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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.
ACtually, no, that's not how copyright works at all. The copyright OWNER is responsible for finding and reporting infringement, the service provider needs to provide some means for the content owner to report and request a take down. Youtube automatically scans content, flags are copyrighted, then layers ads on it sending the revenue to the content owner, or outright removes the video Every single asshat "musician" complaining about youtube is doing so because they are attempting to launch their own service and it sucks.
One thing that came up in the original Youtube lawsuit was that the content owners themselves can't tell what is infringing and if they can't, how do you expect Youtube to manage?
I hope you are trolling...
What is a "content owner"? Oh, the person who owns the recording.
For those of you who don't understand the big issue, there are two kinds of "owners" for a piece of recorded music - the guy who owns the actual sound recording (master) and the person/people who own the copyright on the underlying work (the writers). These are often not the same people, particularly in commercial music where a record label typically owns the masters.
Writers get paid statutory rates for sound recordings or digital downloads, known as a mechanical royalty rate. For a song that's 5 minutes or less, it's 9.1 cents per copy, with a 1.75 cent/minute increment above 5 minutes. They also get paid for broadcast uses of their works (this is what BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC handle in the US). The issue with Youtube is that there's no good way to pay writers, so they get screwed. Frankly, the labels are getting screwed, too, as $1B isn't a whole lot of money after it's sliced a million ways. I doubt Youtube's ads bring in enough money to pay out more, anyway. ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC pay writers some from Youtube if the song is recognized in the content-id system, but the money is paltry.
Writers are really getting screwed on streaming and Youtube, and while people used to be able to make a decent living as a writer even 10 years ago, it's getting quite difficult now. I have a niece trying to get into the business and I'm telling her she has to perform as well as writing so she can make a good living at it.
Anyway, that's the issue.
Do you have ESP?
Google has absolutely no obligation to police any other party's copyrights, and the web would be a poorer place if they did.
A copyright is your own private monopoly on a piece of content. It is a granted right, and something of a legal fiction: we have collectively agreed to treat this non-scarce good as if it were scarce, to serve an economic purpose. We, collectively and severally, have no further obligations to you. Neither Google nor any other third party is responsible for your private property, absent a specific agreement to that effect. The DMCA makes no provisions that Google do anything more to protect your property than [a] not to block tools used to detect infringement and [b] to respond expeditiously to takedown requests. ContentID is a wholly voluntary program, whose primary purpose is to reduce the number of DMCA requests they have to process.
Forcing Google to police all content submitted would not only be contrary to centuries of jurisprudence, but it would probably kill off user-submitted content entirely. In point of fact, there's not been any clear ideas proposed on how exactly to do so, because the content industry knows very well that their position is legally indefensible. It's not like they have had any issues buying favorable legislation before, after all. This is a public campaign and not a K street one because they don't want a change in law, they just want more money. This is a shakedown, pure and simple.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
In fact, Google outright removes just about anything any company complains about, whether the infringement is real or not, thereby depriving thousands if not hundreds of thousands independent artists ad revenue or just removing personal videos with bird noise in the background.
That's the real issue.
Well of course, infringement is not what it is all about. That is a lie put out by the publishers. The problem is old content competing with new content, they want to bury the old content, so they can charge a premium for new content and of course pay fuck all for that new content, just like the old days. So they attack all over the place and want infinite copyright and infinite patents and the right for corporations to be able to print their own cash when ever they feel like, which is of course what they do via the US Fed, they just want the sole right to do that globally. Everything from them is double speak and lies.
They don't give a fuck how much you tube makes or how much it pays, they want you tube dead because it keeps to much old content alive and produces way too much new content. For me the most annoying thing about you tube is not being able to block content you have no interest in, and guess who that content is I would most like to block and pretend it doesn't even exist, the lame types like the biebers and taylors of this world, not interested in the PR bullshit marketing. It is high time you tube allowed the rest of us to block content and let's see the reality of who gets the most blocks. Who is really unpopular because blocks are the most accurate measure of all and not likes. Just plain disinterested please do not show me this shit any more on the you tube home page, make it worth while to log in. You bet main stream publishers and the shit content will end up being buried the deepest. We'll be happy and they'll be happy, when their content is buried beyond end user blocks, well, of course they will be extremely unhappy to have their content blocked but, meh, fuck em.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Actually no, that IS how it works. It isn't up to the copyright owners to monitor every video sharing site or search through Youtube. It is the responsibility of the site that is providing the service to make sure they arent SERVING copyrighted content they haven't licensed it. That is what the PRO-IP act was for.
WTF are you smoking? The PRO-IP act did nothing to remove the safe harbor provisions for site owners, which was established in the DMCA. It increased infringement penalties and allowed the DoJ to proactively go after infringers, rather than relying on copyright owners to initiate action, but nowhere did it do anything to require site owners to police content.
You apparently think site owners should be responsible for policing user-posted content, which is fine for you, but that's not what the law says, and I think the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are a very good thing myself. Without them, no organization would dare host a site that allowed user-uploaded content. Slashdot might have to shut down, for example, or risk having to police user posts for material from copyrighted books.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?
The article states that YouTube already reviews each uploaded video by machine to ensure that it is not an unlawful derivative of a work owned by a user of the "Content ID" staydown system. Are you claiming that YouTube ought to do so by hand as well? If so, and if you were running YouTube, how would you organize and fund such manual review?
Well you know what they say: "Anything is easy if you don't know what you are talking about"
They're fighting hard to make content owners look good by not pissing off their audience (and hence content cabal's customers), but over and over, they find a way to spit on YouTube's services.
Remember when basically everyone pirated music and didn't give a dime to the artists? Well, at least with Youtube, they're getting some compensation. What do they want? More hand jobs and blow?
Bye!
YouTube need to reign in their ContentID system because it's stealing money from the content creators, i.e. the people making the videos. The false positive rate is insane, and the moment it decides a video uses some bit of content all the revenue gets siphoned off and can never be recovered, even when the mistake is corrected.
Content producers are resorting to deliberately including some copyright material at the end, from a company that doesn't allow commercial use such as Nintendo. Just a few seconds of Mario, say. Then Nintendo flags the video as "no monetization", which blocks all the other arseholes trying to leech off if. Unfortunately it also means that the video owner can't get paid either, so it's a choice between being robbed or working for free.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So she is getting a raw deal from YouTube, causing her to miss hitting the mark of earning 1 million dollar a day.
She has also turned feminist because she believes that, as a woman, she has been held back in her career.
Fuck off. :D
Google just trained 2 millions Indians.
1. They just announced the program. Training has not yet started.
2. They are training these guys in android development, not hiring and training them to manage youtube content.
Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?
The short answer, for those who don't understand how copyright works, is that it would be literally impossible for Google to require such evidence, because in most cases there isn't any. Copyright is automatic. For you to own the copyright on your own creative works, you are required to do literally nothing.
Breakfast served all day!
I agree with your premise but the issue is scale. The reason Content ID exists is because Youtube can't possibly manually review everything. Unfortunately the reverse is also true -- they can't possibly manually review every single counterclaim either if they made the counterclaim process easy enough that everyone Content ID screws can potentially counterclaim.
I don't really have a solution (and I'm sure the people at Google trying to find a solution are much better suited to the job than I am, and they still haven't found one either.) Its absolutely not in Google's best interest to be taking down valid content -- it makes them look bad and also reduces their own revenue stream a bit -- so its not like Google is teaming up with the RIAA here to screw the little guy.
Google is, I'm reasonably sure, doing everything in their power to make the situation as positive as possible for everyone but unfortunately if they don't make a profit, all videos will be taken down (because Youtube won't exist) so doing something like hiring 10,000 reviewers to try and keep up with manual workload isn't really possible and we're stuck in a situation where all they can do is try to tweak the automated systems in hopes of getting incremental improvements.
Also, for everyone who continually complains about false negatives -- there's also a right boatload of false positives. You can find practically anything on there if you hit the right search terms (especially if that "anything" is more than a couple years old) and it often remains available for weeks or months before it gets taken down -- and there's usually a replacement or 3 just another search away.
I'm not saying either of those failure modes is a good thing, but ignoring half the problem just because it benefits you isn't really helping anything and makes you sound just as far off from reality as the RIAA lobbyists -- and they're at least getting paid to ignore reality in their rants.
if YouTube simply shut down for a week. Just one week. I rather suspect the drop in sales would have those music "industry" fuckers screaming like stuck pigs. Then maybe they'd just STFU about how YouTube is destroying their profitability. In a year or so they'd start bitching again. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few wash cycles maybe they'd even catch on.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"The reason Content ID exists is because Youtube can't possibly manually review everything."
It's not YouTube's job to review *anything*. The DMCA obligates them to take down content when they get a claim, and to put the content back up when their is a counter claim. That's it. The Content ID system actually works outside of any legal requirement.