Cost of Pre-Screening All YouTube Content: US$37 Billion

Fluffeh writes "The folks that push 'Anti-Piracy' and 'Copying is Stealing' seem to often request that Google pre-screens content going up on YouTube and of course expect Google to cover the costs. No-one ever really asks the question how much it would cost, but some nicely laid out math by a curious mind points to a pretty hefty figure indeed. Starting with who to employ, their salary expectations and how many people it would take to cover the 72 hours of content uploaded every minute, the numbers start to get pretty large, pretty quickly. US$37 billion a year. Now compare that to Google's revenue for last year."

Comments

How do they filter porn then?

[Anonymous Coward]

[Sorry to go against the party line here]

I always find it amusing when Google claims that it's impossible to filter copyrighted content, that the uploaders are the copyright infringers, but at the same time, YouTube is doing a heck of a job to filter out porn -- you never find porn there and I don't think that's because nobody ever tried uploading it.

So what gives?

Re:How do they filter porn then?

[shadowrat]

This is horribly pedantic, but if you analyze skin in a color space other than RGB, like HSV, everyone falls into a relatively narrow hue band.

Re:So let's just add that to the cost of piracy

[randomaxe]

More accurately, let's just add that to the cost of keeping the RIAA and MPAA afloat. If we just let them fail, then this money would not "have to" be spent either, and as an added bonus, fewer innocent grannies would be dragged into court.

Let them clamp down on it all...

[N0Man74]

I want to see the MPAA and RIAA clamp down on everything we do online. Let them start taking down mere references to copyrighted works, little kids posting videos of themselves dancing or singing a popular song, takedowns of birthday party videos where a song happens to be playing on the radio in the background, videos with samples and soundbites, music and video reviews, and book reports. Take it all down!

I mean that's where it's headed already, so I say let them continue until the average person realizes what utter bullshit it is and demands that lawmakers end this bullshit and legislate them back to the stone ages and bring an end to the abomination that is the modern state of copyright.

If there's one thing the US is good at, it's overreacting and over-legislating once we find our boogeymen and the average person starts getting pissed off. Let it work for the good for once.

Ok, this probably will never happen, but a guy can dream, can't he?

This argument goes not support youtube

[goombah99]

Just because due diligence would kill the market does not mean it should not be required.

for example, if I am mining potash to make fertilizer and in doing so am spewing gobs of arsenic and uranium over NY city, I can't say, well the cost of not doing that would make my fertalizer cost $500 a pound. Ironically, this is an interesting example: potash fertilizer mining has exceptions for allowed uranium release. But still it's regulated and that regulation causes costs.

At one time steamships were having boiler explosions at an alarming rate. Despite the deaths and cost of repairs it was still economically better to use cheap boilers than pay for better ones. The US instituted standards and inspections, and even forced owners to pay for inspections. This drove up the cost of shipping in the short run.

The same was true of the train industry. Indeed deaths and poor working conditions are what led to the formation of the first US trade unions.

In both cases it was claimed that due diligence would put the industry out of bussiness. it didn't. Costs were higher, yes.

But the problem here is one of externalities. Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.

The starting place for the negotiation needs to be not starting with zero and working up, but starting with the maximum cost and working down. This makes it incumbent on the infringer/polluter to come to the table.

Re:This argument goes not support youtube

[EdIII]

While it is an interesting argument, it is still fundamentally flawed.

YouTube is not the one performing the copyright infringement. "They" don't like to hear this, but "They" are required to control and defend their copyrights, and nobody else.

To say that YouTube needs to verify every single possible iota of content for proper use of legal entitlements is just plain crazy. That would be like IHOP being required to frisk you down, take your smartphone and tablets, and then somehow check to see if you have the legal entitlements to all IP on your person. I say somehow, because the logistics of identifying the copyright holder, contacting them, and the copyright holder even assessing the truth is damn near insurmountable.

No.

It needs to be a system where the copyright holders are responsible for administering the copyrights that we, The People, gave to them. I don't think society would have decided to give them those copyrights if they were going to go all psycho-batshit-nuts and started conscripting large groups of citizens into their private copyright armies to terrorize the masses.

At some point, enough is enough, and it no longer serves the original purpose, which was to enrich society by providing a stream of valuable content for the Public Domain.

Re:Judges are necessary

[cpu6502]

>>> they can train their employees to delete what they find unacceptable.

Like how they removed a 16-year-old teen's video as "hate speech" because she read her Bible's passages about same-sex marriage being forbidden. (Meanwhile they left-up all the other reply videos that called her a "whore" or "asshole" or even included death threats.) Yep. Youtube certainly can screen content in order to defend their right to use videos to attack a teen girl.