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Unofficial Answers: Why Does YouTube Seem So Biased? (vortex.com)
Lauren Weinstein writes with some insight on an frustrating aspect of YouTube's video hosting service: "Why does Google's YouTube seem so biased against ordinary users who upload videos? I've unfairly had my videos blocked, received copyright strikes for my own materials, and even had my account suspended — and it's impossible to reach anyone at YouTube to complain!" No, YouTube isn't biased against you — not voluntarily, anyway. But it could definitely be argued that the copyright legal landscape — particularly in the mainstream entertainment industry — is indeed biased against the "little guys," and Google's YouTube must obey the laws as written. What's more, YouTube exists at the "bleeding edge" of the intersection of technology and law, where there's oh so much that goes bump in the night ...
YouTube is the embodiment of all the "problems" the internet was supposed to solve. My internet was a peer-to-peer system, with all peers being equal, two-way flow of content, empowering the little guys, the voiceless, and letting unpopular messages be heard just as loudly as the mainstream ones.
Today's internet is exactly what all of us feared; Cable TV 2.0, and it really fucking sucks. Where I once had hope and positivity for the future because technology was going to empower us, I now have emptiness and see nothing but bleakness for the future because we let technology enslave us.
It's a sea of product ads, mommy blogs, doomsday preppers and meaningless crap. There's a lot of data up there, but not a lot of content.
Who cares about Youtube?
Google has a preference for channels that produce revenue and so mitigate the overhead of maintaining YouTube. Smaller channels cost more than the make so get passively discouraged.
Can we please repeal this bullshit law?
I hope you got Google to pay for this!!!
— and it's impossible to reach anyone at YouTube to complain!" No, YouTube isn't biased against you — not voluntarily, anyway.
Uh, yes, it is biased against the small users and they do so voluntarily. Users who make YouTube enough money (or attract enough popular attention to matter in storeis) will be able to actually make contact with people in customer service. There is no reason aside from the desire for [greater] profit that YouTube cannot field live customer service for all users. That's what other companies do in bleeding edge areas where things go bump in the night: Provide customer service. YouTube doesn't have to and still be profitable. So it doesn't. Simple as that.
I've posted a few songs from live concerts that I recorded on my cell phone (crappy sound and all) and gotten copyright violation notices and warned that my account could be suspended. I've tried to fight it, but no luck. Why can't I do that, but other people post concert videos and even full albums, full music DVD rips, etc. and they don't get taken down? I was just offering the chance for someone else at the show to re-live the moment - and certainly not getting anything out of it. Very frustrating...
have access to better lawyers than you due to having more money , more money means they bought better laws than you. Of course there is the chance it IS YOU and youtube simply dislike you.
Money wins against free, 90% of the time. Money pays people to do work, then free has to do that work for nothing.
We need the following system in place, by law.
1) Youtube (and similar sites), must rank all censor requestors that make more than 10 requests a year, by how many requests are found to be invalid.
2) Those that rank in the bottom 5%, i.e. more of your requests are found to be invalid than 95% of the rest of the requestors), then next year, you must pay a refundable fee of $120 per request. If it is found to be invalid, the person you tried to censor gets $100, Youtube keeps the $20.
3) If you attempt to game the system (by using multiple logins or other methods), you must pay double that fee.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I posted a video last year, and when I first made the video, I used an old blue song that was recorded 90 years ago and is long out of copyright. You can easily find it on the internet archive. Well of course I get the dreaded "copyright violation", etc, etc. I challenged it, even provided YT with the link to the internet archive and links to information about the song, why it is in public domain, etc. Still lost the challenge.
So okay, next video I use one on youtube itself. They provide songs you can supposedly use hassle free when you edit your video online. The first couple go fine, but about my 4vth or 5th video i upload, I get a copyright violation notice again. So I challenge it and point out that I used the music as provided by youtube itself in it's own video editing menu. Still lost the challenge. I don't think they even read or pay attention to these challenges at all.
At this point I seldom use YT for anything now. I totally agree people are abusing YT for many things, but punishing the honest user is not helping the situation at all either. Youtube needs to pull their head out of their arse, but hell will likely freeze over first.
Because its TheirTube, not yours. Now fuck off and let them cash in on all that sweet internet monies!
One of my friends uses Blender to create his own videos at times. His content isn't earth shattering or likely to be of interest to anybody outside of his circle of friends and acquaintances. He canceled his YouTube account a few years ago because he got tired of continually getting his videos flagged over the music they used. He was very careful to use old classical music not under copyright with performances available under a Creative Commons license, and YouTube kept flagging them all and pointing him to a licensing service. He decided that basically YouTube just wanted to shake him down for some money (pretty sure they get a cut of what the licensing company makes) and he objected to it, so he closed his account and moved his videos to a different service. I'm not sure, but I think he's using Vimeo now.
It's not impossible to get your own videos through YouTube without any problem. My nephews have done it for goofy stuff they shot themselves with friends that doesn't use any music. I took a quick look at the linked to article and we need a lot more info than seems to be provided on just what exactly these videos are. YouTube is pretty inconsistent in what they flag. I've seen some interesting tricks used to get copyrighted stuff past the monitoring bots. If the complainer is trying to get, for example, TV or movie excerpts through or even worse entire episodes or movies, there might be good reasons why it's being flagged.
This article seems to be saying, "It's not just YouTube that's biased against you. It's the whole world."
Well, thanks for that bit of info, Slashdot. As if I needed more information that late-stage capitalism is designed to crush ordinary people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
On the one hand they're trying to protect some of the users from that crap. There's even a pilot program supposedly. However that program has largely gone quiet.
And on the other hand they're bound by agreements struck with the likes of television producers and music labels. And who knows what's in those things? I suspect that there's more than one directive for YouTube to follow.
Given all of this, I'm thinking that there's a contingent in YT that wants to be sued by one of the bigger channels for some of this stupidity. If it was my business, I would want something to happen so we could have a 21st century version of the Sony decision. That way I could get out from under all of this policing of copyright and get back to developing the platform.
Nobody wants to see your shaky and unlistenable concert footage.
YouTube is the embodiment of all the "problems" the internet was supposed to solve.
That's a little hyperbolic don't you think?
My internet was a peer-to-peer system, with all peers being equal, two-way flow of content, empowering the little guys, the voiceless, and letting unpopular messages be heard just as loudly as the mainstream ones.
What color is the sky on your planet? A peer to peer system with all peers being equal? Never been true in practice since the internet was founded. It has aspects of a peer-to-peer system but the internet is more complicated than that. Differences in bandwidth alone make a true peer-to-peer internet impossible even if we ignore the legal and economic landscape. Empowering the little guys? It already does. But empowered does not and never will mean equal results. Letting unpopular messages be heard? It does that but only to a point. Getting an unpopular message heard requires an audience and unless you can match the big content makers economic resources you're very unlikely to be able to match their audience.
Where I once had hope and positivity for the future because technology was going to empower us, I now have emptiness and see nothing but bleakness for the future because we let technology enslave us.
Ok Neitsche, calm down. Sounds like you were a young idealist and you've grown up and figured out that the world is a touch more complicated than you hoped it would be. It's not all roses but it's not all gloom and doom either. Technology isn't "enslaving us" any more than it ever did. Just because it didn't turn out to be a utopian fantasy doesn't mean everything is bad and we are all slaves.
post your videos somewhere else
There needs to be penalty's for false claims. I don't remember the law exactly but I thought the DMCA had provisions for this? If so, why aren't they being enforced? (I know, don't answer) Every time I hear about a video or channel being shut down because of a false DMCA request, it's always the content creator's problem. All they get is a "i'm sorry", if that. The quickest way to prevent these from happening is to penalize people and organizations for these false claims and compensate the victims accordingly.
We just get "moved out of the way" even when right. That's the feeling I have.
The speed of the law, due process almost, seems to be quite varying depending on who you are. It's evident in the drug laws too.
If people find a new legal way to get high, it is usually banned "preemptively" up front while they then "investigate" how to ban it. But if a business finds a new legal way to literally rape and pillage, we are told "it's the law and you can't do anything without proof".
This double standard also is joined by a smaller problem of assumption. Individuals are assumed to infringe upon copyright if they use *any* song while any business is assumed to have somehow licensed it.
Basically it's getting closer to simply being "You are slaves, know your place". Anyone else feel that way?
We can't even convince the law to change with a smoking gun and hard evidence, while business can simply hint at something and the law asks "how high should I jump for you".
This is why we need to think about all owning weapons.
Google's YouTube must obey the laws as written - a law written to enrich cronies at ordinary people's expense.
This is what we get when RIAA and MPAA bribe, ahem, give campaign contributions to lobby politicians to write laws that benefit them at everyone else's expense.
A friend loaned me a DVD of an old Italian Spaghetti Western, that was in Italian with English subtitles.
Kind of a cult classic.
This is a film you can't get on DVD or any other way.
There is no way to watch this film, period.
So I ripped it and uploaded it to YouTube.
Then about a month later I got an email from YouTube/Google, whoevertheyare, saying:
[Copyright claim] Your video has been blocked
the claim was from some German film company...
Then about two weeks later they released the claim.
Why keep art hidden away so it will never be seen or enjoyed.
I can understand blocking things that are already available and can be purchased.
But for something that is unavailable?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Who says you need to use YouTube? Who says YouTube has to change what it has become to please you? What did everyone do when they weren't happy with MySpace?
Switch.
Pick your poison. Vimeo. Daily Motion. Veoh. Hell, even Zippcast is still there. And maybe, just maybe, if it's a good enough service, we might turn one of those into the next Facebook.
Youtube is a business, first and foremost. Their goal is to make money.
The big corporate partners (Sony, Disney, Warner Bros, etc.) serve that goal much better than little one-man review channels, mommy blogs, or whatever else.
This signature is false.
A couple of weeks ago, I got sent a copyright claim by Machinima, stating that I'd copied a portion of their video and was passing it off as my own work.
Machinima stated that I could keep the video up, but they'd keep all the revenue that it made. Nice.
Upon inspection of Machinima's claim, it turned out that not only was their video a compilation of inferior quality clips (a top 10), it was also uploaded 2 years after mine.
I disputed the claim and it was quickly dropped.
What annoyed me was how easy it was for them to bully me and YouTube simply complied. Since their video was uploaded after mine, I was very tempted to make a counter-claim for the exact same reasons.
Summation 2
You don't need anything "special" to host video: just a lot of storage and bandwidth. Granted, that ain't free, but it's not like it's out-of-reach the way it was ten years ago. Throw a video tag onto a web page for the people who are limited to playing inside of browsers, and you're done.
Youtube is nearly obsolete. They are picking exactly the wrong time to stop working. But that's ok with us; they are the ones who should worry about hastening their obsolescence.
Youtube clearly doesn't give two shits about anyone who isn't pewdiepie or the finebros.
Sounds like you just got done watching Al Pacino in "...and justice for all"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
My own experience with youtube was the same as the OP. This was several years ago, and youtube has changed a lot since, but it looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same. I had a semi-popular channel, nothing spectacular, about 100,000 channel views and maybe a thousand subscribers. At the time it was not bad for a guy who just posted some of his own sports clips.
The entire channel was yanked one sunny day, without any explanation as to why and no recourse or way to appeal. The automated support was entirely useless. I could not get a hold of a human, or at least, an e-mail address. There were none to be found. Youtube, as it appeared at the time, was entirely ran on automatic. It is, on one hand, understandable for a site that receives several years worth of uploaded material each minute. On the other hand, it was a thoroughly frustrating experience as I have done absolutely nothing wrong. To this day I have no clue as to what happened, my best guess is that someone reported me for the evulz, and that was enough.
I tried again to rebuild my channel with new material. About 6 months later the same thing repeated, at which point I gave up and never registered again.
The moral of the story is: you have to be corporate big, or you have to self-host. Otherwise, you are always at risk.
"Let's give a voice and face to the voiceless and faceless masses"
"OMG, they're all mostly Morons, RUN!"
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein - Pre Internet / Pre You-tube and twitter
End of Line.
YouTube does more for copyright holders than the law requires. Users sign away their ability to utilize Fair Use as an element of YouTube TOS. This is entirely voluntary on the part of YouTube. The law does not require YouTube to actively search for infringing content or limit its users' legal recourse.
Truer words were never spoken. Just wait until the IoT takes hold, along with distributed AIA (Advanced Artificial Intelligence) all distributed via the Internet. The Internet has turned out be largely a "top-down" broadcasting service controlled by large ISP, large content creators, etc. Of course, they let us have our blogs and our Instagrams and our pathetic little selfie opportunities for fame like Facebook, Pinterest, etc, but the Internet is FAR FAR FAR from the liberating force that it was predicted to be at its outset.
This wasn't always the case; initially, the vig players- i.e. content creators, telecommunications providers, etc. resistedthe Internet, until they discovered human being's penchant for taking control of inter-communications. THAT is when commercial enterprise powers got interested; they have now found endless ways to control the Internet and leverage our wired human propensity for communication for profit.
ESPECIALLY if you are a younger person, .go read Vanevar Bush's essay "As We May Think"
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...
or,
Ted Nelson's early ideas about the promise of the Internet Ted Nelson: "The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do." http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/...
Why keep art hidden away so it will never be seen or enjoyed.
Ostensibly because keeping it away "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by not competing with the same author's or same publisher's other works that are released.
---- and there are four billion video views on YouTube a day. 130 Amazing YouTube Statistics The stakes for both the rights holders and Google are high and there is no getting around that.
The music you posted may be based on public domain sources but the arrangement you used was not. The arrangement you used may have been in the public domain but the performance was not. The point being that the worst that can happen is that your post will be taken down.
You aren't looking at the expense or legal exposure in hosting the video on your own site.
The geek isn't realistic about the amount of personalized service he can expect from a site the size of YouTube.
Yes, it's always going to be easier for the big boys like Disney --- who can deliver page views in the hundreds of millions --- and some of whom have been around since the heyday of the nickelodeon, the player piano and the Edison wax cylinder. Experience counts when you are dealing with something as treacherous as performance rights.
I see two problems with hosting your videos yourself. First, you may have a hard time getting found in the first place because the related videos column on YouTube shows only other videos on the same service. You may have to throw teasers on YouTube whose description links to the full video. Second, because advertisers don't know you exist, you'll have a hard time selling your preroll ad inventory, and without ads, you'll see a big S3 bill from Amazon if your video does go viral.
IMHO, the "A" in ADSL already indicated the demise of the Real Internet (TM).
I had an Instagram account, which only consisted of my own photographs, disabled for "copyright infringement"
There weren't even any pictures of objects on which copyright could be claimed.
It was various animal and nature photography I had taken over the years, interspersed with photos of our puppies.
There was no way to reach support or challenge it in any way. I just got the notification that my account was shut down and that's it.
I wonder if they still turn around and license user content if they've deleted a user account.
This "news story" is incredibly biased. "You're not being censored by YouTube, you're being censored by the laws, so everything is A-OK :-)"
This message is absolute poison. Hollow rhetoric. He throws out some half-"factoids" encased in some kind of journalistic prose and supposes it supports his baseless, completely negative, unconstructive opinion. What possible interest could this guy have in shooting down someone else's point of view? What belief is he supporting? "Everything is okay no matter what even when people are being systematically censored for absolutely no good reason"?
'Differences in bandwidth alone make a true peer-to-peer internet impossible even if we ignore the legal and economic landscape'
Practically every internet connection in this country is overkill for sharing ideas in an engaging way (text, images, sound, video). Proof by example: Skype. False assertion.
'Empowering the little guys? It already does. But empowered does not and never will mean equal results.'
'Letting unpopular messages be heard? It does that but only to a point. Getting an unpopular message heard requires an audience'
What is this even supposed to mean? Empowered how? Empowered to host your unpopular messages in a little corner of the web that will not be prioritized in any index and is for all practical purposes inaccessible to a broad audience? Meanwhile every popular hosting service, the keepers of the broad audiences, vigourously censor anything according to their whims and "legal obligations"?
'Technology isn't "enslaving us" any more than it ever did. Just because it didn't turn out to be a utopian fantasy doesn't mean everything is bad and we are all slaves.'
There was absolutely no implication in the message of which this is a response that a "utopian fantasy" was expected. Having the broad audience held captive by a few powerful content/service providers does smell of slavery if you have a nose. You may argue that the majority chose to occupy their time with only a few service/content providers. To be blunt: they were herded to these providers. The disparity of development resources ensured that the existing powerful interests would eventually invest in the construction of something more immediately attractive to most people than an eclectic array of simple content.
Simply put the powers that be invested in their own ability to distribute multimedia rather than the ability of everyone else to distribute multimedia. ISPs and indexing services ignored the immediate demand and the potential demand for self-publication because it did not suit the interests of the majority of the economy even if it would result in more profit for the ISPs and indexing services (surprise: the majority of the economy is not the majority of the population). This amounts to a clear sign of slavery.
I can't even imagine why the original formatting of this message is being stripped or why I can't edit my post. Maybe this is why slashdot is not popular anymore
It used to be if you wanted to host a video, post a blog, send an email, whatever, you bought a computer, installed your own web server on it, connected it using your own paid-for Internet access, and put the video on your own website running on your own hardware.
No, nerds like us did that. Most of the rest of the world either hired a nerd or couldn't be bothered. Even those who did bother often run into problems of limited bandwidth, time consuming administration, clumsy interfaces and other technical problems that make it not worth the trouble.
But people are lazy and cheap.
Or busy and don't have the time. Or have other important things to do. Or don't understand the technology well enough to do it. Honestly I'm perfectly capable of setting up my own web server and email server and have done it any number of times but most of the time it just isn't worth the bother. A lot of technology like that utterly fails the mom test. Not everyone is a geek who readily understands web servers and email or how to build a web site.
The masses got to choose between freedom and easy, and they picked easy.
No argument but that hardly means the end of the world as was being implied. Things SHOULD be easy or at least as easy as is reasonable. Hyperbolic statements about us being "slaves" to technology are absurd and frankly more than a little naive. It's the sort of drivel that 18 year olds who've just read their first philosophy books spout when they become convinced they are now smarter than everyone around them.
More people need to abandon YouTube and bring attention to ZippCast.
Over there is actual humans that can be reached, and they take fair use into consideration.
Make sure you're posting as "plain old text." That tends to pick up the oddball markup you may want to throw in but doesn't require the use of <p> tags.
Slashdot has never supported comment editing. It's a pain in the ass some times, but that's what the preview button is for. With the moderation system, comment editing would open too much of a can of worms. If preview is showing something different from what's posted, let our new overlords know. They seem to be interested in actually bringing the site up to par with the red site.
Disclaimer: just a passing AC who once had a 6 digit UID. Think of me like a ringwraith I guess.
If you ever had a problem with google product you know you will be ignored and there is nothing you can do. Case in point youtube "infringement violations". Your issue is "processed" by algorithms not by people. It's not that they are using algorithms that bothers me, it's that they trust them too much - or rather are unwilling to have people watching over.
We should also expect this user experience from their self-driving cars and many other algorithmic meatspace undertakings. Super scary.
You really dont understand why editing posts isn't allowed?
I like your post, but it needs formatting, and you verify that formatting by preview before committing it.
"His name was James Damore."
Replying due to incorrect mod applied. Insightful
You do know there is a "Preview" button when writing a post.
Cut that shit out. Fuck you, Lauren, this isn't your personal blog so fuck off.
particularly in the mainstream entertainment industry â" is indeed biased against the "little guys," and Google's YouTube must obey the laws as written.
Um... OK, so .... how the hell does the law impact things like being able to get in touch with higher ups, being able to dispute false Content ID claims, etc? Content ID is Youtube, it's not the DMCA, or any other laws, so I find it hard to believe there is any legal ground for slow responsiveness in regards to that....
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
is that you don't own the spaghetti western movie, nor did you get permission to rip and post from the film owners.
In fact, why the hell did you post this movie to YT? What bizarre impulse would cause you to do this?