The other day while at work, in an attempt to block out the incessantly repeated songs being played on the radio, I decided to plug in my earphones and find some music of my own. The first artist that came to mind, was, of course, my all time favorite, John Denver. I googled John Denver and found an album of his Greatest Hits on YouTube that played for forty minutes. I was in heaven. “Country Roads” is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.

Now, I’m sorta a nerd and a dork and the other night I found out I am a biophiliac. (Sounds bad, but it only means I am a nature lover). “Country Roads” has always evoked in me feelings of beauty and peace and it is rare that I approach a country scene and not think of this song. My husband and I love to ride our motorcycle and our favorite route is through the beautiful rolling hills and farm land of Calhoun County, Illinois. I also love photography so I always take my old Canon along on the bike and take pictures while he drives (correct word?) the bike. A couple years ago, I put together a book of photographs taken on our rides and called it “Back of the Bike,  View from the Harley Seat”.

I blogged about this book in my other blog corleyfoto.wordpress.com . Here’s a link to the actual post:
http://corleyfoto.wordpress.com/?s=back+of+the+bike

I decided I wanted to use the photographs in this book and put them to music–John Denver’s music “Country Roads”. I did what I thought was the responsible thing and bought the song from Amazon. I then spent a couple hours using PowerPoint (I no longer have access to Adobe Premiere) putting these pictures into a slideshow. I was pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I figured out how to use PowerPoint and make a video in .wmv format and uploaded it to my YouTube account. What better way to enjoy my pictures than listening to John Denver while I do it? I had noticed many John Denver videos on YouTube, some which seemed official John Denver sights, but most appeared to be just like me, individuals uploading their projects.

Shortly after I uploaded the video, I got the red curse on my channel saying that I had used copyright music and it had been stripped from my video. I couldn’t understand that since I saw all the other John Denver videos, so I figured it was because I had neglected to put the name John Denver in my title. So I re-uploaded the video with the new title of “John Denver Country Roads 1971”.  Succcess! It was on my channel. Then when I opened my email, I got this message:

Followed by this next email message:

My immediate thought was what good does it do to be on my channel if it is blocked? I went back to YouTube and my video was still there. To see if it would share, I shared it on my Facebook page. Yes, it appeared there too.  But this morning, in an effort to see what others saw I had a friend log into her account and on my feed, it showed the following message on my YouTube upload:

I have since removed the video from YouTube and my Facebook account. I certainly didn’t intend any copyright violation and foolishly thought if I purchased the song, I could use it for noncommercial purposes. I was obviously wrong. Oh yeah, and for whomever owns the picture of the John Denver Greatest Hits album cover, I just borrowed it . (I do have the album in the basement somewhere).

Turns out, unbeknownst to me, my video was shared on Google+, so here’s the link:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113795806698146067063/posts/cYQdtA3jUHj?cfem=1