Blogger’s Note: Important Update

Greetings, all–

Perhaps you’ve noticed a lot of broken video links on this site lately; you certainly will now.

Over the past couple of months, copyright holders have started aggressively blocking Springsteen-related videos on Youtube. Not all videos, but increasingly more with each passing week. A few days ago, those blocks (which simply prevent users from viewing the videos) have evolved into takedowns (which remove the videos altogether and issues a “strike” against the user who posted them).

After three such strikes (which can come in almost instantly rapid succession for users who have posted a lot of videos), Youtube closes the user’s account. If you go to Youtube right now and search for Springsteen videos, you’ll see a lot fewer videos than there were at the beginning of the year due to the take downs and closures of fan accounts these past couple of weeks.

I’m affected by it too–I received two strikes at virtually the same time, so I’m one away from my account being closed.

It’s taken me a while to understand why certain types of bootleg audio/video shares sail along and why others trip the takedown wire. As far as I can tell, the only videos that (for me, at least) have been either blocked or deleted have been full show postings–all of my one-or-two songs postings have been left intact, and from a casual perusal of other channels, that seems to be the case for those users as well.

I don’t know why there’s a sudden crackdown on bootleg sharing after so many years of loosened enforcement. Perhaps it’s due to the increased output of past shows in Bruce’s official archive series. In any event, it’s clear that Bruce’s camp is sending a message, and I want to respect it.

So–in order to do that and keep my channel going, I’ve deleted all of the full show audio/video recordings that I’ve ever posted. With those gone along with all of the other users’ full show recordings that I linked to, that’s going to leave all of the back posts in the Kingdom of Days daily seriously broken for a while. I apologize for that, but I don’t have enough free time to go back and update them all at the moment.

Instead, starting Saturday, April 12th, I will start including only a single track from each show featured. That should still give a taste of the experience while not running afoul of the dreaded youtube strikes. It will obviously take a full year to circle back around and remove all the broken video links from the everything up through today, so I ask for your understanding until then if and when you view back posts.

Also, it’s important to note that this should primarily affect the Kingdom of Days series (and to a lesser extent a few of the Where the Band Was entries); those are the only places where I’ve posted full shows. The Roll of the Dice, Cover Me, and Meeting Across the River series should be unaffected except where those articles include videos shared by other users whose channels have now been closed. I will update those posts over time if and as I discover broken links.

Again, though, all new posts published from this point forward will include intact video links, and I ask for your understanding in the short term if you discover broken links in past posts.

As always, thanks for reading!

Ken