This Is NOT Legal (video about new Youtube copyright policies)

[Pier]

Click to read more...

 

[Pier]

Lawyer up!

She explains why this is useless. Youtube doesn't tell you exactly who is making the copyright claims. Google has no one to talk to either. And lawyers are expensive.

 

[LatinXCombo]

Do you think Google wants a million people making a bunch of videos independently with 5,000 views each, making a little bit of cash as a side hustle that they can walk away from?

Or would they rather have 5,000 people making videos with a million views each, whose livelihoods are dependent completely on the platform?

 

[Pier]

Do you think Google wants a million people making a bunch of videos independently with 5,000 views each, making a little bit of cash as a side hustle that they can walk away from?

Or would they rather have 5,000 people making videos with a million views each, whose livelihoods are dependent completely on the platform?

I doubt Google cares. Youtube optimizes for ad revenue and user engagement.

Even Rick Beato with 3M subscribers and 460M views has been complaining about music copyright claims for years. Now with visual claims it's only going to get worse.

 

[NekujaK]

Yup, Google/YouTube don't really care. All of the rights-protection mechanisms in place on YouTube are solely designed to prevent YouTube itself from getting sued. If I were YouTube, I'd probably do something similar. Several years back, before YouTube had any such protections in place, they were being threatened with massive legal actions from all the big media companies. So to protect themselves, they put things like Content ID in place, so rights owners could have recourse and go directly after the people actually posting copyrighted content. YouTube itself has no dog in this hunt.

If, as this woman points out, we're in for a free-for-all by copyright trolls, then one of the possible outcomes is that it will have a chilling effect on content creators and the number of postings on YouTube could diminish. That might hurt YouTube in the long run and allow other sites that don't have such restrictions (like Nebula) start to gain traction.

But ultimately, what we need to remember is that having a video flagged for copyright violation on YouTube does not constitute a legal action. It simply restricts the video from being shown or monetized on YouTube. There are no laywers or lawsuits involved, unless the content creator decides to lawyer up and try to fight it, which is rarely worth the effort.

YouTube is after all, a free service, and they can choose to run it however they wish. There are no guarantees of service for content creators - we're just lucky to have a platform on which to showcase our content that reaches such an incredibly vast audience. It's unprecedented in the history of man.

 

[Pier]

YouTube is after all, a free service

Is it though?

Youtube generated almost $30B with a B of revenue in 2021. It would be hard to do that with a free service.

All Youtube users are feeding Google with data in one way or another. Searches, trends, tracking, etc. Websites with Youtube embeds (such as VIC) feed Google with data too.

Content creators upload for free but this is not the end of the story. Creators only get a share for monetized content, but Youtube always profits from content being uploaded to the platform. The house always wins.

Even for viewers it's not really a free service. Most viewers either watch ads or pay Youtube premium. Some users have ad blockers on desktop but Youtube revenue keeps growing so it must mean this is not really a big issue.

You know what they say, either you're the customer or you're the product.

 

[NekujaK]

Is it though?

Youtube generated almost $30B with a B of revenue in 2021. It would be hard to do that with a free service.

I can't fault YouTube for wanting to make money. They have employees to pay, servers to keep up, business relationships to maintain, and hopefully some profits to be earned. It's the way of all businesses.

I personally have never paid a single penny to YouTube. Yes, they get to collect some usage stats from me, but at the same time, the ad and tracking blockers on my browser enable me to completely avoid any YouTube ads and minimize the amount of information YouTube can extract from me.

I don't monetize my videos, so for people who do, I can understand how some of YouTube's actions are a threat to their income stream, and that's unfortunate. But at the same time, there are a significant number of people out there who've earned decent incomes from YouTube, or their exposure on YouTube has led to other paying opportunities.

I myself have made money through YouTube indirectly - by creating and uploading/hosting videos for others as a side business, and also thru the exposure of my music that led to paying gigs. I definitely get annoyed with some of YouTube's policies and ways of doing things, but at the end of the day, I've gotten a lot of benefits from it, so I can't complain too loudly

 

[Pier]

I can't fault YouTube for wanting to make money. They have employees to pay, servers to keep up, business relationships to maintain, and hopefully some profits to be earned. It's the way of all businesses.

Certainly

I'm not anti Youtube at all and I hope I didn't appear as such.

In fact I pay the premium subscription so that creators can get their share and I don't have to watch ads. I want people that make good Youtube videos to keep making that and even make a living if possible.

I think blocking ads on services one uses regularly (like Youtube or here on VIC) is not a very ethical thing to do.

That doesn't mean these copyright infringement issues don't bother me.

 

[NekujaK]

I think blocking ads on services one uses regularly (like Youtube or here on VIC) is not a very ethical thing to do.

That doesn't mean these copyright infringement issues don't bother me.

I don't view blocking ads as an ethical issue. YouTube, and other ad-dependent services, and users of such services, are fully aware that ads can and will be blocked. It's not like anyone's being duped or deceived. It's the cost of doing "business" on the internet.

If it's any consolation, when I watch YouTube on TV or mobile devices, which is about 50-70% of the time, I get the full onslaught of ads

In terms of the copyright stuff, the most unfortunate aspect IMHO, is the imbalance of power that favors copyright claimants. I've been able to challenge such claims and prevail in the past - it's not difficult to do - but that was many years ago and I don't know if YouTube's made that process more opaque now. But I understand why YouTube wants to appease the copyright claimants.

 

[timprebble]

Apart from anything else, it is a useful reminder that 'making a living' via a corporate owned platform means you do not own your relationship with your supporters - you are renting it and it can be terminated any time. Best do something about that, if thats you....

 

[Sophus]

Copyright claiming is easy because YouTube wants to make it easy for the right holders and they are some of the biggest customers of YouTube. The viewer and content creators are not the customers but the companies that buy ad placements.

So, the trick is, to claim your own videos if somebody else claims it. The more claims you put on your own video, the bigger the split of the revenue gets.

There are channels out there which place three or four short jingles in their videos. If somebody makes a false copyright claim on this video, they just claim the four jingles and then still get 80% of the revenue. You just need to be careful not to claim everything right from the start, or else you could risk a copyright strike.

You can also claim every other video that uses your jingles. This also means you can get around the subscriber and watch-time threshold if you create a new channel. If you claim the first uploaded video you will get the revenue straight away.

 

[zigzag]

She explains why this is useless. Youtube doesn't tell you exactly who is making the copyright claims. Google has no one to talk to either. And lawyers are expensive.

Maybe multiple content creators could join forces for a lawsuit?

Seems like Google offers the service in bad faith to content creators since they provide from very little to no details why they are terminating the agreed upon payments and no real way to dispute. Or Google is simply falsely advertising their service.

 

[Pier]

I don't view blocking ads as an ethical issue. YouTube, and other ad-dependent services, and users of such services, are fully aware that ads can and will be blocked. It's not like anyone's being duped or deceived. It's the cost of doing "business" on the internet.

"People will steal your products, it's the cost of doing business"

Yeah, not a great argument.

And my main concern is not Youtube but the little guys. The creators, Mike who's running VIC, etc.

Maybe multiple content creators could join forces for a lawsuit?

Hopefully but going against Google and/or these big copyright troll companies might get expensive.

 

[Pier]

Apart from anything else, it is a useful reminder that 'making a living' via a corporate owned platform means you do not own your relationship with your supporters - you are renting it and it can be terminated any time. Best do something about that, if thats you....

Yep.

I'm a developer and was an Apple fanboi years ago. Back in the day I wanted to develop apps for iOS. Until... I completely changed my perspective on how Apple runs it.

Apple takes a cut of everything you sell on iOS. Apple is not offering a service to you, they are allowing you to become a partner with them and they have complete power in this relationship. Not only they can kick you out whenever they deem it appropriate, but they have complete control over anything you write for iOS.

Say you spend 1 year working on a mobile app for iOS and then Apple decides they don't want it on their app store. This means Apple has complete control over the money you invested into writing iOS exclusive code because of course iOS code cannot run anywhere else.

This is pretty shocking if you think about it. And it's not a hypothetical scenario either, this has happened countless times.

Thankfully the EU is very close to passing legislation that is trying to change this. This just happened today:

DMA: Council gives final approval to new rules for fair competition online

The Council approves new rules for a fair and competitive digital sector through the Digital Markets Act.

www.consilium.europa.eu

We'll see how it goes.

 

[vancomposer]

Oh man, so I can get a copyright claim soon because I filmed the Queen Mary in my last vlog? At least that's how I understand it.

Certainly

I'm not anti Youtube at all and I hope I didn't appear as such.

In fact I pay the premium subscription so that creators can get their share and I don't have to watch ads. I want people that make good Youtube videos to keep making that and even make a living if possible.

I think blocking ads on services one uses regularly (like Youtube or here on VIC) is not a very ethical thing to do.

That doesn't mean these copyright infringement issues don't bother me.

I use YT Premium as well after they offered me one of these 3 months trials and realized I am paying 10$ for Spotify anyways and for 12$ YT Music and add free videos on all devices turned out to be a much better deal. I also felt bad to watch videos of good content creators with an ad blocker on my computer but for F*** sake I couldn't stand the commercials at all.

I am spending so much more time on YT now then ever before, well you could argue if that's always a good thing but beside the legal issues it can be such a valuable resource. If I could only pick two websites for the rest of my life it would be Wikipedia + YouTube.

 

[Pier]

I am spending so much more time on YT now then ever before

I'm pretty sure I spend more time on Youtube than Netflix these days.

It's little chunks of 10-15 mins but I'm sure that must add up at the end of the month

 

[gsilbers]

Im a little more worried about distrokid not letting poeple upload tracks that have loops/sample libraries for youtube content ID.





This album does NOT contain beats, loops, sound effects, or other audio that I downloaded from sample libraries or other public sources. This includes sounds that are available for free from GarageBand, Ableton, Logic, Fruity Loops, etc

Like WTF.. they only want pop singer song writer one guitar acoustic music in youtube?

 

[Pier]

Im a little more worried about distrokid not letting poeple upload tracks that have loops/sample libraries for youtube content ID.





This album does NOT contain beats, loops, sound effects, or other audio that I downloaded from sample libraries or other public sources. This includes sounds that are available for free from GarageBand, Ableton, Logic, Fruity Loops, etc

Like WTF.. they only want pop singer song writer one guitar acoustic music in youtube?

I wonder how deep this goes?

Is the ID triggered with a loop or only with a kick drum sample?

 

[Nico5]

I wonder how deep this goes?

Is the ID triggered with a loop or only with a kick drum sample?

It’s triggered by the transient of the kick drum sample!

 

[Denkii]

I think blocking ads on services one uses regularly (like Youtube or here on VIC) is not a very ethical thing to do.

Display ads are being paid for by the advertiser on a cost per click basis almost exclusively. Generally speaking you have to be a very bad advertiser to agree to paying for impressions only (and it's super rare anyway).

So technically it's more unethical not to block them and clicking them by accident.