My understanding goldenrail, is that the music muting/replacement is offered/required for any video that contains unlicensed music…regardless of any fair use considerations. Also, apparently, the muting is done to the ENTIRE audio track… not just the offending musical clips.

I’m going to take a (likely) unpopular view of this. Yes, Fair Use is important and *should* be protected.

Think past the immediate pain and shakeout of this and tell me if it isn’t possible that by doing this, some YouTube producers will choose to either 1) license music legally before they put their videos up, or 2) create their own, original score for their videos. I personally think that would be a net positive if more music was created and less music was UNfairly used. When professional producers want to make a film, they certainly don’t use uncleared music, instead they either clear the rights or they create original scores. Where would we be if “Chariots of Fire” had decided to nick “Runnin With The Devil” since it was easier? I’m hoping that by reducing the amount of non fair use occurrences, the true fair use can be given permission and the craft may improve with the influx of original music created by musicians and composers since stealing will become more difficult.