It is not the performance of a song in public that is an issue (assuming the song is published already) but the posting of a recording of that performance that can be a copyright infringement.

Permission and/or mechanical licenses must be sorted out to republish a recording of copyright protected material. And of course that is important to the owner of the intellectual property.

I have had this happen to me with Youtube on a surprising number of occasions. I have posted my own videos of me performing my own songs. No issues there. And I have posted one video of me singing someone else's song (Bill Staines). I ask for and obtained permission to do so. I posted proper credit info and links to Bill's website.

BUT I have had people film me performing - sometimes my own songs, sometimes songs written by others. In some cases they asked for permission - and in others they did not.

In truth, there are some of the videos that I wish they wouldn't post because the film quality was poor, the environment was bad - or the performance less then stellar - but I would never say no for any of these reasons. I just hope the videos wouldn't be noticed!

And when people have asked my permission to republish MY songs or my performance of Public Domain songs I've always said YES and asked for the appropriate copyright and publishing info to be posted along with the video.

BUT when I find these "bootleg" videos - that is someone republishing MY songs or my performance of Public Domain songs - I have always contacted them and asked them to post the appropriate copyright and publishing info. I do not ask them to remove the video and I can see no reason why I would do so.

For me, the credit info that is specified by copyright and publishing is is important. I don't have any issues with it for my music - except as I said, matters of taste, and I would never voice those concerns.