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YouTubers take centre stage in latest Get It Right campaign
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 15 August 2019
The latest phase in the UK’s government-supported anti-piracy programme Get It Right (From A Genuine Site) has been announced. The aim is to educate the YouTube generation about why they should be choosing legit over non-legit sources of content. YouTube being considered “legit” for the purposes of this endeavour. And, with the YouTube generation the target, YouTubers are fronting the campaign. Which makes sense.
Says one of those featured YouTubers, that there Caspar Lee: “The Get It Right campaign is raising awareness of a key issue that so many of us are just not thinking about. When we don’t get content the right way, it makes it so much more difficult to make more of it”.
And Lee knows this first hand, see. Because, yes, YouTubers are hurting because of all that bloody internet piracy too. Even though, for the music industry at least, piracy shouting has often been put on the back-burner in recent years to allow more time for shouting about, well, fucking YouTube and the bloody copyright safe harbour.
But, Lee goes on: “When our movie ‘Laid In America’ came out, it was one of the most illegally downloaded films at the time. It’s unfortunate because it affects every person who is involved, from the set designers to the caterers to the extras, when content is not sourced from genuine sites. It’s important to support the industry as a whole, so everyone involved can continue to make the content we all love and want more of”.
The Get It Right campaign grew out of the truce that was negotiated between the creative industries and the internet service providers in the years following the 2010 Digital Economy Act. That Act obliged the ISPs to send warning letters to those customers who were using their internet connection to access unlicensed content. Despite sustained resistance from some of the net firms, an alliance called Creative Content UK was set up which did ultimately result in some warning letters going out. For a time.
Get It Right was the accompanying education campaign which has out-lived the letter sending. Run by movie and record industry trade groups MPA and BPI, it all began with some slightly odd art projects and a telly ad that basically jazzed up the same old tired anti-piracy messaging. But subsequent activity, which has been increasingly online, has generally been better formed and targeted, the YouTuber tie-up in particular making sense given the current target demographic.
Commenting on this latest phase for the record industry, the BPI’s Director Of Public Affairs, Ian Moss, told reporters: “It’s encouraging to see Get It Right quietly but surely having a positive effect, and that its core message is getting through. Fans have a clear choice – if they value the creative process, and access content legally from licensed sources, creators will be able to invest more of their time and creativity into producing the music, film and other entertainment we love. If they don’t, and creators feel less able to take risks and invest, this rich choice will diminish for us all”.
