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 :)"

Comments

Stuff That Matters

[Kunedog]

Yeah, random piracy is definitely the most important and relevant crowdfunding story right now, especially involving Patreon and Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If I started my own channel...

[magusxxx]

...where I take this yutz's content and ask you to hit the "Click to Give" link at...

https://thehungersite.greaterg... ...would that be wrong?

Re: If I started my own channel...

[93 Escort Wagon]

You should do it! If only for the ensuing fun where we get to watch him figure out how to deal with it.

Sounds like they do more than cable

[Agent0013]

The cable companies don't even do that much work. If we can pay for cable to give us the episodes, then why not a youtube channel.

Re:Sounds like they do more than cable

[jamesborr]

Because the cable companies are actually paying the content owners, this entity -- I suspect not so much...

Re:Sounds like they do more than cable

[jythie]

Something I always found fascinating was that when content was available both via piracy and legitimate sources, the pirated content was less likely to be mislabeled or out of order, while the legitimate sources did not seem to put any effort into making sure they got anything right.

Re:Sounds like they do more than cable

[ArchieBunker]

Sounds like the free market at work.

Re: It's arguably a public service what they're do

[DarkRookie2]

Yeah. Its free. That is the best part.
Second best thing, easier to find things on the pirate sites.

They are just doing...

[blahplusplus]

... what corporations have been doing to us via lobbying and inserting defects into software like games and OS's and calling them a "service".

The reality is out world is a hive of criminal and villainy and most people are too stupid to notice or do something about it.

350 subscribers

[AndyKron]

Looking through my youtube recommendations I don't see any infringing videos. I like small time original content like covers to popular songs, but I have to download them because they keep disappearing. Check out this guy with 350 subscribers covering Elton John: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Do the crime.
When you "pirate" Bladerunner, you're not hurting RIdley Scott or Harrison Ford.
You're not hurting the head makeup artist, the best boy or the gaffer.
You are hurting the media megacorp, who's trickle-down model is a ripoff for everyone.

The Copyright Holder's Cycle of Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Download them?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Good lord ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 :)"

Wow, so basically this person is more or less admitting they're engaging in copyright infringement for monetary gain by indicating they wish to be compensated for their time pirating someone else's work? Damn!

I don't see this ending well for that person, this is about as blatant as you can get.

Pretty much YouTube and Patreon are going to have to hand over anything and everything they have when a lawyer comes knocking.

And if punishment is based on per infringement, the view counts are going to make this even bigger ... if they've got even a few hundred thousand views, they're fucked.

Cue the hordes of shrieking lawyers.

I want to hear how this plays out, asking for people to crowd fund you pretty much tips you into the scary end of the reaming you're gonna get for this. This is now literally someone the content owner is going want to make an example of, and in a hard way.

Good lord, this is not going to end well.

Workload seems exagerated

[Bobrick]

Bullshit. What is there to edit? You download the episode off Bittorrent at about 5 minutes per episode on a decent connection, upload that file to YouTube. Be honest and just say you want us to pay your connection bills + as much extra cash as you can get out of this, but don't bullshit us or seriously rethink your workflow.

Re:Workload seems exagerated

[Aighearach]

Often they have to do some editing to put the content in an embedded window, and surround that by a moving background so that the algorithm can't tell what they copied. Often they also add a few minutes of extra sound, or repeated sound, at the end for the same reason.

I'm not saying it deserves payment, I'm only saying that it does involve some editing.

Pirates should do it for love, if they do it for money they risk troubles. Great hobby, horrible job.

Re:Workload seems exagerated

[ruddk]

YouTube's Content ID will flag their uploads if they don't alter the video and audio.
Apparently, Patreon isn't as quick to shutdown accounts of pirates as they are to people that offends someone. :D

Re:Workload seems exagerated

[Waccoon]

Never mind that. While it's been known since forever that time is money, it's also well known that not all time is equal. There's no correlation between how much time you put into your job and what you get paid for it, because sometimes the work you do is just worthless (hence, the endless begging for money).

I remember when people did stuff for free because it was fun. Today everyone and their grandma has a Patreon, and whines that they can't make a living posting recycled crap online.

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[lgw]

When you "pirate" Bladerunner, you're not hurting RIdley Scott or Harrison Ford.

I like the fact I have all the different versions of Blade Runner, not just the theatrical cut. Those only exists because of DVD sales.

Better if we all moved to a model of crowdfunding movies, of course, and left "copyright" behind.

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[mi]

You're not hurting the head makeup artist, the best boy or the gaffer.

Of course, you do hurt them all. Their jobs depend on their employer's being able to sell the fruits of their labors — and profiting from it. Diminishing the profit diminishes the pay. For everyone.

You are hurting the media megacorp

So theft is Ok, if you really hate the victim? How about rape? Is it Ok to rape a CEO of a "megacorp who's [sic] trickle-down model is a ripoff for everyone"? How about murder? No? Why not?

Entitled cunts

[reanjr]

How much harder is it to select a higher encoding bitrate or quality?

Given what Nintendo just did

[rsilvergun]

this seems like a really, really bad idea.

Re: It's arguably a public service what they're do

[Z00L00K]

If the copyright owners were to utilize the same business model - serve movies/shows on YouTube and link to a Patreon account then they would probably render the piracy less interesting.

karma gonna karma

[epine]

When you <scarequote>pirate</scarequote> Blade Runner, you're not hurting Ridley Scott or Harrison Ford.

Nice self-serving, incomplete logic.

Do you really think that the negotiating power of the A-list stars and directors is entirely independent of the profitability of the industry as a whole?

As it happens, the stars of yesterday were compensated based on the profitability of yesteryear. Not every economic compensation loop is forward-biased.

It's the young up-and-coming stars who are presently deprived of negotiating power because the industry is less profitable than it might have been if piracy were less of an intrinsic problem. This causal relationship exists in the large as surely as long-term starvation causes weight loss (if you can't afford to pay for a medically trained doctor to perform bariatric surgery, wait a little longer and the worms will do it for free).

Short-term causality is complex, and is riddled with moguls, humps and fluctuations. It's therefore a trivial exercise in motivated reasoning to assert that the broad outer box is far too large to matter, and that any smaller box is far too erratic to understand.

(We absolutely know that the modern food environment is instrumental in the modern obesity epidemic, but to slice this picture any finer is the domain of a thousand rabid hucksters; what passes for consensus is limited to tobacco, trans-fats, chronic indolence, and excessive refined sugar intake—everything else has devolved into a three-ring macro-nutrient circus of differently hued social-media clowns).

So this kind of argument is just completely ridiculous. You can't honestly argue that shrinking the pie doesn't hurt specific individuals who claim a stake in that pie. Even if there are such individuals who are getting shafted at the pie table, that's theirs to judge and juggle, and not yours.

(Turns out, Mortdecai was a heist movie, only Charlie Mortdecai was merely a plant, and it was actually Johnny Depp who rode off into the sunset in sole possession of the Brinks truck.)

What you can argue is that there's shenanigans all around. The studios perpetrate all kinds of shit they shouldn't be doing (e.g. Hollywood accounting). Cable companies and networks are some of the brashest corporate oligopolies known to man. Copyright term extension is cynical and destructive of what had started out as a workable economic, cultural, and social compromise. Retroactive copyright extension is beyond farce.

I would be conceptually prepared to slap YouTube's wrists over this, but for this: wake me up when retroactive copyright extension is well and truly off the books (and everything that had been slated to expire at some past date actually has expired).

Meanwhile, my governing attitude amounts to: karma gonna karma.

While any single artistic work remains in a state of retroactive copyright protection (protection that would otherwise have expired), the studios and the networks—and everyone else feeding from this pie, no matter how small their canary cage—have the least and last and lowest claim on progressive cultural outrage.

But I'm not going to lie about the economics. Those marginal impacts surely exist.

Re:karma gonna karma

[bzipitidoo]

As often happens, a small but powerful, greedy, and stupid group of people are in a futile fight against technological change. They can't turn back the clock, but they can and are hurting a lot of others and making a big mess. They are lying to themselves and everyone else, pushing vile control freak, ownership society propaganda with all its overtones of fascism and authoritarianism.

They have the arrogance to believe they're better and more deserving than everyone else, think the rest of us are "the masses", a bunch of feeble minded "consumers" who couldn't video record or edit our way out of a wet paper bag and who wouldn't have any good cinema, music, or other art if we didn't mooch off the producers. The bitter irony is that they're worse moochers and thieves than ever we were. Their entire business could not exist as it is without the technology to record and broadcast audio and video-- technology they had little to do with realizing. There's hardly any Disney movie that isn't an unashamedly naked retelling of a classic story. As you pointed out, they've lobbied for and been granted retroactive copyright extensions. They've got some nerve to cry thief to the victims of their many thefts.

Understand just how awful it is to apply ownership to knowledge, and to call someone a thief just for doing a little self-education. They very people whose science and invention made their business possible, they slander as hackers and thieves. Education is the foundation of democracy and civilization. Well, I have a name for those who would lock up and paywall basic knowledge, and it's a lot worse than thief. Traitors. When a move they make blocks children from self-improvement and learning, they commit treason against the democratic West, and all humanity. The universe does not work in accordance with the ugly notion that knowledge can be owned. If it did, the world would be a lot darker and eviler place.

So, what's to be done about it? Putting them on trial for treason would get their attention, but I think there's no need for such a harsh route. For, in another big irony, though they think they're such geniuses, at least in the arts, the fact is, they're not. Even in their best art is ownership thinking and propaganda. One of the foremost blatant examples of that is in the Star Trek episode, I Mudd.

But it goes much deeper and more subtle than that. Fantasy is absolutely chock full of magic that somehow is unique and unrepeatable, and highly respectful of ownership. And there's lots of mystery around the lost secrets of the ancients. Tolkien is full of Gothic, Dark Ages style thinking, tragedy and loss. For instance, the mighty stallion Shadowfax is regarded as a 2nd coming from the legendary, more powerful, and plain all around better horses from "the morning of the world". The alliance that defeated the Dark Lord and took his magic ring is the "Last Alliance", because elves are in decline. And elves are in decline because that's their fate. It's their fate to decline, because, well, that's just the way it is. So dramatic and tragic, to know that the elves will soon be gone forever, their wisdom and knowledge forever after beyond the reach of men. Tolkien says so, now go cry a river about it. To be fair, it's only relatively recently that our technology has reached the point that we've surpassed the ancients in pretty much everything, but even as little as 150 years ago, that couldn't be said-- for one thing we didn't have concrete, and the Romans did. Even 1500 years after the Fall of Rome, we're still hung over about it.

So that's why things must change, must be allowed to change. It won't be a loss, won't be a huge tragedy, the streets will not be full of the bodies of artists who starved to death. The tragic loss is the opposite. The real tragedy would be being held back, being kept uneducated, barbaric, minds dark, fearful of the unknown, lashing out violently

And, we do know what we can do. We can unleash our technology, realize its full

Re:karma gonna karma

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

If you "steal" a Hollywood movie made in the last 20 years, I insist that YOU are the real victim in this situation.

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[cascadingstylesheet]

You're not hurting the head makeup artist, the best boy or the gaffer.

Of course, you do hurt them all. Their jobs depend on their employer's being able to sell the fruits of their labors — and profiting from it. Diminishing the profit diminishes the pay. For everyone.

I think he's saying that you are not hurting the head makeup artist, the best boy or the gaffer who actually worked on BladeRunner.

Now, as you point out, if rampant copying is tolerated (well, if it is tolerated for all content, not just for decades old content), then you will hurt current and future workers, as it will become difficult for the movie industry to make money.

But that's a subtler point and more difficult for many to grasp.

Re: It's arguably a public service what they're do

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright infringement = theft = rape...nice strawman and giant false analogy.

No, crime = crime = crime. Sure some crimes are more severe than others, but it is neither strawman nor false analogy to ask where the cutoff is between crime that is acceptable and crime that is unacceptable. It is simply a question, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[Dragonslicer]

Of course, you do hurt them all. Their jobs depend on their employer's being able to sell the fruits of their labors — and profiting from it. Diminishing the profit diminishes the pay. For everyone.

The studios keep saying that the films don't make any profit, so what's the problem?

Re:Ok

[Aighearach]

If they do at the same scale, expect a response of the same scale.

The examples given here are multiple orders of magnitude smaller, so unlikely.

But possible. Americans love a good perp walk.

Re:Nazi faggot whines about being a nazi faggot

[Z80a]

How long until you declare jews as nazis for not following your exact political beliefs?

You misunderstood.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

So, the shows themselves are in ~480p, and the uploader thinks it looks better if converted over to HD?

No, he's saying that he now uploads in HD, as opposed to when he used to upload at 480p. The shoes he's talking about were shot in HD, so it's probable he found an HD version and didn't just downsample it. Of course, downsampling is a long, complex process, but changing the wrapper file for a 1080p show isn't, so it should be easier/faster to upload at a higher framerate (bandwidth aside)

You know what this is

[Provocateur]

It's the world's smallest violin.

PS Let's rethink your workflow. Or your priorities.

Disclaimer IANAL

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[hackwrench]

Copyright infringement is not theft and copyright shouldn't even exist. To make a record of a discovery shouldn't be so expensive.

Re:Was YouTube EVER not a criminal enterprise?

[rtb61]

Actually your claim is totally the exact opposite of reality. It is not about Google making money, it is how much it would cost google to personally and individually review every single piece of content uploaded, 576,000 hours of content per day (https://www.businessinsider.com/viewers-find-objectionable-content-on-youtube-kids-2017-11/?utm_source=feedly&amp%3Butm_medium=referral&r=AU&IR=T) times by say $25 per hour because the people doing should be very knowledgeable in law, every single day. So it is not about making money, it is solely about them being not able to afford it, end of story, done and finished. Can it be automated, no, they pretend it can but it can't because any attempt to automate results in far too many false positives which cost way more to review, a person much watch the entire bit of content and do the consultation process with the uploader, the added cost on the other option.

So want a public video content sharing channel, well, it is going to be public and what goes up, goes up. Have a complaint about a specific bit of content by a specific users, well fucking make it to Google, each and every fucking single time, just the way it fucking is. You want content protected, than you fucking pay to protect it, otherwise fuck off.

Re:Was YouTube EVER not a criminal enterprise?

[shanen]

Why is Slashdot overrun with illiterate trolls these years? One of my theories is that international hackers think trolling on Slashdot is a cheap way to boost their English skills.

Re:Was YouTube EVER not a criminal enterprise?

[SigmundFloyd]

it is solely about them being not able to afford it, end of story, done and finished.

Google is one of the richest companies in the world, but you justify their profiting from copyright infringement because they can't afford operating withing the law? Since when is that a valid excuse?

Also, why should the content owners waste their time searching and reporting? So Google can cut their costs and hire less people?

Are you a Google shill or are you being dumb for free?

Re: It's arguably a public service what they're do

[Rande]

And things that shouldn't be a crime at all?

What Rosa Parks did was a crime, but it shouldn't have been a crime at all.

The anti-copyright people are trying hard to bring the copyright laws back to reasonable levels, but they have a hard fight because the pro-copyright people have made lots of money off prolonging copyright protection.

Re: It's arguably a public service what they're do

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Because crime is a natural force of nature, not a policy established through the exercise of power and privilege, often in violation of assumed social contract. Right.

Re:It's arguably a public service what they're doi

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I will steal from the Atlantic Records catalogue at will, with a clean conscience.
Jerry Wexler became a wealthy man, while many of the real artists died in near poverty.