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Hiding in Plain Sight: The YouTubers' Crowdfunding Piracy (engadget.com)
Some YouTube channels are publishing full-length episodes of TV shows, rights of which they obviously do not own, and on top of this, they are trying to crowdfund their piracy efforts by asking viewers to donate some cash. From a report: YouTube creators asking for money is nothing new, be it through the site's built-in membership features or third-party services such as Patreon. But trying to profit off someone else's intellectual property isn't the same as asking for support on an original video they've created. The person who runs the Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen channel did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Engadget, but their Patreon page (named YoIUploadShows) isn't coy.
"Hey! It's not as easy as you might think to make my content, I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them and upload them," YoIUploadShows' Patreon page reads. "This can sometimes take at least a few hours. Especially because the downloads are usually slow and the rendering itself can take a couple hours, because I started making all my uploads in HD instead of 480p to give them a little extra clarity." It's not easy, folks, so for that he or she "would really appreciate the extra support if you have any money to spare :)"
"Hey! It's not as easy as you might think to make my content, I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them and upload them," YoIUploadShows' Patreon page reads. "This can sometimes take at least a few hours. Especially because the downloads are usually slow and the rendering itself can take a couple hours, because I started making all my uploads in HD instead of 480p to give them a little extra clarity." It's not easy, folks, so for that he or she "would really appreciate the extra support if you have any money to spare :)"
Movie Studios c. 1970s: We can't let TV stations broadcast our movies - then nobody would go to the theaters anymore and we'd loose money! .... studios start licensing movies like The Wizard of Oz to be broadcast on TV and raking in cash...
Movie Studios c. 1980s: We can't let people rent movies on VHS - then nobody would go to the theaters anymore and we'd loose money! .... studios start selling VHS versions of movies for $80, raking in cash....
Movie Studios c. 1990s: We can't let people buy cheap movies on VHS - we have to make them expensive so people will rent them! .... studio sells Jurassic Park for $20 on release day, rakes in tons of cash...
Movie Studios c. 2000s: Digital copying is going to kill off movies! We're loosing our shirts! .... studios start selling DVDs for $10 as duplication prices come down, raking in even more money than VHS sales....
Movie Studios c. 2010s: We can't STREAM movies! We make all our money on....
It's almost as if the easier and cheaper you make it for people to buy your stuff, MORE PEOPLE WILL BUY YOUR STUFF.
So let me guess, they're not just pirating content, they're using someone else's pirated content as the starting point to make their pirated content. And they expect people to give them money for that, when the bulk of the effort was time a computer spent chugging away unattended? Might as well mine Bitcoin if that's so much of a burden. Damn GoFundMe generation expects people to throw money at them for doing practically nothing except breaking laws and violating rules.