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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

The question to me when these stories come up at least once a month is: Why would YouTube want to fix this? YouTube as a platform for generating revenue has largely become the domain of large media companies and top personalities. Those entities have a vested interest in keeping the copyright claim system exactly as it is, and YouTube has a vested interest in keeping those entities happy.

I think we've long since passed the point where anyone can say with a straight face that YouTube is first and foremost a platform for individuals to post whatever videos they want to.

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FWIW, the author of the tweet, Mumbo Jumbo is a high-profile Minecraft videos content creator on YouTube (3M subscribers) and he's doing this as his full-time job. By your description, I would say he's in the top personalities group.

What's happening here is basically Warner Chappell is claiming a revenue sharing of his video with no recourse.

Edit: he posted a new video elaborating more about this issue.[1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZplh8rd-I4

He has a contract with the musician whose songs he incorporated in the video. Would be simpler (and possibly more profitable) to use the dispute-resolution process and maybe indemnity built into that contract, tell the musician to call off the dogs and reimburse him for diverted profits and his time/expenses.

This doesn't sound like an example of YouTube badness, but rather an example of the hazards of working with unreliable business partners. And pay attention to your contracts!

It's quite possible that the musician doesn't actually own the rights and was never allowed to license the music in the first place. They may have negotiated some deal (handshake or formal), but musicians normally don't own the publishing rights to their own music; the label does.

I've just listened to the music and it sounds like it's sample-based - in which case there may be a problem if ProleteR didn't clear the samples.

This isn't MumboJumbo's fault in any way. But if there are samples and they're not cleared, there's a legal issue.

That does not - of course - give WC the right to steal 25% of the value of MJ's work just because YT says they can.

With his recent tweets it looks like this exactly what has happened!

>That does not - of course - give WC the right to steal 25% of the value of MJ's work just because YT says they can.

This is completely wrong. Youtube can do whatever it wants unless MumboJumbo specifically signed a contract with Youtube to receive guaranteed compensation. The only law Youtube has to follow is the copyright law and it's doing it to the fullest extent possible in this instance.

>Would be simpler (and possibly more profitable) to use the dispute-resolution process

For each 1800 videos? The youtuber claims that you have to do it for each video and it takes 1 to 2 minutes each.

Though this case looks more reasonable then the idiotic case where white-noise gets a copyright strike.

MatPat of Game Theory & Film Theory says that his YouTube rep explained the company has a categorization internally for video game accounts, which means they can never be part of the VIP category.

What a weird system.

In English, please?

A person who uses YouTube heavily, who's content many people here will recognise, has a contact inside Google. This Google representative has reportedly said that the group who are recognised as "VIPs" (Very Important Person) by the company specifically excludes people working in a particular field of content production, namely gaming.

Thanks, I didn't parse "MatPat" as a personal name.

I don't understand why popularity, not the type of content, isn't what makes you VIP?

Any VIP program works on the (perceived) social standing that comes from (perceived) exclusivity. YouTube doesn’t want to alienate the traditional celebrities with ties to big media companies; part of that means stocking the VIP pool with only people that those celebrities consider to be their peers.

It's not that. YouTube is very worried about the copyright position of video game streams (ie. The stream clearly shows the copyrighted artwork of the games, unlicensed).

If they don't review the video, they can use the safe harbor provisions. If they look at the content and decide to promote or reward those creators, Google themselves could become liable for that IP infringement on aassive scale that so far is mostly going unprosecuted.

The recourse is to sue, and if the facts of the case are as they appear to be, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were punative damages attached.

Yes but he doesn't work for the large media companies that effectively wrote the copyright law. He's merely running a "one man" operation + some support. Destroying these "one man" competitors who can become dangerous to the entrenched business models is part of the strategy.

I think you answered your own question. YouTube is running the risk of turning into a sterile, corporate mall. Soon enough an edgier, more tolerant alternative will pop up and start attracting eyeballs.

YT is running the risk of its content creators organising themselves into an industry association with legal and financial teeth, and suing its profits into oblivion.

On what grounds? I disagree with Youtube’s actions here, but no one is forcing them to publish on YT.

The competition to youtube is virtually nonexistent. If you're a medium or small content creator (which most youtube creators are), then instead of deciding to go to vimeo you might as well just file for unemployment benefits.

And the network effects of youtube will ensure that this continues to be the case. Content creators aren't organised, so a mass exodus won't happen.

So maybe the concept of a medium or small content creator isn't profitable in our current pop-capitalistic system; I guess you are suggesting changing this system, because at the moment this process repeats, what has happened to 1000s of businesses (most recently small farms) in the real world too. Still people elect the ones being paid for by the profiteers very reliably year after year

Youtube has a monopoly on the online video market. There are other ways to publish but not other ways to get viewers.

It was my understanding that YouTube isn't profitable; has there been any new data on this that I've missed? Lack of similar-sized competitors in the space would certainly indicate that the margins don't really stack up and you could make an argument that the aggressive foisting of their premium offering underscores that notion, but I don't know for sure. It'd be interesting to know more about operating a site of that nature at that scale but I don't suppose that sort of data will make it out any time soon!

If they aren't profitable now they can always become an increasingly large money sink.

There has been the ghost of this argument floating around for more than a decade at this point, based on the idea that Google pays for youtube bandwidth (due to peering, they don't).

If Google was losing money on youtube they wouldn't pay out billions a year to video creators in the face of zero competition.

How big a risk is that really? Exploiting the other side's inability to coordinate seems like a standard business trick these days. All they need to do is to pay attention and do some token changes to the product or ToS every now and then, disrupting any attempt of creators at organizing themselves. They can keep at it forever.

I have never found data on whether or not the YouTube legal entity is an independent thing while the add supplier is a separate entity they can happily say they make no money to take for their other legal exposures that YouTube generates. There's also the fun outcome that tomorrow YouTube is sunset the moment the creators start being properly organized because like you mention the jig would be up.

What will they sue YT for? The creators aren't employed by YT and therefore YT doesn't owe them a cent. Copyright law doesn't forbid over-blocking or demonetization and the new EU Copyright directive explicitly forbids under-blocking. The only thing those creators can do is leave YT and let it die from a lack of content. They don't have any legal or financial teeth at all.

Recoding and hosting and transmitting video is so expensive that I can assure you no alternative will ever pop up.

BitChute?

Do you think that self hosting a video streaming server is going to be attainable for content creators? Simply setting up DNs is hard for the layman.

There's no technical reason someone couldn't put together a WordPress-for-Video system - or even add video to Wordpress. (Although that would almost certainly suck for performance reasons.)

The big problem is discovery. A lot of people are wondering about decentralised server networks with an open discovery/search system built on top.

That's a horrendously hard project for social as well as technical reasons. But it's badly needed to drag the web out of the corporate swamp it's currently drowning in.

I’d say the problem is less discovery as it is monetization.

The total bandwidth for one of these creators’ videos is not itself all that massive. Particularly if you are not live streaming, a few thousand dollars in hosting costs a year to get 100TB/mo dedicated servers in a couple datacenters.

But once you have the servers humming and serving a few million views a month, whose ads are you running alongside your content?

Patreon has proved people are willing to pay for content. We just need an easier way to do it.

Patron is fractions of a percent of the GDP of YouTube’s content creator payout, and patron works for only a fraction of creators. It’s not even a comparison.

I have worked on a video streaming service[1] and I also worked for a company that did sell ad space on their own and with this background I can tell you that I do believe that it should be possible for him to set up his own video distribution site. You are right that he probably does not have the technical expertise to build it himself, but he makes about 1 Million Euro a Year. He probably has enough cash on hand to hire a team that can.

[1] Although a kind of specialized one with a lot simpler scaling characteristics compared to a YouTube replacement.

>Recoding and hosting and transmitting video is so expensive that I can assure you Youtube does not exist

Many such platforms exist; starting a new one from scratch without monetization scale would be difficult, but certainly not impossible. The real expense when scaling would seem to me to be moderation of illegal content actually, since you have to pay people for that.

Hosting: I'm fairly sure many streaming solutions (HLS, MPEG-DASH?) work by having the client request chunks of content pre-rendered at specific bit rates. Ergo the actual chunks are static content.

IPFS does static content and Cloudflare does a free IPFS gateway.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/

https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/blob/master/examples/browser...

Recoding seems like a candidate for distributed computing, and a way for fans to support creators.

What about decentralized hosting by users on increasing fast fiber connections

What's the current consensus of LiveLeaks being the edgier alternative?

Definitely. One example is Twitch - It seems like Twitch is growing while YouTube Gaming is shrining [1].

The trick to find the niche and be 10x better than youtube for that niche and then expand from there.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/26/twitch-solidifies-its-lead...

YouTube doesn't have a lot of flexibility here. The DMCA spells out specific requirements YouTube must follow when they receive a copyright claim and even with the current DMCA submission system and content id system which creators claim is too large media company friendly Google is constantly being threatened with law suits by the large media companies claiming they are in violation of safe harbor requirements for not making it even easier for them to make mass DMCA take down claims.

The youtube process where others can claim ad money from videos has nothing to do with the DMCA.

YouTube content strikes aren't DCMA, though.

Copyright holders could file a DCMA request, but YouTube's process makes it easier while achieving the same result. This allows YouTube to satisfy large content holders by avoiding the penalties for false DCMA claims.

DCMA is intented for forcing a comapny to remove content. YouTube simply removes things without actually involving DCMA.

In some cases, YouTube is now explicitly rejecting DMCA "safe harbor" protection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHtHpC6nc_E

From https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3045545?hl=en (emphasis mine)

> Videos removed or blocked due to YouTube's contractual obligations

> YouTube enters into agreements with certain music copyright owners to allow use of their sound recordings and musical compositions.

> In exchange for this, some of these music copyright owners require us to handle videos containing their sound recordings and/or musical works in ways that differ from the usual processes [aka the DMCA takedown/counter-notification process] on YouTube. Under these contracts, we may be required to remove specific videos from the site, block specific videos in certain territories, or prevent specific videos from being reinstated after a counter notification. In some instances, this may mean the Content ID appeals and/or counter notification processes will not be available. Your account will not be penalized at this time.

That's not how that law works. The safe harbor protection in the DMCA is for Youtube, not their customers. It protects them from legal action by copyright holders as long as they honor the process spelled out in the statute.

There's absolutly no law requiring Youtube to host whatever content you want them to. Nor should there be, really.

> It protects them from legal action by copyright holders as long as they honor the process spelled out in the statute.

Yes, that's what I was referring to; YouTube is now saying in some of their emails[1] about taking down a video that they are not intending to forward the counter-notification to the claimant, which they are required under 17 USC 512(g)(2)(B) to do if they want to limit their liability as a service provider.

They don't have to put the video back up or do anything when someone sends a counter notification, but that means they have full copyright liability for that video. They can now be sued directly for violating copyright for each copy they made when someone viewed the video prior to when it was taken down.

In the video in my previous comment, a copyright lawyer discusses the situation. He thinks the big music industry companies that are involved in these agreements ("YouTube enters into agreements with certain music copyright owners") must have indemnified YouTube for any legal costs they might face in exchange for the power to anonymously kill videos without question or appeal.

[1] https://twitter.com/adamneelybass/status/1124734826119090176

> They don't have to put the video back up or do anything when someone sends a counter notification, but that means they have full copyright liability for that video. They can now be sued directly for violating copyright for each copy they made when someone viewed the video prior to when it was taken down.

Sued by whom?

Anybody claiming to own the copyright. It doesn't matter if the claim is legitimate; "safe harbor" means the time and effort wasted on copyright problems is limited to hiding/restoring videos and forwarding a few legal notices between the claimant and alleged copyright infringe channel. The expensive parts like defending against potentially frivolous claims happens directly between the parties involved.

Almost anytime the video stays up but the monetization is going to someone else it is a content ID claim, and it is not required by law

It is less reach but people need to explore other options. Maybe Twitch streams and Patreon would allow him to monetize in a different (better?) way. I agree that YT only cares about corporate interests.

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