorized music offering is being held for access. What they meant was you’d embedded a music video on your blog, and now you had one week to delete it or face legal action and massive fines.

It didn’t matter that the video was on YouTube or Vimeo, platforms that actively encouraged embedding. Didn’t matter that their own artists benefited from blogs sharing their work. Didn’t matter that you weren’t making money off it. According to Universal’s lawyers, a link was theft. An embed was theft. You were guilty either way.

This was part of a bigger, meaner wave. Photographers threatening bloggers with extortion. Lawyers abusing cease-and-desist letters like a shakedown. At some point people just stopped. Why write anything when there’s a lawyer waiting behind every image, every video, every link? It became too risky.

The absurd part was that Universal was destroying their own promotion machine. Blogs and independent magazines were free advertising – we’d find their stuff, get excited, tell people about it. But instead of letting that happen, they sent letters. Now when you see a song you like, you link directly to YouTube instead of embedding it. Nobody wins.

They clarified later that the whole wave targeted bloggers who’d embedded a Major Lazer video that hadn’t officially released in Germany yet. Like that detail made it less insane. It didn’t. Blogging had become legally uncertain, paranoid, and not fun anymore. The internet got meaner.