SEBASTIAN BACH: 'It's Nobody's Right But Mine To Put My Art On The Internet'

Former SKID ROW frontman Sebastian Bach has defended his practice of removing videos from YouTube that contain officially released recordings that he appears on.

A registered member of Bach's official message board who has used some of SKID ROW's music in his World Of Warcraft YouTube videos wrote in an online post that he received five e-mails from a YouTube representative saying that "a copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos." Insisting that his YouTube clips were made "just for fun" and are nothing more than "just captures of a game" with music dubbed over them, the Bach/SKID ROW fan, who goes by the name "baranthalas", wrote, "What I would like to know is, is Bach or other guys in SKID ROW are in charge of copyright issues of SKID ROW songs? Because in my videos songs like 'Slave To The Grind' or 'Livin' On A Chain Gang' are perfect! . . . I want to use those songs [in] my movies. So help me out, who should I send [an] email [to regarding] this issue?"

In response to "baranthalas"' question, Bach wrote in the same thread, "This is so crazy to me. I know you don't mean any harm in using my music for your videos, but what every person under 30, it seems like, doesn't realize: we make our living by making music. No one has the right but us, the musicians, to upload our music to the Internet! It is so insane to me that anyone even wants to be in a band anymore sometimes. If you upload our song to your site, why would someone go buy the CD? If they can go to your site and hear it for free? It's absolutely unbelievable. It's also like beating your head against a wall.

"If I see any 'Roadrage' [a film by Sebastian Bach which was included in last summer's limited-edition 'Angel Down' CD/DVD package], 'Angel Down', 'Forever Wild' [Bach's official DVD], 'Jesus Christ Superstar', 'Jekyll & Hide', anything that I did not consent to be on the Internet, I have it taken down. It's nobody's right but mine to put my art on the Internet. Bootlegs are different. They are not supposed to be professional-looking or sounding, so I don't really care so much about that. But if I put a CD out or a DVD, and put my name on it, it makes me furious to see it all being given away for free and there is next to nothing I can do about it.

"Ace [referring to another registered member of the Bach message board, Acekicken, who in November 2008 launched a 'countdown' to the release of Sebastian's next studio album], you know that countdown you got goin'? Add about another 10 years onto that, because it's shit like this that make me and a lot of other musicians say, 'Fuck this.' No one has intentionally done anything wrong; it's just assumed these days if you make music than it should be free. This does NOT exactly make us all run skip and jump into the studio as quick as we can. It's like the dude in THE WHITE STRIPES said: 'Playing music now is like being a carpenter and all the work has left town.'

"I would suggest if you want music for your video game videos, learn how to play an instrument, write a song, record it, and use it in your video. Because I have to feed my children and pay my bills with mine."