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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."
Just crowdsource the pre-screening and get it done free! Oh... wait....
nice article - let the studios pony up if they are so worried about it
I guess by the MPAA's logic, that is another $37 billion added to the cost of piracy. After all, if there were no piracy, that money would not "have to" be spent, right?
Palm trees and 8
Why would Google need to screen every bit of content? A trust system with the uploader, user feedback(they already get), random sampling, and some automatic processes should cover this for a lot less than 37 billion.
btw... worst job in the world would be one where you had to watch non-stop youTube. I would hate to be the guy who got stuck looking at bot fly removals all day.
[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?
Copyright infringement is always supposed to be decided by the courts; otherwise, we can have no fair use defense...
Oh, I see what you did there...
Palm trees and 8
Google only need to send the bill to the RIAA. And only do the job if the RIAA pay.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
One of my jobs is a photographer. I make videos too. I generally see copyright as a good thing. However, I'm also a realist. Piracy is bad, m'kay. However, at this point fighting piracy like this is going to do as much if not more harm to our economy and/or culture.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
I'm sure the RIAA would be happy to pay the salaries of all the pre-screeners once they have used this to stop piracy and get all that extra revenue.
The article says only judges are qualified to screen content, and the average judge in Silicon Valley gets paid $177,454
So let's see:
1) Judges are not required. You can TRAIN people.
2) and those people you train can be ANYWHERE -- including INDIA where Facebook's screeners are
3) and those Indian screeners definitely do NOT expect $177,000/year
4) and you can use software to help screen content, which Youtube already does to block content it has removed from being re-uploaded.
The article did get one thing right: the analysis is absurd
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?
Oh, poor Google -- Imagine the long-term disability costs of inssane asylums for unfortunate employees when asses start deliberately uploading Jar Jar scenes.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But if you crowdsource it will be postscreening not prescreening.
Who's going to flag copyrighted material? Most people want to watch copyrighted material, not have it removed. Except for the stakeholders. Who have people who watch for the content, then flag it for removal.
What you've just described is, in theory, pretty much how the DCMA works.
Um... Youtube has had a flag this option for a long time now.
... what's the problem?
NOTE: this post may contain traces of sarcasm.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Theft? You mean a great deal of files infringing copyright, didn't you? It's not like YT was a robber's lair or something similar, where they keep the stolen original masters of Hollywood films that the pool studios can't find anymore.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Hell, just do it for an hour and quit. You'll still walk away a millionaire.
That poster on the wall behind the baby is copyrighted, so posting the video is infringement. Since the baby is repeating words from a copyrighted TV show, that's another violation. The hardwood floor the baby's sitting on was artistically arranged by the construction crew, and its artistic value must be preserved! While the baby's showing off his brilliance, a delivery man rings the doorbell, which plays a two-note sequence that's also used in a song from 1953, so that's another infringement.
With so many infringements of copyright, the violations are obviously willful, and the poster should be sued.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
the media companies goal is not primarily to protect their ip their goal is to kill a more successful distribution method.
where is the big push to enact laws to stop it? And it is not just stealing from people like directors and writers, it is stealing directly from US Taxpayers.
Taking someone's more reasonable suggestion of Indian outsourcing, and training people to do the job rather than using judges:
It was difficult to find an average Indian call-center salary, so lets use Rs 300k. This was at the upper end but using the high figure makes some allowance for training and other costs.
This is $5610.
Of course you may want differing levels of staff, and can use some software. I would say using a system of software flagging, geared to hit more false positives than risk missing something followed by a review by a human, with a system for them to refer it to someone more experienced/qualified if its not straightforward could reasonably cut the hours requirement in half. So, 199584/2=99792.
Multiplying this by the much more reasonable salary gives 99792 * $5610 = $559,833,120.
Still a hell of a lot of cash, but probably not unaffordable to Google.
Why isn't the content industry responsible for this? If I go to Walmart, then Walmart pays people to watch the cameras so I don't walk out with a big screen tv under my shirt. It is considered part of the cost of doing business. How does the entertainment industry get away with pushing the costs of discovery on the government and other companies? (I do know the answer is paying congress.)
$37B is also, IIRC, about equal to the annual income of both the recording and movie industries combined in the US...
I suppose this number has value for making a point, but in terms of practicality it is barely more meaningful than the "studies" which assume that 1 download = 1 lost, guaranteed sale. Why? Because if the legal regime were even remotely positioned to impose this sort of cost on free services, they'd fold overnight. Larry Page would be booking 100mph from his office to their nearest data center in his Tesla to personally shut down Youtube post-haste.
I get and sympathize with the propaganda value of this "study," but let's be realistic:
1. Probably only about 25% of all pirates have both the means to buy a good and would buy it if piracy weren't an option (contrary to the views of both sides).
2. In the real world, Google would either fold its operations at YouTube or would simply ratchet up the automated scanning algorithm to "guilty until proven innocent via human review."
(and 2b, Google would buy out half of Congress to make filing a false DMCA complaint be strict liability, that is absolutely no criminal intent required in order to do hard prison time for "getting it wrong.")
That poster on the wall behind the baby is copyrighted, so posting the video is infringement.
With so many infringements of copyright, the violations are obviously willful, and the poster should be sued.
the poster of the video or the poster on the wall?
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Provide it as a service and charge the benefiting entities i.e the music and movie industry. Presumably it's a net win for them as they get billed X dollars and see an increase of Y revenue. If it turns out Y is less than X they'll change their mind as to the value of their content and the worth of screening.
Well, the *AAs won't pay for this ... they'll get a law passed that says all internet connections need to be taxed to pay for this in order to keep the world safe from copyright infringement. Then they'll insist on a treaty to make every other country do the same thing or risk trade sanctions.
Their position is that society should be protecting and guaranteeing their income.
And, yes, obviously I know you were being sarcastic. But these guys really seem to think like this.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Meh, I think the systems they have today are pretty impressively sophisticated.
Uploaded a school video I'd cut together for some local teens, using their video and 3 different (commercial) music clips.
As soon as I'd uploaded, google told me some content would be restricted in some geographical areas due to licensing for songs X and Y in the video, as well as saying that for the other content, I could use it but viewers would see ads.
I'm perfectly cool with that, and thought that was impressive, given that the song excerpts were no more than 1:30-2:00.
-Styopa
If I go to Walmart, then Walmart pays people to watch the cameras so I don't walk out with a big screen tv under my shirt.
Walmart sets it's prices to ensure it can afford to hire people to watch the cameras. If you buy something from walmart, you ARE paying to have those people watch you.
...because it's too expensive. The blogger's "nicely laid out math" is absurd though. Take down notices seem to get the job done (albeit often imperfectly).
You can't flag copyright material.
I've tried..... and youtube responds by saying Only certified copyright holders (record and movie companies I guess) can flag videos for copyright infringement.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The more interesting comparison is to the annual value of the 'valueable intellectual property' being protected. According to the RIAA, the annual sales is only 13 billion a year.
It makes no sense to spend $1000 to guard a $100 watch.
Negative. Stop this "dreaming" immediately or we will be forced to take action.
"Love", "dream", "Mom", and "screen door" are (C) 3003 MomCorp.
Someone moderated your comment as "funny", but the record company executives think exactly that way.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
RIAA/MPAA already know full well this is prohibitively expensive.
They simply want public digital dissemination to be gone.
I bet that if there were no DCMA laws, YouTube would allow anyone to flag copyright violations. But, because RIAA/MPAA fought so hard for this law, YouTube needs to cover its arse by actually following the letter of the law.
I think you'll find the reason a large amount of programmers are utterly indifferent to copyright is because we effectively give all our code away anyway as far as copyright is concerned, we pretty much all "Work for Hire", our income is dependent on people wanting us to do more stuff that is different to what we did yesterday, rather than doing the same thing, whether or not copyright covers our work makes ~0 practical difference to us.
There is no "Depressingly true" mod, so "Funny" is close enough alphabetically.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Look, I'm happy to participate in crowd sourcing efforts like generating the sum total of human knowledge, or sharing reviews of products I've used online. But there's no way I'm going to participate in taking my neighbor down for the fake "crime" of copyright infringement.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Both. That piece of wall-mounted paper has been publicly displaying the artwork for years, to every person who's passed by that window in front... According to my trade-secret formula, that is at least 27 billion people who've received an unlicensed viewing of the artwork, and at a reasonable rate of $200,000 per incident, the paper poster alone is responsible for $5.4 quadrillion in lost revenue, which is clearly backed up by the fact that the poster-printing company has not made $5.4 quadrillion in profit since the poster was printed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Well, you would need to have one employee for each hour of video. So, that's 72 employees. But since 72 employees can't watch an hour of video in a minute, we need to increase that to an hour. That sharply increases to 4320 employees, with each one screening 1 hour of content every hour, assuming they're required to look over every little bit of content. Let's say they're required to take breaks. Tack on an extra 680 employees for a nice round number of 5000 employees. What about finding out if something is copyrighted? That's an extra 1000 employees confirming that something is copyrighted in addition to the 5000 initial screeners. 6000 employees. Now, let's assume those 6000 working 8-hour shifts. But wait, there's content being uploaded 24/7. So now we have at least 18,000 employees. Taking sick leave and vacations into account, we need maybe at least 2000 more employees to fill in for those. Now, those 20,000 employees have to be paid. Let's assume they're being paid modestly at $22 an hour. (I don't know enough about salaries to give a fuck about calculating that) That's $440,000 dollars to those employees. Per hour. $10,560,000 per day. $147,840,000 every 2 weeks. That's $2,620,800,000. $3,843,840,000 every year.
It's quite simple, instead of prescreening every post, just prescreen the posters. Make them signup with a real name, address, credit card, copyright insurance and MPAA membership!
That way, the MPAA will be happy with every video posted...and no videos would be posted = Win!
And everyone would head back to the cinema to see moving pictures, just like the Good Lord intended to put in the Contract for Breathing Oxygen that we all signed before birth.
This would definitely work, but the 'industry' don't want it as they think they should be able to go waaa and have someone else pick up the tab because their business model is stuck in the late 20th century.
Korma: Good
Yes, but if I don't buy something then they don't force the local police to sit in the parking lot and check tickets, nor do they force Toyota to check my receipts before I put my purchases in my car.
"but pirated content costs a gazillion so this is a bargain" - RIAA
Right now I have a video where 5 different companies claim rights to the music. They are all wrong and I have disputed their claim. But they don't seem to be in a hurry to get their ads removed from my video.
Yes, their estimate of wages is likely high ... however, what they didn't include:
In the US, the 'burdened cost' for an employee is about twice what their wages are. It's possible that if you were to outsouce, the multiplier would go up (cost of the computers haven't decreased; and the costs of running that much bandwidth to a place that won't have the same infrastructure)
So yes, the analysis is absurd, but I'm guessing it's closer than most people would think. (if they're getting paid US$15k/year, it might be closer to US$45k burdened cost, so ~ 1/4 the cost, not ~1/12 the cost)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Those take-downs are all initiated by someone filing a complaint with YouTube. Asking YouTube to pre-screen everything that gets posted is an entirely different animal.
Whelp, there goes the internet. No one has a way to ensure anything unless they're perfect beings with the ability to magically identify copyrighted content.
But that's okay. They should be defending another person's copyright for them, anyway!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Although pre-screening is not economically feasible, limited pre-emptive screening might be. If the view count exceeds 100, it should screen. Besides, the post summary says "72 hours of content every min". This is irrelevant, when you only do first few seconds of screening of each video. A more important measure would be number of videos a min. Also, if a video is uploaded by user with a nice record, then only a small sample of those users' video should be screened. Further automated analysis can analyze the quality of video. If the quality is poor, its effect on reducing sale of actual video is minor and can be removed as well. I don't have any statistics, but based on my viewing habits, this can eliminate need to screen > 98% of videos and the cost can fall to less than 1B. Still large, but not significantly lower.
Prescreen *everything* for three months. *Then* send the bill for doing so to the MPAA and the RIAA.
mark "but I thought you were opposed to unfunded mandates!"
Seems to me that Google has built a business that is too cumbersome to maintain legally? I mean just because no one was bothering them about it previously doesnt mean tthey dont have the legal obligation to do it. It's as if I started a landscaping business and I was dumping all the waste products in my back yard. When I run out of space and have to pay for garbage removal...it means that my business is flawed....not that they should write laws to allow me to dump it anywhere.
Even if you don't use judges at $117K a year, this would be pricey. The summary says 72 hours of content every minute. That's 37,869,120 hours of content a year. Let's round up to 38,000,000 hours (to account for breaks, needing to watch videos a second time in cases of tough calls, etc). Even at $10 an hour, this would be $3.8 billion. Last year, Google made about $39 billion in revenue. So this system would cost 10% of Google's revenue. And I highly doubt that $10 an hour pre-screeners would be able to make tough copyright calls. Videos would be denied when they should have been approved. Other videos would be approved when they should have been denied. It'd be a billion-dollar mess.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Removing all the infringing copyrighted content on Youtube would basically kill it and the copyrighted content would just go elsewhere- probably like a Mirv'd cluster bomb.
I go to You tube most often to see copyrighted songs with lyrics so I can sing them.
Then I go for instructional videos which would probably remain but which get a fraction of the hits.
Youtube basically has an illegal business model.
The Vevo channels change that a bit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Rather than prescreening every video before making available... only screen videos that get more than, say, 50 unique views per day (counting since the day they were uploaded). If the video is found to contain copyrighted content, it would then be taken offline and the uploader notified. If the uploader genuinely has legitimate claim to the work, then a compensation system should reasonably exist so that the the screeners are discouraged from taking down videos that are not infringing on anybody's copyright. In addition to a wrongfully taken down video being restored, any compensation that the uploader is entitled to for should be based on the number of unique views that were received prior to takedown, so that the more views it gets before they take it down, the more sure they need to be that the content is not infringing.
I expect that would probably bring down their costs by at least an order of magnitude, as I'm certain that only a very tiny percentage of videos uploaded to youtube get more than 50 views in a single day.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I made a YouTube video of my daughter riding a train and used some background music from a popular artist in iMovie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ANqENBQbjs
I uploaded it and within 15 minutes it had been flagged with the correct copyright holder information.
This made me realize that the Shazam style technology is just being marketed to us as a secondary use.
It is already being used to screen content in a larger fashion.
>>>because RIAA/MPAA fought so hard for this law, YouTube needs to cover its arse by actually following the letter of the law.
There is nothing in the law that says only RIAA/MPAA can file DMCA notices (or flag videos). Anybody can file a DMCA notice.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
From 17 USC 512(g)(2)(C): A service provider that receives a counter-notification "replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice". How am I misreading this?
Say Aerith and Bob are candidates for an elected office. Two weeks before the election, Aerith files a notification of claimed infringement against the host of Bob's campaign web site. To make this not perjury, Aerith finds some sort of tenuous ground, such as a claim that the use of excerpts of Aerith's ads in Bob's response ads exceeds what fair use allows. During these two weeks, Bob's campaign has no web site.
There's simply no way that abuse of the DMCA can be fought without fighting the DMCA itself
I agree with you. It's just that due to the movie industry's control of the news media, nobody can get elected on a platform of pro-commons copyright reform.
Really? Google has voluntarily put plenty of preventative measures in place in an attempt to keep copyrighted content off the site. I don't think their business model consists of a venture that costs them more in legal fees than any IP-infringing video could bring in. The "You" in their name should tip you off to their real business model, user-generated content, which is why they reward popular channels with a share of the ad revenue.
They seem to already have a very good working automated system, and really a person would never be able to memorise all copyrighted works like a computer can to check against the videos.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
the calculation assumes a bunch of stupid stuff - like paying a judge to watch every minute uploaded.
you can make some reasonable assumptions to come up with a _much_ smaller number
1) your employee will work for $35k/year (I'm sure you could get lower than this if you outsourced)
2) screener on average only has to view 1/10 of the video to figure out whether it is likely to be infringing
3) half of uploads are content that is already known to the system (re-uploaded)
that's a factor of 100. Suddenly it costs $0.37 billion.
a lot clearly - but less obviously unsupportable.
I'm not saying Google should screen all content, but I am saying that the calculations in the article are absurd enough to be meaningless.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
No I'm not arguing YouTube cant exist. I'm saying that their business model is inherently problematic. They need to find one that can work. Like for example profit sharing as I mentioned.
The closest analogy I can think of to you tube is a consignment shop or pawn shop. Sometimes goods in a pawn shop are stolen goods. Yet we let pawnshops continue to operate. Yet there is an important difference. The pawnshop operator meets every person with goods, he take careful records, and spends time on each item. We would not tolerate automated anonymous pawnshops. That's what You tube is.
Saying that, well given the volume of business you tube does they cant vet everything, is not an excuse for them, just like it would not be an excuse for the automated pawnshop.
In a way they are lucky that RIAA and MPAA exist. Otherwise they would be in the impossible position of having to negotiate with everyone with a copyright. It is not necessary that RIAA and MPAA cover the rights of every copyright, just a large fraction. We don't require perfect vetting by pawnshops either.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You joke, but the RIAA seriously are suing limewire in real court for 72 Trillion dollars.
Really. They are actually suing someone for more money than exist in the entire world. They are presumably not trying to make fun or of parody themselves that I am aware. (Though perhaps not doing a good job of it)
Wow -1 Flamebait? I guess all you song and movie torrenters have taken over Slashdot.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Lol. It's trivially easy to use Google to find all kinds of infringing material including torrents.
However, google does also have a legitimate business-- showing car ads to people who search for car information, showing vitamin ads to people searching for vitamins.
It is a bit creepy tho. A friend of mine had a bug problem so I searched for bug info and suddenly every site I visited was throwing up bug ads to me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.