Comment by Vampiero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Vampiero | Hacker News Reader

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Consider the following: I make a form of parody that is known as a Youtube Poop. It was all the rage last decade, but now it's a dying art.

In part because of these stupid DMCA rules preventing people like me from expressing their creativity.

I can appeal the strikes, but every time I do so I risk losing my channel forever. I don't monetize, and I only make parodies of stuff that came out over 10 years ago. So I've already accepted that the existence of my channel is ephemeral and that one day it will probably disappear forever.

But I don't have any other platform to go to if I want to share my 5-10 minutes long edits with more than 4 people.

Why am I not allowed to continue an art form that owes its name to the platform that spawned it? Is protecting the copyright of some random anime adaptation or cartoon (that no one gives a shit about anymore) seriously more important than creating novel art?

Copyright lasts WAY too much.

And no, I don't really want to go to court over this bullshit. But I am firmly convinced that it's in my rights to produce it. It's just that what counts as "my rights" depends entirely on the jurisdiction, because the law is a joke meant to protect people who can afford good lawyers -- it's not meant to actually enforce justice. Or rather, the concept of justice is so malleable that it basically means nothing in a globalized world.

Also, I'm from Europe. Which court should I go to when I infringe on an american dub copyright for a japanese cartoon, exactly?

But here it's not so much even about DMCA, as about YouTube's own para-legal system and trolls abusing it.

At this point, if you are still using YouTube (or another platform), you're part of the problem (we've already been talking about this specific issue for 15 years already !!), use something like PeerTube instead !

Even more so if you're in Europe, heck, we even have the example of VLC basically violating DMCA and US patent laws for decades and they are still online - notably because they're not under US jurisdiction :

https://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions/#What_a...

My audience is not on PeerTube, duh. Normal people don't know and they don't care

Nobody has a right to an audience.

> Also, I'm from Europe. Which court should I go to when I infringe on an american dub copyright for a japanese cartoon, exactly?

Well the copyright and the site are American so probably America.

> Nobody has a right to an audience.

That's literally what copyright is

No, it's literally not. Copyright is that you have the right to potentially benefit from your work.

You can broadcast it. You don't have any kind of right to an audience to watch it. I don't even know what that would look like.

A plausible interpretation of "you don't have a right to an audience" is that people don't have to watch your dross if they don't want to, and this is the meaning which is normally meant to be implied (the motte in the motte and bailey).

Then people want to use it in the sense of, you don't have a right against someone else interfering with your interaction with your willing audience, i.e. you don't have a right not to be censored by a government or corporate oligopoly. But that is a far less defensible proposition.

Exactly. Or even "you don't have a right to a platform".

You can speak your mind. That doesn't mean YouTube is obligated to broadcast it for you, nor does it mean your speech is being suppressed if they choose not to.

On a factual level, your speech is being suppressed every time someone refuses to broadcast it for non-commercial reasons.

YouTube isn't obligated to broadcast it, and in some cases it's debatable whether they're the ones suppressing it, but it is still being suppressed.

That isn't accurate. Unless they are physically stopping you from speaking, they are not suppressing it. They're just not amplifying it.

That's just ridiculous. If everyone in town is allowed to send telegrams except for the one gay couple, is their speech not being suppressed?

I don't mean in the legal US sense of the legal right to free speech, I mean the actual speech itself. If most people can speak but you cannot, and completely absent any question of rights and legality, how is that not suppression?

Well, if YT is suppressing a user's video _because of their sexual orientation_, then yes, it would be.

If you have the option to send a letter, then your speech is not being suppressed. And if the telegram company is being considered a common carrier, your speech will not be suppressed.

All of these things (protected classes, common carriers, etc.) have already been considered.

Reverse it. Why do -I-, a private citizen or company, have an obligation to amplify your speech for you, often without compensation?

I don't.

You don't have an obligation not to suppress my speech. However, when you do choose to suppress my speech, you are, in fact, suppressing my speech.

I'm not asking you, or YouTube, to stop suppressing speech. I'm objecting to the weasel-words. When you apply a special case to a user to reduce the reach of their content, that's targeted suppression. Suppression can be good! I'm grateful that YouTube suppresses spam and violence, but I'm not going to call it some newspeak term like unamplification.

I'm not sure why adding the reason of sexual orientation changes speech from being not-amplified to suppressed. Both cases are suppression. A fire suppression system doesn't turn into a fire unamplification system when it's used on the homes of heterosexuals.

But the thing is, ultimately, that your speech does not need a platform, let alone a specific platform, to be speech.

"I can't speak freely because Platform A won't carry it" isn't a thing when Platforms B through ZZZ exist. And if B through ZZZ have less reach, well, so be it.

The premise being that you have lots of other equally-viable alternatives. Which was probably true on the old internet -- just use a different host.

The modern one where the adversarial video host is owned by the search engine with 90% market share that disfavors competitors in the search results? That's a different story.

Of course, the better solution there might be antitrust rather than common carriage requirements, but something's got to give.

> Nobody has a right to an audience.

The GP isn't asking for an audience. (Except if you mean "with the king", because that's exactly what the comment is asking for.)

> Well the copyright and the site are American so probably America

The GP didn't tell you who the copyright owner is. And Google is present in more than one country.

That said, yes, your last paragraph is a good hint. The world should just think very hard about blocking every large US business.

Comments like yours are why ycombinator has a horrible reputation. It's a worthless dismissive truism to shut down a legitimate complaint from a creator who is being screwed around by bad laws and bad applications of bad laws. Yes, we know we don't have rights, that's why we're complaining.

> Nobody has a right to an audience.

If you are an American citizen, the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution mentions your God-given right to any audience that wants to listen to you.

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