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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.
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.
The signal-to-noise ratio may not be that great, but there's plenty of good content on there. Once you find channels that you like, and subscribe to them, all the noise just passes you by as if it didn't exist.
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
So, in your mind, someone is going to watch a clip of a concert, with shitty distorted audio, INSTEAD of going to the concert? Wow. That's a whole new level of fucking idiotic.
Inspiring.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It's not a valid complaint, true, but his point is also true.
I've noticed for the last few years how much inconsistency there is regarding who/what gets blocked for violation.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
This is a prime example of why I am skeptical when people complain about getting unfair copyright notices on Youtube. There are a lot of individuals out there that don't have a clue how the various IP laws work yet think they're experts.
I'm not saying that Youtube is perfect. I've seen some actual abuses and false claims made but for every legitimate complaint I see a hundred instances where someone did something like mix their wedding footage with some Katy Perry songs, upload it to Youtube and then wonder why they got a copyright strike for their totally original material.
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?
If the guy driving ahead of you is over the speed limit on the highway and they don't get pulled over that doesn't mean it's suddenly ok for you to speed too.
...and so I'm thinking I may buy some tickets to see that band when they tour my area, because I have all their albums and am curious how they sound in concert, and I do a search on the net to see what I can find, and I come across your cell phone recording "crappy sound and all," and think, reasonably, hey, maybe this band ain't worth the 50 bucks, I'll just stay home and enjoy them on my 5.1.
Seriously, d00d. I never understood guys like you. You're *not* helping the band, and anyone else who wanted to "re-live the moment" has already recorded it on his own crappy cell phone recorder. You *do* know that everyone today has their own crappy cell phone recorder, don't you? Next time, how about just turning your phone off, putting your arm down, and enjoying the show?
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.
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.