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YouTube Says Content Owners Made $1B Last Year -- So Music Labels Should Stop Complaining (recode.net)
Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode: Here's the latest salvo in the back and forth between YouTube and the music industry: A report from Google that says its video site's copyright software has allowed content owners to generate $1 billion in the last year or so. Or, in other words: Hey, music guys! Stop moaning about money -- we're making plenty of it for you. Google's formal message comes via "How Google Fights Piracy," a 62-page mega-pamphlet it is releasing today. Google adds that its Content ID tool, which lets copyright owners "claim" their videos that users upload to YouTube so that ad money can be made off it, has garnered $2 billion since 2007. This is Google's response to a growing concern from the music industry that YouTube doesn't pay well, its Content ID isn't a solution, and that the video platform is built on stolen material.
People always say "Well Google can't monitor EVERYTHING on youtube! There are too many videos to find all the infringing ones!" Well guess what: that isn't the copyright holders problem. If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model. Spend some of those billions in cash and hire 50,000 people to monitor video submissions. It can be done, but Google just wants the cash with minimal expenditure.
You are wrong. I don't really care if you like copyright or not, but they are responsible for serving copyrighted content. "Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.