YouTuber Hums “Bark At The Moon” to Avoid Copyright Infringement on Guitar Hero Video

Posting performance videos to YouTube has become a staple of gamer culture, but it can get you into hot water if that video game involves licensed material — for instance, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Bark At The Moon.”

One YouTube user discovered this when his original video of a playthrough video of the classic Ozzy track on Guitar Hero: Classics was taken down due to copyright infringement. So he did what any self-respecting metalhead would do — he sang all the riffs himself and reposted the video.

Something worth noting is that the guy who posted this video can’t make money from it from ads shown on YouTube streams, no matter how popular his humming shtick becomes. Publishing rights relate to a composition, not a particular recording or rendition of that composition. That means that even if Ozzy’s people don’t pull the video, they can claim it and reap any financial rewards that the video might get, should this dude’s riff-humming take off and become a “Numa Numa”-esque phenomenon (thanks to Vince for that tidbit, found wrapped around a stone that just hit me in the head in my basement cell in the Mansion). It’d be interesting to hear any arguments against that. “I purposefully hummed that off-key! It’s not technically ‘Bark At The Moon!’” Heh, yeah, that won’t fly.

Check out the self-sung playthrough below. Points off for not squealing like a stuck pig during solos and pinch harmonics.

[via The PRP]