A mock trailer from the movie blog Film School Rejects imagining how 2001: A Space Odyssey would be promoted to a contemporary audience garnered a quarter of a million views after it hit YouTube last week. The recut trailer amped up the apparent action quotient of Kubrick's classic sci-fi meditation by speeding up outer space footage, trimming the fim's shots from their original length to quick flashes of imagery, and setting the whole thing to a library track — Jack Trammell's "Tactical Dominance" — that had recently been used to score a trailer for the upcoming Total Recall remake.

When Position Music, the record label and music library that licenses Trammell's Behemoth album of underscore cuts, got wind of the trailer, company A&R guy Jake Versluis sprang into action. But he didn't dash off a threatening email or call a lawyer to draft a cease-and-desist letter. Instead, he simply posted a note to the YouTube comments section.

If you're going to use our music, please credit our composer and our company. It costs us a fair amount of money to produce music like this.

Label: Position Music
Music: "Tactical Dominance"
Composed by: Jack Trammell (ASCAP)
Regards, Position Music
 
The reply came back the same day: "Sure thing." And full credit for the song, artist, and label was duly appended to the posting, so that both Position Music and Jack Trammell's name now appear close to the top of the page. We aked Versluis by email why the company's default action isn't asking for takedowns of unauthorized uses of its music. He said there are three reasons:
 
  1. We thought it was a cool use of the song (and the video isn't promoting a product).
  2. Generally speaking, we don’t have a problem with fan use of songs as long as they're not promoting a product and making money from the usage.
  3. It tends to be extra promotion and PR for our composers and our company. We release our composer albums commercially, and we hope this extra visibility will result in increased sales. 
At the end of the day, Position Music is betting that the additional exposure from a hit YouTube video (at least a noncommercial one) is worth taking a more lenient stance on copyright violation. That might not be the right strategy for every case of unauthorized use, but it does show how a kind note that helps spread the word about your content can go a lot farther than a nastygram that effectively keeps it under wraps.