TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube is now muting users videos that use a copyrighted audio track.
YouTube has been testing out various ways of detecting copyrighted videos, the company has been fingerprinting audio tracks and notifying users of infringement when they find a copyrighted song. It appears as though the focus has changed and instead of users being notified the music is now muted on the videos.
The reaction from the twitter universe has been mainly negative with some saying "this is not a good idea!" and "the end of amateur creativity on youtube? arghhh!!".
The notice on the videos states "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled. More about copyright"
It"s clear that this will kill user generated content where users often use an audio accompaniment to picture slideshows, like the muted video below.