But there are roving “enforcers” who monitor the background sound in every commercial establishment they can find, pouncing on anyone who is playing music, or allowing music to be played, on site.

Ditto for every form of entertainment. Keeping track of rights, and making sure every copyright owner gets paid, is a huge part of running an entertainment enterprise these days.

I’m sure there are valid reasons why they feel they have to have zero tolerance in the unauthorized use of their content. But the fact they haven’t found some way to allow individuals some leeway in the citizen-generated media world shows that they aren’t trying hard enough.

If I were part of Universal’s PR group, I’d be praising the Almighty that fine folks like this help increase awareness about our artists FOR FREE! I’d look at it like free product placement and the more people that viewed the video, the happier I’d be about it.

I can see requesting someone to pull a video with your song in it if the video shows anything illegal or completely out of line with the morals of middle America, but this is an example of ridiculousness. It’s power hungry, greedy corporate America types who don’t stop to think about the benefits that something like this offers. Shesh…