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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."

9 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Or... by Troyusrex · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just crowdsource the pre-screening and get it done free! Oh... wait....

  2. Simple by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Re:How do they filter porn then? by SausageOfDoom · · Score: 5, Funny

    Presumably they score each video based on what percentage of skin-coloured pink there is per frame, multiplied by whether speech detection gets a hit for "I'm here to fix your fridge".

  4. Re:Crowdsource the effort by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:How do they filter porn then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only slashdot had "+1 user name wildly appropriate"....

  6. Re:How do they filter porn then? by shadowrat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Crowdsource the effort by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  8. Re:This argument goes not support youtube by actiondan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >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.

    No it's not. There are some similarities but there are also differences.

    Youtube is a middleman between content uploaders and content viewers. In your polluting example, you are not a middleman. Would you make a waste company responsible for pre-screening every load of waste they pick up from a customer to deliver to the dump to ensure it does not have any illegal waste in it?

    Forcing youtube to screen content could have terrible consequences for all websites that act as conduits between their users (slashdot being an example) - could Slashdot afford to pre-screen every comment here for copyright violations, libel, hate speech or other illegal acts?

    Right now, such sites can operate on the basis of removing content when there is a complaint. Forcing pre-screening (presumably with penalties if violations slip through) could prove costly.

  9. Re:Judges are necessary by lattyware · · Score: 5, Insightful

    YouTube is not run by the government - they are free to pick and choose what they want to display as they see fit. If you don't like it, feel free to set up same-sex-marriage-bashing-tube.

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    -- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)